Large Project - Help and Advice Please

[SilverTwist]

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Hello,

Pending the success of 3 other business ventures I am currently working in I would like to set up a large “price comparison / Product review” website.

In an ideal situation (returns made on investments elsewhere coming through) I would outsource the majority, if not all of the work to 3rd party individuals or companies. However I have no idea where to start.

To be honest my technical skills are some what limited. The first stage of this idea is to put together a website. I have some ideas about how I want it to look and work however need a website design company to put together the site.

The website would need to include:

E-commerce as I would eventually like to be able to offer customers the option to buy direct from the price comparison site itself.

Data Feeds. Would be looking to list information regarding products automatically etc.

Customer Reviews and Recommendations

CPC for none affiliate businesses

Banner advertising etc

Newsletter etc

I know the project will need to start off small however I would eventually like to be competing with the likes of Kelkoo.

Before launching the site I would like to have it fully complete and operational. I know this project seems large, and to some maybe impossible however I hopefully will be in a situation where I will not need to see a return on this investment for some time (5 years for example)

Before I consider marketing plans for this website I would like some feedback. What else could a website like this include? Unique selling point etc.

Finally Could people point me in the right direction for website design, technical operators etc.

Peter Adley
SilverTwist

[jklondon]

think you will find the competition tough

as for USPs doubt anyone would give them away on here if they were any good.

Good Luck - try GetAFreelancer for technical support but make sure you know what you want

[SilverTwist]

Ok, I wasnt expecting a huge response the USP point, more to the website design really. Anybody able to recommend a decent website design company?

[drivetowin]

To be honest (and not just because you would be a competitor to me ) - unless you've got seriously deep pockets I wouldn't bother.

The price comparison marketplace is ultra competitive and if you have no real technical skills and no real idea where to start you are on a hiding to nothing.

Yes you can outsource but if you don't understand how it all works, when something goes wrong you are going to be looking at a monolithic waste of space.

Price comparison gets more technical and more advanced all of the time - to build a site of the size you seem to be implying you'd be looking at two years plus of development by which time Kelkoo, Shopping.com, my sites, pricethat, comparestoreprices et al have moved two years further on so your offering is uncompetitive.

The site design really is the least of your worries - getting the underlying technology right is most important - from database design to load balancing your servers to multi-tier architecture - it all needs to be addressed...

And that's before you get started on the marketing........

[SilverTwist]

i was expecting that kind of response

Would you be able to put some idea on set up costs? For example.. thousands or hundreds of thousands?

[pricethat]

I guess you might want to look at the link in my signature perhaps.

[jklondon]

yea I second what KB has stated - I am also in that game - have something unique and backing it up with good technology is the absolute key here - bear in mind its very unlikley you will ever get anywhere to challanging kelkoos impressions/revenues but that doesnt mean you cant setup something as a viable primary or secondary business. I spent a long time getting together a good team who now all operate on stakeholder basis - if your starting from scratch and with cash you will need a good few thousand pounds at least to get started (build the backbone) and you can double that to get a decent system up and multiply that by 10 to get a decent marketing budget ...

[John Jupp]

Same here and I'm at least eight months away from being in a position to exploit it properly. To be honest you'd be better employed concentrating on a niche site or two with plenty of content.

Price comparison sites go up and down and unless you have virtually bottomless pockets for PPC you will have to rely on modest progress via good SEO. Takes a lot longer, earns you less but it's nice to beat the likes of shopping.com on certain key phrases every now and again.

[Donk]

Hi

I would agree that you should start in a niche market and then expand to compete with kelkoo when the money starts rolling in.

The initial setup costs for the website design can vary from £0 to many £1000 depending on how much work you are willing/able to do yourself. The backend scripts would set you back anything from a few £ hundreds to many thousands. (pricethat kbudden and others here have scripts available).

Having set up the site your work then begins. Every merchant has their own unique way of presenting the data. They may have different product names for the same products . They may have the same product names for different products. Delivery prices may be included/excluded etc. etc..

You would have to manually go through your database of many million products on a regular basis. If you could check one product every minute it would take about 6 months (depending on your daily hours and weekends etc) to check the first million. So to keep up to date you would have to employ say 6 people per million products for data entry. Then a couple of fulltime techies to keep the site going and marketing bods. The wages bill is already running into a few £100,000 per annum.

Now add on your ppc, seo, advertising budget...........as kbudden says how deep is your pocket.

Regards Bob

I guess you might want to look at the link in my signature perhaps.

Pricethat you may want to check your site.

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