With traffic growing rapidly, Kaboodle has come up with an easier way for consumers to add items they find on other web sites to Kaboodle.com. The site also recently launched a new program that gives retailers and branded manufacturers new ways to reach Kaboodlers, and is looking into ways to better integrate with online merchants.
Registered Kaboodle.com users—550,000 at last count—add products from other web sites to compare, rate and discuss on Kaboodle.com. Users also can create a list of items they are considering purchasing and ask others for their opinions and upload photos of potential purchases. When someone clicks on a product at Kaboodle, the link takes the shopper to the site of the retailer or manufacturer where they can make a purchase.
However, until recently in order to add products to its site, Kaboodle users had to download special software. That extra step was keeping many visitors from adding items, Manish Chandra, CEO of Kaboodle says. While traffic to Kaboodle.com is increasing sharply, with 6.5 million unique visitors coming to the site in April up from 1 million the year before, only about a quarter of Kaboodle’s users install the software, Chandra says.
This is not only keeping Kaboodle’s site from growing to showcase more items, but it also impacts the company’s potential profit as Kaboodle receives a commission for products sold through its site.
To simplify the process, Kaboodle has created an Add to Kaboodle Wish List button that retailers can add to their web sites. That way a consumer need only click on the button to add a product to Kaboodle, where it can be seen by all Kaboodle users. Chandra hopes the new feature will entice more users to add products and build up the Kaboodle.com selection.
Among the first to add the button is Beauty.com, a web site owned by Drugstore.com Inc., No. 41 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. “That makes it easier for our users to comment on this product and add it to their wish list and connect it back to the Kaboodle community,” says David Lonczak, chief marketing officer of Drugstore.com and Beauty.com. “Others can talk about the product with that person, and ask questions about it.”
Drugstore.com is also among the roughly 200 retailers and branded manufacturers that have created their own profiles on Kaboodle, taking advantage of a service Kaboodle introduced this spring. Merchants can describe their products and Kaboodle users can add them to their wish lists, which then makes those items show up in searches on Kaboodle. Drugstore.com is partly owned by Hearst Corp., which acquired Kaboodle last fall.
Kaboodle says it hosts products from about 1,000 e-commerce sites and tracks sales made through Kaboodle.com largely through the affiliate networks of Commission Junction and LinkShare.
On those sales, Kaboodle receives a commission comparable to that of other online affiliate networks, typically in the range of 5% to 10%, says Lonczak. He says Kaboodle-generated sales for Drugstore.com and Beauty.com are still very small, but notes the relationship has just begun. “As we work on exclusive offers for the Kaboodle community and Kaboodle puts them into its e-mail program, I’m optimistic things will ramp up,” Lonczak says.
Meanwhile, Kaboodle is addressing issues that prevent it from integrating with some online retailers. Kaboodle wants users to go directly from the product link on Kaboodle to the product page on the retailer’s site, and some retailers are not able to support that kind of “deep linking,” Chandra says. “That’s been the biggest showstopper,” he says. “We’re progressively solving that with big retailers.”
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