New green shopping site by PriceGrabber

PriceGrabber has launched a new green section – at shopgreen.pricegrabber.com – where you can find and shop eco-friendly products, from organic clothes to Energy-Star compliant electronic devices. PriceGrabber considers a product as green if it follows one of the following rules:

• “Energy Star-compliant products”
• “Products made from organic or recycled materials”
• “Products made from environmentally-friendly materials including hemp, bamboo, soy, and seagrass”
• “Biodegradable products and compost bins”
• “Products with low usage of natural resources including LED light bulbs, low flow shower heads/toilets, solar power, and cloth diapers”
• “Products made by noted environmentally-conscious companies like Patagonia”

I really like the approach PriceGrabber has followed: creating a site that is independent from their main site allows them to efficiently communicate through the new “ShopGreen” brand and a new webdesign. Still, the content displayed on ShopGreen is also available on their main site: the “ShopGreen” site is only a specific view of the classic PriceGrabber site, with “ecoFriendly” filters always on (see screenshot below).

Still I wonder how they fill those “ecoFriendly” filters. I didn’t see any mention of “green” attributes to be filled by merchants in PriceGrabber Data Feed Requirements. I understand some data could come from their product database providers (data regarding “Energy Star-compliant products” for instance). But for soft categories, they may have to rely on data from merchants, either from specific fields or through attribute extraction. Also, they should do quite a lot of manual tweaking and editorial work (to identify “Products made by noted environmentally-conscious companies like Patagonia” for instance)…

Well done, PriceGrabber!

(via ComparisonEngines)