PriceInspector now live!

[PriceInspector]

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Hi All,

Just to let you all know, we launched PriceInspector today - please feel free to have a browse and let us know what you think.

www.priceinspector.co.uk

Best regards,
Wes

[drivetowin]

Look and feel is very good - I think your graphics are superb - well done on that - love the 'case solved' link page

Unfortunately the actual results are not so good:

I went to Tom Tom Go Europe which gave me four results

Kelkoo GPS Store Image £0.00 £128.08 [Go to Store]
Comet Store Image £0.00 £199.99 [Go to Store]
LX Direct Store Image £0.00 £259.00 [Go to Store]
Littlewoods Store Image £0.00 £279.00 [Go to Store]

When I went to Kelkoo it could not find the product
When I went to Comet I got a 'page not found' error on the Comet site
When I went to LX Direct the price on site was £239 and not £259
When I went to Littlewoods I got a Tradedoubler error screen 'There is no relationship between this site and the advertiser.'

Sorry but I think the Inspector needs to go back into uniform

[PriceInspector]

thanks for the feedback much appreciated.

With regards to the results, I agree there are some weak areas and will be enhanced over time - with regards to these stores:

Kelkoo GPS - a poor datafeed issue linking to Tradedoubler.
Comet - a poor datafeed deepfeedlink issue on Aff Window.
LX Direct - our database is updated every night and therefore this price will be picked up when we have a fresh feed.
Littlewoods - well spotted - looks like an expired affiliate.

Regards,
Wes

[pmjoyce]

Really like the site. Overall look and feel is excellent and well thought out + lot of features.

Best of luck with it!

[PriceInspector]

Thanks pmjoyce much appreciated.

[axod]

Nice site...
Can you really trademark 'case solved' though??!!

A sign of things to come...
http://trashf.taistelumarsu.org/tras...Apple_osaa.jpg

[stu foster]

Looks fantastic and i particularly like the redirect screen.

good use of language, with the right marketing this could be very sucessful indeed.

Stu

[deadgoodundies]

Looks very nice
can you get our feed for deadgoodundies on to it

[PriceInspector]

POR is on our list for future import partnerships.

Regards,
Wes

[globalmedia]

Signed up after Shopspree recommended it , nice feel to it, results well you can say the same about Search engines

But for now its on Duty and back to my PriceInspector Office, such a Geek

[D-Mac]

I'll be completely frank.

It looks great. Whoever designed the skin has done a good job.

But, and it's a big but. I went down this road 3 years ago, and to be honest, we were at least 2 years too late and made bugger all from it. We couldn't get decent listings in Google, and struggled to get even a small percentage of the pages indexed. We've left the site on auto-pilot for the last couple of years, and it does bring in a few quid each month, all from Yahoo and MSN. However, those earnings don't justify the huge amount of time invested in the set-up stage. I'll be amazed if Google let you have any half decent rankings.

Which leaves you with PPC, AM, PR and offline.

I'm sure you can find some PPC niches that can generate a profit. But you've still got the deadwood of all the other hundreds of categories to keep updated with new product matching. You will need a lot of staff for this to be viable. Outsourcing to eastern Europe or China might work, but QC will be hard to handle remotely.

I can't see affiliate marketing working. Given the choice most affs will promote the merchants directly, and if they don't want to do that they will promote Kelkoo or Shopping.com. What can you offer that the KK don't?

PR is unlikely to work unless you have a USP, which as far as I can see you don't.

Offline will cost hundreds of thousands.

Sorry to rain on your parade. All is not lost though. If I were you I would re-use the matching engine, use the same graphic designer as before, and set-up a much smaller version of the same thing, focusing on a niche. Then stick some focused content on the niche site and get some nice free Google traffic. I hope I don't sound patronising. I wasted a lot of time on a very similar project, and that was when it was easier too! Go niche and add proper value to the customers experience.

Good luck.

[PriceInspector]

Hi D-Mac,

I appreciate your views and advice - can you tell me which website you have left on auto-pilot just to compare with?

As with having no unique position in the market, I feel our fun approach to it, the many advanced features available as a Price Detective and several skills in our team will do enough to eat into the Top 50 price comparison websites in the UK within the next 18 months (which according to reports is about £4m per year)

I agree it sounds a big task, but with a good brand, excellent bespoke technology, and dedication we should do pretty well on the back of this website.

As for niche, its already been considered - PriceInspector is the front face of what will be a huge array of websites.

Regards,
Wes

[D-Mac]

Hi Wes

I'd rather not divulge the name of the site, not least because we're in the process of splitting up the old company and I don't want to say bad things about any of the assets.

You're certainly committed to PI, which perhaps is half the battle. We were running ours at the same time as running an e-commerce business, which perhaps lead to a loss of focus.

I'm not saying I don't think you'll make any money from it, just that I think you can make easier money using the same skillset in niche areas. It's the dead wood that will hold it back. Dragging around all the nonsense long tail stuff that makes the site look poor because you don't have the time or resources to update it.

Still, price comparison is a massive market as you point out, so who knows, you might get lucky. 1% of the pie is a lot of cash If Google take a shine to PI then you'll be laughing all the way to the bank, but you know that already

[D-Mac]

The other thing of course if the quality of product feeds. I've been looking at a few recently, and they're just as shoddy as they always were. I really can't understand why the networks aren't investing more in getting this sorted out. It's been discussed a hundred times on here, but nothing much seems to have changed. There are dozens of affiliates creating workarounds to the same old problems that really should be fixed at source. It's shameful really.

Some of the networks have made nice tools for using feeds, but the results are still poor. Garbage in, garbage out. (sorry for hijacking your thread)

[PriceInspector]

By the way, thanks for the compliments on the look and feel - that was my job :-)