How to build a Price Comparison / Product Search Site?

**Qui Gon Jinn** · 19-05-05

How to build a Price Comparison / Product Search Site?

Would this be a worthwhile topic to discuss from the beginning to fruitition.

**David Stephen** · 19-05-05

I for one would certainly be interested. I'm just starting to have a look at the database driven / PHP side of things and this would be a great help.

Dave

**OLBG** · 19-05-05

I think the first question is why build one?
There are certainly a lot out there already

**lakrasia** · 19-05-05

Must admit, I steer clear of them - so many product numbers are non-identical - e.g. DVD1233-B is a black version of DVD1233-S, which is silver. Lot of maintenance to match up things like that; takes a brave person to try competing with the some of the excellent sites that are out there (and I don't mean Kelkoo).

**morleymouse** · 19-05-05

id be interested, even if purely just to learn a few new tricks

**Dazza30** · 06-11-06

Originally Posted by Qui Gon Jinn

How to build a Price Comparison / Product Search Site?

Would this be a worthwhile topic to discuss from the beginning to fruitition.

So how would you go about building a price comparison website from start to fruition ?.

**Aquanuke** · 06-11-06

Originally Posted by Dazza30

So how would you go about building a price comparison website from start to fruition ?.

Compile a list of products, put them in a db and order by price ?

**jklondon** · 06-11-06

why would you want to do this from scratch, the fixed startup cost is massive here to get a level where you are aggregating enough merchants to compete against the usual suspects...

whats interesting is what features are currently lacking from the major price comparison sites, whats next in this domain what are they thinking off doing...

**Stuart** · 06-11-06

I think it would be a great topic, especially if multiple people contributed, we could see if people have different way's of matching products that are the same but have different names/codes, seen a few different people use different methods.

Stuart

**seekituk** · 06-11-06

More interest from this corner

**Pokerman** · 06-11-06

I'm also very interested. Niche is the key here. No-one is going to take on Kelkoo or pricegrabber, but you could do ok in a small niche.

**zaq** · 06-11-06

i dont think its good setting up a price comparison site to take on the big boys Kelkoo or pricegrabber but its worth it as an extra option to your visitors on your site/s, why take 10p a lead when you can have 5%- 10% a sale.

Theres a few sites selling price comparison scripts just do a search on google and you will see but the hard work is keeping everything upto date, i like the DataFeedFile.co.uk idea.

**hpops** · 06-11-06

I think virtually everything I've seen (except for Pricethats stuff) is kind of crap - I'd love to do something great in the field (and yes, niche is the key) multiple sites per sector, real long tail stuff - but have none of the technical skills required to do it (well). I don't think datafeedfile or any solution I 've seen is impressive enough to actively work on the sort of volumes necessary to make them commercially worthwhile.

I'll happily discuss what I feel would make a good one though - not really sure if thats what the threads asking though

**Northern Monkey** · 07-11-06

I disagree with a lot of comments about the complexity, yes when you first setup your datafeed there may be some "tweaking" to do, but isn't there always! I've got a few datafeeds and they work very nicely and also update on a regular basis through a cron job. Why should we have to beat the bigcats, let's be honest none of us have those staffing levels and computing power otherwise it'd be a sinch. I'm taking feeds through affilliatewindow so if anyone needs a hand.

NM.

**pricethat** · 07-11-06

Originally Posted by Northern Monkey

I disagree with a lot of comments about the complexity, yes when you first setup your datafeed there may be some "tweaking" to do, but isn't there always!

If only, i think if i listed every single problem and every single solution and how much it cost in time and money to solve you would change your words. As it is 2 years on and we still have development to do, we still find install issues that should not be there, it never ends. Now if we have spent tens of thousands to get where we got to with a team of 3 or 4 good full time programmers then i am sure it would take the average affiliate much more and you wouldnt exactly call any of our sites "professional" enough to compete with the big price comparison sites (although i guess thats just a bit of design and branding work).

The cost of making one is by the way to be honest, the cost of marketing it is what you want to worry about. We spend a few thousand a day on ppc and i would say you dont really even become a minor irritation online with that kind of spend.