IMshopping is capitalizing on the increasing role that social media and product recommendations are playing in shopping decisions. The company, which describes itself as a human-assisted shopping recommendation platform, announced the general availability of its Merchants Answers service to all online retailers. IMshopping Merchant Answers allows customers to ask shopping questions directly on retailers' websites via a lightweight widget that appears on any page. Questions are routed to shopping guides for answers, which are then sent to customers. Guides can be employees of the retailer or recruited from Imshopping's own community of shopping guides.

IMshopping's back-end tools make it easy to integrate merchant product catalogs and attach relevant products that fit customers' needs. The question and answer format also creates valuable user-generated content that drives additional organic traffic beyond the initial customer inquiry.

Twenty retailers have already launched the Merchant Answers service on their websites including BargainCell, AMB Furniture and Rainbow Appliance. Online retailers wishing to add a shopping community to their sites can sign up at http://merchants.imshopping.com.