Smarter.com’s Invitation Only Registration is Official

As of 2/1/2011, Smarter.com is no longer available for merchants that do not have national reach and recognition.  This change was mentioned by us on how they plan on changing their business model.  Many of the clients that we work with have received emails in regards to getting refunds for any money that was already deposited in the account.  While it is sad to see a company have to change so drastically, it is not a surprise for Smarter.  They never really took charge of their previous business model.  Many retailers were never really happy with the low ROI that was attributed to Smarter and its traffic.

I believe that the invitation only applies to the companies that have given Smarter a lot of money in the past and will continue to do so.  I wonder if they will change their pricing model for the large merchants to a CPA in order to utilize the traffic that the Smarter.com domain is already receiving.  This would be a winner for both Smarter and the merchants if the deal with worded correctly.  A lot of smaller merchants were not really happy with the change as Smarter did not cost them as much as the larger comparison shopping engines, but still allowed potential customers to see their sites.  Luckily for them, there are many more comparison shopping engines to choose from.

If a merchant wants to sign up for Smarter, they have changed their new merchant signup page to show that they are now invitation only.  While anyone can submit their site for consideration, please note that they are really only looking for large brand merchants, not small lesser known companies.  Here is a screenshot of the new signup page.

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