Tracking and Monitoring Mega Brands Products

Introduction

MEGA Brands Inc. is a leading manufacturer of children’s toys in North America. The company distributes its products through leading online and offline retailers in the USA, UK, Europe and Canada such as amazon.com, amazon.ca, walmart.com, target.com, sears.com, sears.ca, amazon.fr and baur.de.

Everyday Megabrands receives thousands of inquiries from consumers on www.megabrands.com about the availability and pricing of their toys and products. In order to satisfy this growing demand for product availability and pricing information, the company refers consumers to the online retailer websites that may carry the particular product. However, the company was unable to keep trac k of availability by retailer and this information was often outdated on megabrands.com since it was being updated manually once a month. The retailer sites changed their pricing and stock availability on a daily or weekly basis. Hence the information provided on megabrands.com was often misleading to consumers.

Megabrands also has affiliate program with retailers who sell their products. The accuracy of the affiliate link from megabrands.com to the particular product on the retailer website is crucial in order to track referral commissions owed to Megabrands.

Megabrands commissioned CloserLook Search Services Inc. to build an online search and tracking application to help them meet the following objectives:

Objectives

	Ensure accuracy of links to products on retailer websites from megabrands.com . This will provide reliable information to consumers. This will also help tracking of the conversion rate of the referrals i.e. how many people were referred to a particular retailer versus the number of purchases that resulted from these referrals.
	Increase reliability of the information provided to consumers about product availability and pricing on megabrands.com. Megabrands.com needs to keep up with the pace of change of product information on the retailer websites on a daily basis.
	Track retailer sale price of products to ensure they have not deviated considerably from the MSRP range for a particular product. This will help Megabrands ensure that retailers respect the sale price range suggested by Megabrands, prevent the abuse in sale price of products and control the online pricing in the market.
	Encourage comparison shopping on megabrands.com where consumers could compare the prices and availability of a product from multiple retailer sites on a single screen.

Description of Project

In order to satisfy the above requirements, CloserLook Search Services delivered a turn-key online search & tracking application to Megabrands, that monitors over 25 online retailer and affiliate program websites in the USA, Canada, UK and Europe such as amazon.com, amazon.ca, walmart.com, target.com, sears.com, sears.ca, amazon.fr, baur.de etc.

The features of the search and tracking application include:

• Periodically monitor retailer sites for changes to pricing or availability of Mega Brands products offered
• Capture a list of products that have been added/removed since the site was last monitored
• Is a particular product in stock or sold out or has the pricing changed
• Total # of Mega Brands products listed on that site
• Trigger regular alerts to Megabrands with a report which includes information about availability and products carried on each of the sites
• Search affiliate program sites to obtain affiliate links to each product listed on the retailer sites.
• Over 700 SKUs are monitored by the application.

Results

• Consumers can monitor availability of products in real-time
• Over 95% accuracy in the links to products from megabrands.com to online retailer websites
• Information about multiple products and retailers is available on one single screen which facilitates comparison shopping.
• Improved quality of leads to retailer websites.
• The application has helped double the conversion rate of referrals to retailer sites. Higher click-through rates from the megabrands website to retailer sites.
• Sales through the website have doubled since this application was launched and the conversion rate has more more than doubled
• Increased volume of visitors to the megabrands.com website.
• 50% increase in customer retention
• Increased coverage of products referred from Megabrands.com - over 85% of megabrands products now have affiliate links.
• Real-time tracking of retailer sites for changes in product availability, description and pricing information
• Real-time tracking of the number of Megabrands SKU’s a particular online retailer is carrying on a daily basis
• The application has eliminated over 80% of manual work compared to previous method