I was going through my email this weekend and had these emails come through from Newegg.com and Circuitcity.com. Which would you click on and engage with?
For me, I know it’s the Newegg ad. It provides more insight to what the sale has to offer and there’s more to intrigue me to go deeper. The Circuit City ad just tells me they are having a sale. Being that’s it a holiday weekend, I know every retailer out there has some sort of sale, so it doesn’t do much for me.
Google just release Google Checkout Trends. Similar in nature to Google Trends where you can compare the popularity of search terms, here Google is allowing you to compare sales of products or brands that were paid for through Google Checkout.
After playing with it a bit, I started to think about how it might be used by retailers for useful information. One of the clear ways may be to look at two brands like I’ve done in the screenshot below. Comparing shoes from the brands Sebago and Rockport, show they are fairly even in their success overall, but show very different peaks and valleys. I think it would be interesting to compare Google’s results to your own sales metrics and see how they differ.
When checking it out, be sure to zoom in on specific time frames and price points. You can start to see patterns of how the products do at various points.
Merchandisers will have to keep in mind that this sales data is only for online transactions and those that went through Google Checkout, which is an extremely small portion of online sales at the moment. Never the less, it can still show interesting trends.
One of the disappointing things that makes this less useful is that Google only shows top tier items so trying to compare products
