Coupon label vs. landing page mis-match.

[nite]

Coupons seem like a good idea, but there seems to be a mismatch between:


The coupon description
The merchant landing page

Here's an example of a coupon description:


Samsung DualView ST100 14.2MP Digital Camera - Now only $169.99 + Ships Free - Best price on the web! -- Valid from 2011-05-13 to 2011-08-01The link location for this particular coupon is:

http://prosperent.com/coupon/218646-285-0/?m=Meijer&k=Samsung+DualView+ST100+14.2MP+Digital+Camera+-+Now+only+%24169.99+%2B+Ships+Free+-+Best+price+on+the+web%21+-+ends+8%2F1&d=Samsung+DualView+ST100+14.2MP+Digital+Camera+-+Now+only+%24169.99+%2B+Ships+Free+-+Best+price+on+the+web%21&sid=blogmasher.com_q%3Dcereal%26sort%3D0%26numitem %3D10%26page%3D1The landing page for the coupon is:

http://www.meijer.com/s/kitchen-dining-housewares-cutlery-cutting-boards/_/N-3zm?CAWELAID=415254522&PID=3726866&cj=cj&cmpid=commjunct

As a shopper, I would expect that the landing page would have something to do with the coupon description. But in this case, I click on a link about digital cameras, and I wind up on a page about kitchen knives. I imagine that this couldn't convert into a sale.

Any solutions? Or is this another case where the merchant is at fault?

[prosperent brian]

Looks like the all too common issue of a merchant supplying bad data in their feed. I'll contact them.

[nite]

Looks like the all too common issue of a merchant supplying bad data in their feed. I'll contact them.

You minus well send out a mass email to all merchants asking them to verify their coupon data. It would be a face-palming experience to contact each merchant who has bad coupons individually.

[prosperent brian]

I'm not going to mass e-mail 2,000 merchants. If you run across a specific example I will handle it at that time. Otherwise, not much you can do about it. We fix it as we see it.

[mister]

Most merchants are retards. It's the way it is. Brian's magic can't compare to harry potter :(

[nite]

I'm not going to mass e-mail 2,000 merchants. If you run across a specific example I will handle it at that time. Otherwise, not much you can do about it. We fix it as we see it.

That's fine and dandy, but I'm not going to be policing the sites (who has time to police thousands of domains?) -- it's the customers who are going to come across these mis-match issues. Shall we create a reporting form for them to send us webmasters feedback on product mismatches, and then in turn relay that information to Prosperent? Are customers really going to go that far? I don't think so. Customers won't make a purchase when all is said and done. So, in the end, these issues will continue to happen and at the present time there is no mechanism in place that verifies the quality of the links.

In other words, Prosperent is only as good as the data provided by the merchants, except for the odd fix here and there, right?

[prosperent brian]

Look, I don't know what you want here. Of course the data is only as good as what the merchants provide. We do a LOT of post processing of the datafeeds, but i'm not going to hand check 50 million products each day for you. If a merchant has some bad url's, so be it. Not much we can do beyond talking to them when we see it. I don't know what else you would expect here? We're talking a few clicks a day out of millions, and if you guys were going straight through some of these merchant instead of through us, you would be in 100X worse shape. We already filter out millions of malformed url's that they provide us, and other completely useless data that would otherwise take weeks/months to do by hand. At the end of the day, we can't do much about a couple url's here and there that don't go to the proper landing page because the merchant didn't verify them. If, however you do come across one, like I said before, I am VERY happy to contact the merchant and see if we can get them to increase the quality of their feed. Otherwise, we can also remove a merchant.

[lhw455]

I second what Brian says, I ran data feed sites and it was and absolute nightmare - different field names, inconsistent data among feeds. We have it good with Prosperent.

[nite]

I'm not saying that we have it "bad" with Prosperent. Nor am I saying that I would somehow fare better if I sorted out all the feeds alone.

Look, we all can admit that many merchants have coupon issues. And, yes, there is recourse for correcting problem feeds: report it to Brian on a case-by-case basis so that he can email the merchant and get it straightened out. But how feasible is this? Is this really a long term solution? In other words, is this a pro-active solution? No it is not -- it is a reactive solution.

Where Brian, I, and every other member of the Prosperent program can agree is that we want our sites to make MAXIMUM money -- our sites need to make sales, which translates into commissions. To this end, the faceted search was introduced, Brian has tweaked and refined the standard query, hardware has been added, and redundancy has added to the Prosperent framework.

Everything that Prosperent has done has been for the sake of generating sales! So why, with this in mind, and with all this intellectual talent and ingenuity around, is the best solution for coupon problems the ONLY solution for coupon problems -- report it on an individual basis.

I don't know what else can be done; for all I know, everything that CAN be done is being done.

Where I took issue is when Brian said that emailing all the merchants is not an option, or rather, he refuses to do so. In my mind, if this would help generate sales and money, then it's an option that I would at least keep on the table.

[prosperent brian]

I'm not going to e-mail every merchant in the system because the vast majority have no issues. The ones that do have issues are fairly easy to identify considering we have thousands of publishers. We get several reports on various things on an almost daily basis. As you know, we act upon those within minutes or hours at the latest in most cases:)