MSN Shopping Insider

Windows Live Shopping Site now LIVE

Today we launch the brand new Windows Live Shopping site!

What is it? It is the beta launch of Microsoft’s Web 2.0 shopping experience, featuring one of the world’s largest product catalogs, user-created content and an easier-to-use interface built on 100% AJAX technology. It uses a unified shopping engine to search or browse almost 40 million products from 7,000 stores ranging from many of the country’s leading retailers to eBay. Results are displayed in an order that is not affected by advertising; merchants cannot pay to have their items show up closer to the top. Users will be able to drag-and-drop items to a shopping list and share lists with friends; see user reviews of products and sellers; and read and create public shopping guides on any subject.

What features are we most excited about for this beta release? Oh my, there are many, but drag and drop, lists and guides are super cool in our book. Enhanced preview is another cool feature; allow users to get the details of an item without having to click to a details page. With guides, users can create shopping guides about any subject and link to any set of products in Windows Live Shopping, adding their own comments and insights. Users can rate other users’ guides for their helpfulness. Top-rated guides will be displayed in relevant contexts in Windows Live Shopping.

What is our vision? In the future, Windows Live Shopping will continue to offer the great comparison shopping services you see today, while also integrating more social and community features that will enable users to better research, share, and have fun with their shopping experiences. AJAX will allow us to execute against this vision with a rich user interface that is modularized to capitalize on the gadgets craze. This Beta offering is just the tip of the iceberg.

Come take a look around http://shopping.live.com/ and please let us know what you think. We would love to hear from you!
 

Enhanced prices page and site UI

The MSN Shopping team has updated our price comparison page to make it more useful for both consumers and sellers. This page allows MSN Shopping customers to compare all the offers for standard products like consumer electronics, books and movies. Instead of sorting offers purely by price, the page now sorts offers by condition first, then price. Offers for new items are listed first, sorted by price; then refurbished items, sorted by price; then used items, sorted by price; and lastly, items where the seller did not specify condition.

Our consumer testing shows that most MSN Shopping users prefer to shop for new goods, though many are interested in being able to compare prices for refurbished and used items as well. They can do both on our new page, without having to check a separate page for refurbished or used items, as many of our competitors require.
 
We also made several minor UI improvements on the page, including making more columns of data sortable in a consistent way; simplifying sorting and filtering controls; and displaying product format (for example, DVD or VHS for movies) next to the price.
 
In addition, although most users may not have noticed, we tweaked the site color scheme to use fewer and lighter colors, closer to the style of new Microsoft services like start.com and live.com, and to make text more readable on our category and results pages.

Below is a screenshot of the revised price comparison page:

Mike Gordon
Lead Program Manager
MSN Shopping

Adding a friendly print feature

One of the exciting areas the MSN Shopping Creative Team worked on this month is a friendly print feature. There is no separate button or control needed as it is integrated site-wide via a style sheet, and works transparently with the browser. All the shopper needs to do is hit file>print or use the regular browser print icon. We kept the printed content area as clear and clean as possible.

The style sheet removes the following elements that are useful on a web page but not needed for a print page.  

• ads and design elements
• headers and footers
• navigation  

The only page type it doesn’t apply to yet is the comparison page (which allows shoppers to compare multiple products side by side), as the page could conceivably scroll sideways through some 50 products, and that doesn’t fit well on your average print page. 

Here is a results page on our site and below is the print version of this page:

Here is what the printed page looks like:

Rhea Loader
Lead Designer
MSN Shopping

eBay Selection on MSN Shopping

Inventory on eBay is constantly changing and in order to bring our consumers the freshest catalog of choices possible, we parse, load, classify and match the tens of millions of eBay items on a daily basis. We have invested in building out our software platform to handle such high churn workloads and have expanded our server infrastructure to efficiently and quickly ingest the inventory available on eBay, along with the catalogs of our existing merchants and aggregators. All told, we sift through hundreds of millions of items every day.

Our users will notice that the site has also been enhanced to accommodate features unique to eBay items. We expose the ability to refine using the ‘auction sort’ on the prices page and show the average selling price on the results and prices page. We also show the number of auctions available for that particular item (see screenshot below).

With the addition of eBay’s vast selection, MSN Shopping continues its march towards becoming *the* place to find what you are looking for and buy it with complete confidence.

Questions/Comments? Please don’t hesitate to drop me a line: sprakash@microsoft.com

Shailesh Prakash
Lead Program Manager
MSN Shopping

"Shopping in your Undies" with Cedric the Entertainer

In celebration of the festive holiday season, MSN Shopping sponsored today's "Shopping in your Undies" event with Cedric the Entertainer in New York City's Times Square. Today's event and all surrounding activities highlighted the ease and convenience of MSN Shopping, ultimately delivering the message that "Shopping on MSN is so easy and convenient that you can do it in your undies!"

During the event, MSN Shopping spokesperson, Cedric the Entertainer, officially kicked off the "holiday shopping-in-your-underwear season". Cedric appeared on stage in his boxer shorts surrounded by an army of regular joe's - also in their boxer shorts - called the “MSN Shopping Undies Posse." Cedric shared a few words with the crowd about his disdain for traditional Holiday shopping, and how he would much rather do his holiday shopping at online at home and in his undies! Cedric then launched the MSN Shopping truck, which proceeded around Manhattan, visiting various popular shopping destinations where the "MSN Shopping Undies Posse" distributed MSN Shopping gifts and prizes.

The MSN Shopping Truck, which was enclosed in glass, began at Father Duffy Square. Inside the truck, a few members of the “MSN Shopping Undies Posse” depicted a scene of regular people shopping in their undies from the comfort of their own "home". The event took place at 10:00 a.m. and was open to invited press, photographers and the general public.

Below are some screenshots from today's event with Cedric the Entertainer:

Check out more photos on the MSN Space's blog featuring Cedric and this fun event!

Carrie Shursen
MSN Shopping Marketing

Cyber Monday

Most of us in the online space have known for a while that consumers like to shop while at work. We’ve also known that Black Friday was not as big online as it is offline. Now, the mainstream press have got a hold of the data and coined a new term, Cyber Monday. Here are a few articles mentioning it.

MSNBC - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10233177/from/RSS/ (nice MSN Shopping promotion on the page!)
USA Today - http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-11-28-cyber-monday-sales_x.htm
Time - http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1134823,00.html
Tons more - http://search.msn.com/news/results.aspx?FORM=NRRE&q=cyber%20monday

MSN Shopping shared the same success yesterday. Our traffic on Cyber Monday was our highest of the year (so far) and up 52% year over year. In the graph below, you can see how Monday’s traffic stands out in November.

Scott Austin
Group Program Manager
MSN Shopping

Just Released: MSN Shopping Instant Answers on MSN Search

Today we released a new feature on MSN Search called MSN Shopping Instant Answers. MSN Search Instant Answers are designed to provide better access to highly-relevant information with immediate utility. At the end of the day, we hope we can connect people more quickly with the information that they need.

For relevant searches, the Shopping Instant Answer will provide the top three most popular products, attributes, and prices from the enormous MSN Shopping product catalog. From the answer you can also perform a side-by-side comparison of top products and get to our full product listing where rich shopping tools are available to help you easily find the product you’re looking for. 

Here are some examples of Shopping Answers:

• Digital cameras
• Sony televisions
• Trampolines 
• Engagement rings  
• Men's watches 
• Neutrogena cosmetics  

We’re really excited about this feature, not just because we think it’s useful, but also because it represents the first of many scenarios on the way where search and shopping work better together. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve had fun working on it, and we hope you find it useful. Please send us feedback and your ideas on how we can make it even better.

Below are some screenshots of the all new MSN Shopping Instant Answers on MSN Search.

Search for digital cameras

Search for women's boots

Mackenzie Steele
Group Program Manager
MSN Shopping

"MSN Mother of all Shopping" Campaign with Shirley Jones

In an effort to show our customers how committed MSN Shopping is to providing an easy and fun online shopping experience, MSN Shopping has teamed up with Shirley Jones, also known as “Mrs. Partridge" from TV’s classic The Partridge Family, to create the “MSN Mother of All Shopping" holiday campaign. Using the great new features and vast selection from MSN Shopping, Shirley will help our customers find the perfect gift for everyone on their list this season, while highlighting some key MSN Shopping benefits: convenience, value, selection and ease-of-use.

MSN Shopping was looking to develop a partnership with a famous "mother" who will attract and resonate with our target audience. Along with our fantastic holiday guides and exclusive deals, the "MSN Mother of All Shopping" campaign with Shirley Jones will add a fun and unique element to our site. A mother herself, with a real family and a TV family, Shirley says, “I know, like most of you, what it feels like to have a few too many people to shop for come holiday season".

We kicked the “MSN Mother of All Shopping" program off with a consumer press release last week. We will continue to promote this partnership through other PR and marketing tactics, including our “Mother" viral microsite (goes live 11/15), which will allow visitors to interact with the likeness of Shirley Jones to help find great gift ideas. You will also see Shirley throughout our helpful holiday guides, as she points consumers in the right direction for great gifts and special deals.

Be on the lookout for Shirley Jones and more of the "MSN Mother of all Shopping" holiday campaign!

Shirley Jones

Getting the MSN Shopping message to consumers

As you may know, we announced our new MSN Shopping site in August, and have continued to improve our consumer experience over the past few months. One of the more recent things we have done is to prepare a fantastic holiday offering and shopping experience. We are now taking this message to consumers.

As a part of that, today we released our holiday press release targeted at consumers, telling them why they should not only visit our site this season, but throughout the year. We want online shoppers to know that we have a great shopping service for them, one that includes great selection, useful comparison shopping tools and helpful merchandising.

Please see below for the full text of the release and don't forget to visit our Holiday Guide and Exclusives page for some amazing deals and gift ideas.

Scott Austin
Director of Programming
MSN Shopping

Holiday Merchandising on MSN Shopping

Now that MSN Shopping’s selection is filled with more than 30 million offers, we are especially focused on developing new and unique ways to merchandise our selection and best deals for customers. Offering great prices and merchandising them is critical to the success of online shopping portals like MSN. When customers find what they are looking for at the right price, we have accomplished our mission. 

A DSN Retailing Today article states, “The fundamentals of driving traffic online are the same as driving traffic to stores – create excitement, create a sense of “you’re only going to find this here”. Successful online sites today are offering a broad assortment of exclusive items, items that can’t be found in stores and often carry a higher price tag than in-store offerings.

This holiday, we kicked off the MSN Shopping Holiday Exclusive Program, which is now live on our site. The program is offering one-day-only sales exclusives to MSN Shoppers on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from November 1st through December 23rd. The merchandising done within MSN Shopping’s category pages, Holiday Guide, and exclusives program is second-to-none compared to their biggest competitors on the web. Within the Holiday Guide, we are merchandising items in compellings lists, such as the Top 10 Gifts by Store, where customers can see what is hot this year by category and store. Our Thanksgiving Guide is also packed with the necessary cookware, appliances, and decorating tips to make it a memorable holiday.

The category management team merchandises each category, cross merchandises across the MSN network, studies user needs, and works with design and editorial teams to deliver a shopping portal experience unlike any other on the web today. We invite you to experience holiday shopping on MSN Shopping this season - we welcome your feedback.

Below are some screenshots of the MSN Shopping Holiday Guide and Exclusives page.

Holiday Guide Hub page

Holiday Exclusives page

Karen Reed
Lead Category Manager
MSN Shopping

Community Price Patrol on MSN Shopping

Just released is our new “community price patrol” feature which allows customers to report price errors on the MSN Shopping site. This feature is now available on the 'prices pages' in the form of a link called “Report error in price", which is located at the footer of the page.

How it works: A) Click the "Report an error" link and an inline form displays. B) Click on the price that is incorrect - Step 1 of the form will be populated; Step 2 allows you to select from four possible errors; Step 3 allows you to enter comments. C) The customer is sent a 'Thank you' upon submission. See the images below or visit the following example page for more detail.

Not only do we want to glean as much feedback as we can about the quality of the data we present on Shopping, but we are also interested in understanding how our customers perceive the problems they encounter. Prices on the site are gathered from merchants in the form of feeds. The majority of price errors are due to data lag issues, rather than purposeful manipulation to get higher placement via price sorting. Sometimes the prices are erroneous due to short delays in processing the feeds, other times they are due to merchants changing their process, or just plain incorrect pricing. With this new feature, our customers have a simple way to quickly and anonymously report pricing errors on MSN Shopping. With this information we will improve the quality of our data and create a better customer experience.

Below are some screenshots of the new community price patrol feature and user flow:

A. Click “Report error in Price” at the bottom of the prices page.

B. Report error bubble – click on the price you wish to report and follow the steps.

C. Receive a Thank you upon submission.

Cristina Colby
Program Manager
MSN Shopping

MSN Shopping Launches in Australia

MSN Shopping is very pleased and excited to announce the launch of the new Shopping site on ninemsn in Australia! The new site is built upon the same application platform recently released in the United States, and demonstrates the MSN Shopping team’s commitment to providing high quality tools and services to our partners and customers worldwide.

The new Shopping site was configured, prepped for content, and deployed in two months. It currently host more than 200 retailers and boasts 200,000 products—efforts are already underway to double the number of products in the very near future! This was made possible due to the site’s flexible and scalable platform, which allows our partners to tailor the site experience to meet their customers’ needs.  Stay tuned and look for other new sites/locales to follow!

A few words from Caroline Borge, Executive Producer - Shopping, ninemsn in Australia:

The new Shopping site will continue our status as the No.1 shopping site in Australia and provides the opportunity to now become the largest Shopping site in Australia. Our objective is to attract more customers who come back more often, and who purchase more online. We have more products and stores to browse through, with anything from refrigerators to plasma TVs, tents, and all your everyday items such as computers, cameras, beauty, books, music and movies. You can research, find and purchase exactly what you are looking for.

This was an incredible feat to have achieved in just two months, and we thank everyone - in Redmond and Australia - for making this launch a reality.

Below are some screenshots of the fantastic new site:

Category page for Home and Garden

MSN Shopping at DigitalLife 2005

On behalf of MSN Shopping, I spent this past weekend in New York City attending the DigitalLife consumer technology tradeshow. DigitalLife is a three-day consumer event, produced by Ziff Davis Media, dedicated to educating consumers on what the digital lifestyle means in every aspect of life - at work, home and play. And, how the convergence of affordable, accessible technologies is enriching and empowering people's lives. This is only the second year of the show, but it is already gaining traction on the consumer technology tradeshow circuit.

DigitalLife is focused on educating and inspiring consumers, press and retailers. I spent three days face-to-face with these groups, doing demonstrations and raising awareness about MSN Shopping. The response was overwhelmingly positive, making our presence at this show, and others like it, all the more valuable.

The best part of my experience was the direct feedback I was able to glean from consumers. MSN Shopping held up extremely well under intense scrutiny and comparison against competitors. I encountered several skeptics who challenged me with strange queries and searches for obscure products, including folding bicycles, toilet seats and flooring tiles. In every instance, MSN Shopping held up to the challenge, providing a vast selection of products at great prices. Our new comparison feature was a hit. I was able to help one man find a screaming deal on a 42” Plasma TV he had been researching for months. I honestly think he went right home to purchase that TV on MSN Shopping! Our merchandising truly sets us apart from competitors. Many consumers were impressed to learn about what the MSN Shopping team does for them in an effort to provide the best shopping experience on the web today.

DigitalLife was a great opportunity to demonstrate in real-time why MSN Shopping deserves the mindshare among consumers and competitive comparison shopping sites today. Keep your eye out for us at upcoming consumer technology tradeshows - we welcome the opportunity to make you a believer, too!

Lisa doing her thing at DigitalLife 2005.

Lisa Giles
Category Manager
MSN Shopping

Start.com Integration

MSN Shopping has just released our first version of the shopping gadget on Start.com.  To get to it, expand the Start sidebar and click on Shopping under Gadgets (circled in the image below). It leverages our current RSS implementation on the MSN Shopping site. We grappled with how much information and functionality to include in this first release but decided that simple is best and followed the simplicity of the other Start gadgets.

When you first open the Shopping gadget you get a clean and simple search box (1 in the image below) which exposes MSN Shopping’s rich product universe. The featured items list gives you quick links to interesting collections. You have the ability to see the product descriptions within the gadget itself and your last 3 searches are saved (2 in the image below) with the ability to remove one or all (if you so desire). I would love to hear thoughts, ideas, critiques, or just plain feedback. Email me at crisco@microsoft.com.

Cristina Colby
Program Manager
MSN Shopping

Soft Goods on MSN Shopping - Attribute Extraction

Many people are aware that MSN Shopping gives users the opportunity to refine their results in hard-good categories like televisions, digital cameras, computers, etc.  Attribute extraction was one of the biggest investment areas we made for our new site, and we've now grown our selection so significantly, the next step is to give our users more and more tools to help them narrow down the list of items to the things that they’re really looking for.  To help them do that, we now have category-specific refinements in over 300 categories. 

Check out the following great examples of attribute extraction in action, where you can refine the results quickly to find exactly what you're looking for.

·         Holiday Décor by holiday, or by the type of decoration

·         Men’s shirts by shirt style, sleeve length, & material as well as brand, seller & price

·         Flowers by flower type, arrangement type, and color

·         Women’s sunglasses by sunglass style, shape, brand, seller, & price

·         Loose diamonds by shape, carat, color, clarity & cut as well as price

·         Women’s coats coat style and material

·         Office chairs upholstery and chair style as well as price, brand & seller

·         Women’s pants Refine by pant cut and material type

·         Decorative mirrors Sort mirrors by type, shape & feature

Chris Jolley, Group Programming Manager