Shop.com announces an updated look and a series of new features.

Shop.com is a comparison shopping engine, like MSN Live, Google Product Search and PriceGrabber.  (Check out The Budget Fashionista’s recent review of The 15 Best Price Comparison Sites.) However, unlike the other shopping search engines- which focus on helping you find the item you’re looking for, the primary purpose of Shop.com doesn’t stand out- which may have been the goal of the redesign. The format and style is very much like a content site (see front page of TBF for similarities), which is pretty confusing and a bit deceptive.  The front page advertises a plethora of consumer products with no easily discernible focus (everything from a blouse, to an iPod, to fitness gear).  Even though the search bar is large and positioned at the top of the front page, other page content such as advertisements nearly drown it out.  The newly refreshed tagline, “Shop Smart, Save Big,” doesn’t help highlight the search engine purpose of the site, either.

The new features: The additional of department links broken down by product categories on the left side is helpful (similar to Pricegrabber)  Click on the links to easily browse through a variety of items from stores like 6pm.com (under “Women’s Clothing”), Zappos.com (under “Women’s Shoes”), Radioshack.com (under “Electronics GPS”), and more.  The new price drop alert is very helpful: it notifies a shopper if the chosen product drops to a desired low price point.

Note to established companies: just because everyone is jumping on the social media bandwagon, that doesn’t mean that you need to as well. Shop.com attempts to use social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, etc, but the incorporation of these elements probably do them more harm than good since only they only have 92 followers on Twitter.  Lastly, Shop.com is planning on publishing helpful editorial content to guide shoppers into smarter shopping decisions.  It remains to be seen whether Shop.com’s guides will be as helpful as CNet’s buying tools – which narrow a buyer’s interests by asking a series of questions to help pick the right item to buy.

The verdict: All the shiny new features in the world don’t mean a thing if Shop.com can’t perform its primary function to help you find the best price on the item you are looking for. A simple search for a cute button bootie, by typing in “Steve Madden Elivate,” turns up three matches on Shop.com.  The lowest price found on Shop.com was $84.90, from Nordstrom, with a special offer” button near the price tag offering free shipping if $200 is spent at Nordstrom.  However, a Google Product Search turns up four pages of results with the lower price of $69.99, from Street Moda, early among results.  Additionally, a PriceGrabber search finds an even lower price of $54.00, from Amazon, a rather large retailer, not found by either Google or Shop.com.

Yea or Nay:  Nay. Shop.com’s limited search finds and failure to find the lowest prices available on the web are a huge turn off for a newly revamped comparison shopping engine. We say head to Pricegrabber or MSN Live, instead.