Are people really comparing products via shopping comparison?

One of the core assumptions that shopping comparison engines have made is that people are using the engine to actually compare products before making making a purchase decision. It's one of the reason that Yahoo shopping API home page allows you to reconstruct the compare grid for comparing the various products. The V2 of their API passes the GridImage etc if so requested. (Indeed the shopping grid can be completely recreated, allowing you to compare prices and specifications). Yet a thought a occurred to me - these sorts of comparison grids have been around for a while now since they seem to have been a design decision from early on. Yet I am an avid user of comparison engines such as Shopping.com, Pricewatch and of course my own engine (Early Miser, check out my page at earlymiser.com But I have almost never used the grid features of the various shopping comparison engines and I think no one does except for a few hard core geeks. The reasons for this are multiple but I would like to go into each of them and see if we cannot improve on the shopping experience.

First off the grid approach is designed to compare various technical specifications. Does this unit have more memory? Does this one have a larger hard drive? Yet my own log files indicate that people typically are searching for a SPECIFIC product. I am not alone in this fact. Furthermore the top terms at Yahoo Shopping have a quite a few specific products in them (you can look at them Buzzlog for Shopping.

The other thing that the buzz list at Yahoo has is the keyword "reviews" attached with a product name which I think is fairly revealing how people search. People are making buying decisions about uses - not the specific information that is presented in the product specifications.

They have a use in mind for a product and want to see a review. Reviews never cover the technical specification but how that product performs in real world situations. An ideal review would cover their exact usage and what the review thinks about the use in that specific context. Take a look at the terms in the Yahoo Shopping Buzz

1. Digital Camera Reviews
2. LCD TV Reviews
3. Cell Phone Reviews
4. PS3 Reviews
5. Camcorder Reviews
6. Wii Reviews
7. Plasma TV Reviews
8. GPS Reviews
9. HDTV Reviews
10. Laptop Reviews
11. Zune Review
12. MP3 Player Reviews
13. Kodak C633 Review
14. Samsung D53 Review
15. Olevia 232V Review
16. Xbox 360 Reviews
17. Nokia N73 Reviews
18. Samsung Blackjack Reviews
19. Canon Digital Camera Reviews
20. Mio C310x Review

Notice what they are not searching for - product specifications. Yet almost every shopping comparison engine builds comparison grids for specifications. How can we take user behaviour and improve upon the shopping comparison experience?

By adding peer to peer mediated reviews to our site. Find someone that owns the product in the site or in your extended network (with our upcoming Own Indicator) and then request a specific review from the owner! The question and the review then become part of the editorial content. Over time significant knowledge about the specific uses in a specific situation will be developed. Furthermore this will represent a natural avenue for growing the social network. Most review models are top down or many to one. This enables a many to many model for reviews.