TheFind Says to Merchants: 'Feed Us Directly for Free!'

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 15 /PRNewswire/ -- TheFind, which hosts 17 million unique monthly shoppers and sends quality traffic to 150,000 stores, today introduced an enhanced feed spec and a new merchant center that allows online and local stores to submit their product feeds directly to TheFind, for free.  Most every merchant with their own online store is already in TheFind's index; however, uploading a direct product feed to TheFind provides merchants of every size with a finer degree of control over how their products are presented, including the ability to update pricing more frequently and accurately specify information important for consumers such as tax and shipping charges.  

"When people search for products they are doing the online equivalent of window shopping," said Eric Peerless, chief marketing officer of Since1910 jewelers, the largest online seller of designer engagement rings, including the popular Tacori brand.  "Claiming my store, becoming an UpFront Merchant and submitting a feed directly to TheFind is a free and effective way of managing my product displays to invite more shoppers inside."

As the world's largest shopping center, TheFind contains more than 500,000 online and local stores carrying over 400 million products.  TheFind assembles this comprehensive array of stores and products through a mix of patented web crawling and information extraction technology, in addition to the direct feeds it already accepts from many large merchants.  

Submitting a feed is easy, at merchant.thefind.com. Store owners must first "claim" their store and complete the basic store registration information.  Then, merchants can immediately begin submitting and directly managing their own product feeds to TheFind.  Merchants can use popular feed formats such as GoogleBase, or they can use TheFind's new enhanced feed spec, which includes more detailed attributes relevant to a growing number of online shoppers.

In addition to direct management of how product information is displayed, the new tax and shipping tool highlights the re-launched merchant center.  In simplifying the task of compiling data for tax and shipping costs using simple radio buttons and drop down menus, merchants can quickly provide shoppers on TheFind with a greater level of transparency by specifying where and how they ship and in which states they collect sales tax.

"We wanted to make it as fast and easy as possible for merchants to get their feeds directly into TheFind, which is exactly why we are perfectly happy to receive the GoogleBase feed that many merchants are already using," said Jordan Keffer, director of merchant programs at TheFind.  "We also know – based on our own data – that existing feed specs don't cover many of the product attributes consumers search for, so we've taken this opportunity to also define a new feed spec that better matches how shoppers actually search for products and stores."

Registering with TheFind and becoming an "UpFront Merchant," also a free service, allows merchants to provide buyers a greater degree of confidence by presenting easily located store detail information.  Importantly, UpFront merchants and merchants who submit their feeds directly to TheFind improve the quality of the store and product information consumers are seeking, thereby enhancing the relevancy of their product listings which typically increases the quality and quantity of the shoppers who visit their store from TheFind.  

About TheFind

TheFind is the world's largest shopping center where more than 500,000 online and local stores can be found selling over 400 million products to more than 17 million unique monthly shoppers.  Opened to the public in 2007 and profitable since late 2008, TheFind has received multiple patents for its innovative shopping aggregation and search technology that combines an unsurpassed array of stores, products, coupons, reviews and other information relevant to all shoppers.  Headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., TheFind's investors include Bain Capital Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures. 

SOURCE TheFind