Yahoo! Shopping’s New Bargains Center Makes It Easier Than Ever for Consumers to Find the Best Deals This Holiday Season

November 3, 2006; 06:21 AM
Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced the launch of the newly redesigned Yahoo! Shopping, http://shopping.yahoo.com. The site boasts a fresh new look to make it easier for consumers to quickly find and compare products, and a new Bargains Center which aggregates sales, coupons, free shipping offers, rebates and more from across the Internet. Yahoo! Shopping has also added the integration of Yahoo! Answers, the number one Q&A site on the Web(a), which enables the Yahoo! Shopping community to tap into the experience and advice of other online shoppers to help them make more informed purchasing decisions.

“When we asked people, as part of our research, what they wanted from Yahoo! Shopping, it boiled down to three things: a great deal; learn from other people’s experiences before they buy, and find products quickly and easily,” said Chris Saito, senior director at Yahoo! Shopping. “Our new Bargains Center, Yahoo! Answers integration, and improved shopping search make it easier than ever for consumers to find the best product at the right price.”

A recent Yahoo! study found that 60 percent of Yahoo! Shopping users consider themselves bargain hunters. With the new Yahoo! Shopping Bargains Center, shoppers can easily find all of the gifts they are looking for at the best possible price, without having to visit multiple stores or websites. The Bargains Center is a one-stop shop where users can easily find sales, coupons, free shipping offers, rebates and more. Consumers can search by merchant, type of product or item popularity to quickly find what they are looking for, as well as search coupons by merchants to find bargains from their favorite brand or retailer. In addition, users of My Yahoo! can add the Popular Products and Deals module available on Yahoo! Shopping to their My Yahoo! page.

Yahoo! Shopping offers consumers comprehensive shopping search with over 70 million product offers and 65 thousand merchants for price comparisons. And with new Yahoo! Search, shortcuts users can quickly access Yahoo! Shopping products, reviews, and coupons directly from Yahoo! Search. For example, searching for “mp3 player” on the Yahoo! home page (www.yahoo.com) will bring links to quickly access shopping search results, buying guides, and popular mp3 player brands. Or searching on “cheap digital camera” will bring up marked down products to help consumers save money.

According to a 2006 study by Jupiter Research1, 48 percent of online shoppers find user reviews and ratings useful in making online purchase decisions. To complement existing user reviews, Yahoo! Shopping is now integrating Yahoo! Answers to enable shoppers to tap into the real life experience and insight of other online shoppers to help them make shopping decisions.

Other key features of the new redesigned Yahoo! Shopping site:

• New clean look: the home page, product category pages, and search results have been streamlined to improve search and navigation while integrating Yahoo! Answers, Bargains, and the Yahoo! Shopping blog.
• Popular products and deals: a list of popular products and deals available on the Shopping home page, which can also be added to a personalized My Yahoo! page for daily updates on deals.
• Personalization: in addition to the My Yahoo! Popular Products & Deals, shoppers can easily access their recent searches and saved products from the new Yahoo! Shopping home page.
• Expert buying guides: buying guides that feature professional reviews from Consumer Reports and other leading publications have been integrated into the shopping experience to help people research and buy the right product.
• New holiday gift guide: features advice on how to choose great gifts for the holiday season including top 10 lists to help consumers pick the right gifts for family and friends.

(a) According to Comscore ratings of Q&A sites from September 2006

About Yahoo! Shopping

Powered by Yahoo! Shopping Search, Yahoo! Shopping provides consumers with a comprehensive, relevant online comparison shopping experience. Yahoo! Shopping, a leading search and comparison shopping destination on the Web, boasts a variety of tools and community features designed to empower consumers with the information they need to make an informed purchase, including the new Bargains Center, Shoposphere and Pick Lists, Yahoo! Shopping blog, side-by-side product comparisons, detailed buyer's guides, consumer product and merchant ratings, unbiased expert product reviews, and more.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! seeks to provide online products and services essential to users’ lives, and offers a full range of tools and marketing solutions for businesses to connect with Internet users around the world. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

1 JupiterResearch, Retail Marketing: Driving Sales Through Consumer-Created Content, August 4, 2006. Available at www.jupiterresearch.com