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Portals pack new punch
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October 25, 1999: 2:13 p.m. ET
AltaVista, Lycos unveil new features in bid to boost e-commerce dollars
By Staff Writer Michele Masterson
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Dressing themselves up for the holiday shopping season, two portals unveiled new looks on Monday, with AltaVista introducing a redesigned search engine, the New AltaVista Search, and Lycos rolling out LYCOShop, the portal's shopping hub.
AltaVista touts the new search engine as the Web's largest index, comprising 275 million unduplicated pages that span 90 percent of the Internet's Web sites, with a directory based on Netscape's Open Directory Project.
In addition, AltaVista has revamped its shopping section, dubbed AltaVista Shopping.com, offering reviews and ratings from ConsumerREVIEW.com, product features and price comparisons online retailers are provided by BizRate.com, an independent merchant rating service.
AltaVista's new search
Shedding its low profile, AltaVista also is heralding its changes with a $120 million ad campaign, including an $8 million outlay just for Monday's launch. AltaVista, a grand-daddy of the Internet, went online in 1995 when it was launched by Digital Equipment Co. and was later transferred to Compaq Computer Corp. (CPQ) when it took over Digital. CMGI (CMGI) now holds an 83 percent stake in AltaVista, with reports that it may try to spin it off in an initial public offering within the coming months.
Also making its online debut Monday, Lycos (LCOS) launched its shopping area, LYCOShop. The portal's commerce site contains many of the same features as AltaVista's Shopping.com, such as product comparisons sponsored by Epinions.com. One different feature is its shopping rewards/incentives program, offered in partnership with Netcentives.com. The loyalty program allows buyers to earn points with each online purchase and redeem them for products in an online catalog.
A battle for e-sales
In the battle to ring up electronic commerce sales from purchases made over the Internet, portals are racing to offer users new services, trying to cash in on the much-anticipated holiday shopping season.
Portals -- the one-stop Web sites that offer a variety of services, such as news, stock quotes, search engine results, e-mail and shopping online -- are arming themselves with the latest bells and whistles an online shopping experience can provide.
Online holiday sales in 1999 are projected to bring in $6 billion in November and December, according to Internet research firm Jupiter Communications. Compare that to last year's figure of $3.1 billion or 1997's holiday sales of only $1 billion.
But with such similarity in features, will the portals see dollar results from their shopping hubs? Some Internet watchers remain unconvinced.
"These two sites offer the same features and functionalities," said Ken Cassar, e-commerce analyst at Jupiter Communications.
"Yes, AltaVista's new shopping area is more elegant and a big improvement, but it looks like Yahoo! (YHOO) or Microsoft (MSFT)," Cassar said.
Instead, Cassar maintains that portals would do well to focus on differentiating themselves with functionalities and features found on the front page.
"The shopping portals are not destinations in themselves. More people go to portals for news and stock quotes. And as users get more seasoned they'll go directly to the merchants' sites rather than go through a portal."
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Lycos
AltaVista
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