Bargains and deals blogging is getting more and more prominent in Australia. I started this blog 18 months ago when I could not find any, but there are more and more on the horizon. They talk about the latest deals and great bargains that they can find in both brick & mortar stores and online stores. In the era of Web 2.0, where user-generated content is the king, online stores should try to actually take advantage of those bargain blogs to bring in more traffic thus making more sales.

No. I am not talking about advertising, nor bribing the bloggers. There are already Google Adsense and ReviewMe/PayPerPost that can send you traffic and some link juice if you have some $$$ to spare. I actually want to talk about the things that online stores can do to make bargains bloggers’ lives easier to write about your deals.

There are quite a few that I can think of, but I will just write about two today.

Permalink! Permalink! Permalink!

I am actually talking about permalink in a more general sense. We all know that hyperlinks are the currency of the world wide web, and every website will die to get some quality links. I am sure that online stores are no exception, especially with deep linking, where a bargains blog can link directly to an item on special. Visitors can just click on that link, click on “Add to Cart”, click on “Checkout” and Bingo! Everyone loves fast transaction.

However, in order to get deep linking to happen, each specific product / sale must have its own permanent URL! That means:

• It is not just a blurb on the home page. Bloggers want an URL to that specific sale, and a description like “top-left hand corner of the home page” does not qualify.
• It must be URL addressable. Similar to the point above, and it especially applies to sites that are Ajax powered, or after an HTTP POST operation.
• It must be permanent (or at least try to). You might have a general specials page on /specials/, but each special should have their own addressable URL. You don’t want visitors to come by 4 weeks later seeing something completely different.

I was going to blog about the 50% off special on Creative Zen 20Gb MP3 player at OfficeWorks. It’s a pretty good deal — 20Gb hard disk MP3 player that can store 10,000 songs is going for $199, and it is available online only. Except this product is NOT URL addressable because of the way OfficeWorks online store is built. It’s a nice Java-based website that focuses a lot on user experience, however it is totally brain-dead when it comes to bargain-blogger-friendliness.

I am sure lack of permalink URL to a specific product and/or sale is really a turn off to bargain bloggers or even forum posters who would like to share the deals with the rest of the world. I much prefer to write about online deals than off-line deals because I can easily point it to my readers. An online sale without a permalink? Then might as well go off-line.

Site News and Updates in RSS Feeds

Already got newsletter emails for the latest products and specials? Great! Welcome to the 90’s! (By the way, if you don’t, you really should have newsletter emails). Oh, it is almost 2007, and RSS is the preferred way to broadcast the latest and greatest of your website online store on this side of century.

I guess for average Joes who are tracking one or two shops, newsletters are okay. However for those who are tracking countless number of sites, i.e. the bloggers behind bargains and deals sites, email subscriptions become less feasible.

1. I do not wish to give out my email address to every online store that I would like to track.
2. I would like to turn on/off newsletter at my own will. For example if I decide to unsubscribe, I do not need to go to online store’s website to change preference, or send an email to request unsubscription. Just remove the feed from aggregator will do.
3. RSS is a well documented syndication format that allows easy scripting.

(3) is really for bargain bloggers who also happen to be programmers, who can take a feed, manipulate it and integrate into other websites. If you have been reading here for a while, you will notice that I often have products from Deals Direct and OO.com.au on the sidebar. Products from Deals Direct are generated from their RSS feeds — nice and easy. Products from OO.com.au however are scrapped from their home page with quite a bit of regular expression. Not as easy as I like, and it broke and needed fixing when they updated their website last month.

What then should be in the RSS? First of all, there is no limit on how many feeds you can have on a site. I like Deals Direct’s approach by providing feeds for new items, front-page featured items and bargain bins. I have seen sites providing feeds for each category, and with today’s heavy duty CMS + e-commerce software it’s certainly not impossible.

Moreover, you should have feeds on the newsletters. Remember, each feed item would have an addressable URL, that means a blogger can talk about your latest newsletter with a direct link! There are other things that can go into newletters, which are related to my next point.

Blog

I guess I don’t need to explain what a blog is. An online store will certainly benefit from having a corporate/company blog, talking about new products, coming sales, company directions, or even occasional off-topics like, hmm, cricket?

Do you know why some people always buy from their local corner-shop when it is always 50% more expensive? It’s more than convenience, but some people actually felt that they are relating to the shops and the owners! Online stores can also be more than just a catalogue + shopping cart, and blog (or forum) brings interaction between business and customers to make them feel more personal.

It also applies to bargains bloggers writing about some online stores and their products. Over the past 18 months I have actually exchanged emails with many shop owners that I have written about here, and (surprisingly!) there are real lives behind those shops! It is going to be more helpful if those shops have a blog — no need of frequent updating, but just enough to show that there’s someone there — which bargain bloggers can write about.

Setting up a blog is super-easy. Keeping a blog updated (2 posts per week?) shouldn’t take too much time. Managing it and keeping it civil (i.e. resolving disgruntled customers) might be a bigger task, but we won’t discuss that here.

Conclusion

Permalinks, RSS feeds and a company blog — that’s it for today. If online stores have them, it would make bargain blogging much more enjoyable and at the end it is the stores that benefit.

Do you have any other suggestion?