In your mad dash to add new features and new functionality to your website, it's important to remember that flashy new abilities aren't the only things that bring people coming back.  Sometimes it's a previous experience… sometimes it's word of mouth.  A lot of things can influence customer decisions and determine whether or not they become repeat buyers.

ShopWiki is hoping to keep customers coming back for more by developing a recognizable brand identity, reports Kate Kaye for ClickZ.  In a market of shopping comparison sites with few, if any, recognizable brands, ShopWiki wants to be the place folks think of when they decide to make an online purchase.

ShopWiki sports a number of features common to the shopping website community.  They offer the ability to sort results by a number of criteria, specify companies or brands, and narrow results based on price.  But ShopWiki has gone a step further and offered the ability to narrow results by color, as well.  In addition, targeted shopping guides help customers find exactly what they're looking for by filtering out unrelated items.

The company also deals with merchants, vendors, and advertisers differently.  ShopWiki uses it's own crawler to find online retailers.  Unlike many shopping comparison sites, ShopWiki's crawler looks for original vendors and filters out affiliate websites.

We talked about paying attention to details to set yourself apart earlier today.  ShopWiki is attempting to do just that.  But incorporating unique features and unique ways of dealing with outside companies, ShopWiki hopes to rise above the competition and become a destination site for online shoppers.  By focusing on their company's brand, ShopWiki hopes to establish itself as a household name, like eBay or Dell.

What can you do make your company and/or website into a brand?