FAQ listing online shop in the ShopFinder shopping directory

NOTE: This page applies for ShopFinder.com - North America. For European stores, please visit shopfinder.co.uk

I want to add my shop now »

Why should I list my shop on ShopFinder?

Having operated ShopFinder since 1999 we have established a large user base, visitors that go directly to ShopFinder for any need related to online shopping in the United States and Canada. During this period we have also gained a substantial experience in search engine optimisation - SEO. The vast majority of new visitors to the ShopFinder pages are coming directly from a search engine - not the paid links, but natural organic search results. You probably already use paid services like Google Ads, Facebook ads or similar. If you are a shop owner, we know that the time you can and want to spend, adding, tweaking, updating and optimizing paid Ads, is limited. A listing on ShopFinder is low maintenance, and - compared to paid Ads - very cheap. We achieve top natural search engine rankings by creating an optimised page dedicated to show the information about your shop only.

How much traffic will you send to my shop?

Your listing on ShopFinder should send at least 10 targeted daily visitors to your shop. On a monthly subscription ($20) this equals a cost of just 7 cent per visitor. Most shop listings, even in highly competitive product segments, should expect far better performance from their ShopFinder listing than this estimated minimum amount of 10 unique visitors daily.

If your listing does not perform better than this, please pay attention to the contents of your shop details, keywords etc. Regular updates with product news, discounts etc. is encouraged. Please do not hesitate to contact us for advice.

Where do I submit my online store for listing on ShopFinder?

Please click list a shop (also found at the very top of each page on this site). You will be asked to sign up as a user if you don't already have a login on ShopFinder. Follow the instructions and submit the form. Next you will be asked to choose a payment period and then taken through a secure Paypal payment procedure.

That's it! If your store meets our requirements (see below) it will be published within hours.

Will you approve my online shop?

The requirements are:
- The address (URL) of the shop's website should equal a top level domain name like www.justshop.com, www.candyshop.com etc. Subdomains like bikes.store.com and subdirectory addresses like www.store.com/bikes may not be accepted.
- Also, the connection to your shop must be secure, so a SSL certificate have to be in place. Normally this can be checked simply by verifying that your webshop address (URL) begins with https:// (as opposed to the non-secure http://). So if your webshop shows up correctly in a browser and the URL starts with https://, then you are safe. - Your store's website must offer products that can be purchased online, from your site via a secure ordering and transaction process like a shopping cart system or similar. Any sites acting as intermediates and purely displaying products that are essentially purchased off another site are not accepted.
- Your store's website must have prices available in USD and/or Canadian Dollars. Other currencies are of course allowed as long as the user can select US or Canadian Dollars.
- Your site must comply with current US or Canadian legislation for online shopping.
- Products must be shipped from within the United States or Canada.
Listings are validated completely at our discretion. Should we decide not to approve your site, you will of course receive a full refund of any subscription payments.

Pricing - How much is a shop listing on ShopFinder?

You can choose between 4 subscription options:
$7.00 per Month
$18.00 every 3 Months
$30.00 every 6 Months
$48.00 per Year
Of course you can change your payment option or cancel further payments at any time. You will see these options after adding or updating your shop details.

Will you list my store using an affiliate program?

Many of the online stores on ShopFinder are listed using affiliate tracking, whereby we share the revenue of sales with the store owners. If your store operates an affiliate program, please submit the store (without completing the subscription step) and send us a note that you wish us to join the affiliate program. If we find it favourable, and your store meets our general requirements, then your shop will be listed.

Do I get a discount when listing more than one online store?

You can list as many online shop sites as you wish, and yes, any additional listing is discounted by a generous 50%. This discount is applied automatically to your shopping basket when paying for the 2nd and any additional listings.

With which keywords will my shop listing be found?

The listing will be found with all the keywords and phrases you choose to add. This applies to searches on ShopFinder. If the listing is indexed by another search engine, it is of course out of our control, and depends on the originality of the keyword/phrase the competition, and loads of other parameters. You are very welcome to contact us if you want our advice in optimising your listing towards external search engines. Often we can optimise your listing towards say 3-5 keywords/phrases chosen by you.

How long before you review your listing prices again?

The above prices are here to stay for several years. Should we decide to change them we will of course inform all subscribers, giving them a chance to opt out. We know that these rates are significantly lower than similar listings on other credible directories in the US. Also we are confident that no other directory offers the same functionality in terms of flexibility and search engine optimisation of listings than ShopFinder.

Wasn't it free to be listed on ShopFinder in the past?

Yes, from 2000 and until September 2007 online stores have enjoyed free listing in the ShopFinder directory. We wanted to enhance the promotion of the online shops on ShopFinder and needed a way to ensure more commitment from the shopowners listed. We found that a large number of the 2000+ stores listed on ShopFinder (September 2007) were not kept up to date. We believe that only you, the Shop Owner, should have control over the content of your listing.

Therefore in a move to remove idle shop listings and improve the active ones we introduced subscription payment. By May 2008 all listings on ShopFinder are either subscription based or funded via an affiliate agreement

Is there any tracking of visitors from ShopFinder to my shop?

We count each outgoing click, but currently this figure is not available to listing owners. If you don't already have visitor statistics on your site, we highly recommend implementing a tool like Google Analytics (which is free). With Google Analytics you will get very detailed measures of traffic including traffic sources. One of the planned extras that we want to offer (for subscribers) is a mini-statistics page which will show different measures of how your listing performs.

How many other retailer's selling the same products will you be listing?

It very much depends on the competition within your field. We do not put any limit on the number of listings within each category.

How do I update the details of my shop listing?

Please click Update shop listing and follow the instructions. Please note that only active shop listings (subscription paid) can be modified. Lost passwords are handled from here: email my password

Will my shop be reviewed by users?

Yes, by listing your shop on Shopfinder, you agree that registered users can submit reviews about your store.

Can I add a logo with my listing?

Yes, it is now easy to add your shop's logo to the listing. Enhance the visible impact and upload an image file with your listing. Either when adding a new shop listing or modifying an existing shop, one of the options is to add a logo image.