ShopLocal Adds E-Commerce

By Jennifer Saba

Published: October 27, 2005 3:28 PM ET

NEW YORK - ShopLocal.com is getting ready to re-launch on Nov. 1, this time with e-commerce capabilities.

The online comparison shopping site (www.shoplocal.com) that posts newspaper circulars will soon users directly to the stores. "Consumers valued the product but they couldn't find everything they wanted," said Dave Hamel, CMO of ShopLocal, about why they revamped the site (it's in Beta now).

The improved ShopLocal will allow users to search for items by category and by ZIP code. For example, if a consumer is looking for bedroom furniture, a search might pull up 20 dressers from different stores within a 10-mile radius. In some instances, there's a "buy online" tab that directs people to the store's Web site.

"Ninety-five percent of retail is still local," said Hamel. "To help [people] find things on a local basis is powerful."

ShopLocal gets advertisers in a variety of ways. Newspapers come to the site with the advertiser. ShopLocal handles all the national accounts that use inserts. And finally for the e-commerce portion, ShopLocal gets revenue based on a cost-per-click or cost-per-action basis.

The site is growing. In September 2004, a month after the site launched, ShopLocal had about 3,000 visitors, said Hamel. This September, close to 2 million people visited the site. In December, the site expects that number to grow to 4 million.

ShopLocal, which is jointly owned by Gannet, Knight Ridder, and Tribune, has over 50 newspaper partnerships.