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I hope this post is allowed. I rarely post about personal projects, but I am really excited about a new website I've been working on for quite some time. It's called PriceZombie. It's a price comparison website and I'm looking for feedback if anyone wants to check it out. It's brand new as of this weekend.
There are many price comparison sites currently available. They all suck in one way or another. The main reason why most are terrible is that they only list affiliate sites. This means bias towards one or more companies, and an exclusion to others that might be selling the same product. This means the price comparison results are inaccurate and incomplete.
The feature set is about 50% complete. But I think it's already better than most of the competition.
Current features include:
- Direct cross shopping against multiple stores. If PZ knows about a webcam that is sold in more than one store, that one product will be listed with all known stores on the same page. There is a tabbox on the left with the stores and current price.
- Watchlist. You can't sit around all day watching prices on things you want. On each product page is a watchlist entry. Enter the price you want to buy the item for, and PZ will email you as soon as that price point is reached. If you're a registered user, you will have a nice list of all your watched items in one place. What they originally cost when you added it, what they cost now, and if it's ready for you to buy.
- Historical data. Knowing the best price where you can buy something now is only half the battle. Knowing if it's a good price based on past pricing will be a really good indicator if the current price is actually a good deal or not. Many stores will fluctuate pricing on items multiple times during the day. Some items have regular price drops based on time of the year. PZ has a price range for each store, as well as a price chart. The chart is zoomable and clickable.
- Screenshots. On the price chart, you can click to get a thumbnail of the website when it was indexed. Sometimes prices are too good to believe, and so the screenshot will function much like google's cache of a website for shoppers.
Known deficiencies:
- Product listings take time to acquire. It is in it's infancy, so it will take a few months to grow and gather historical info.
- Only about 8 stores indexed right now. As the parser is fine tuned and resource management refined, the store list will grow exponentially.
- Categories: this is a really difficult thing to do. Each store has it's own category system. It's hard to merge them together because one might have: TV > Pop Culture > DVD, another might have: Media > DVD > Pop Culture. Or completely different words. I haven't cracked this yet, so category browsing is somewhat limited.
- Search results need a way to limit based on category, otherwise if you search on "nails", you will get hardware/home building stuff and women's nail polish. The user will only be looking for one of them, not both.
http://www.PriceZombie.com
Let me know what you think. If this post is too spammy, please delete. I figured it isn't motorcycle related, so it would be OK.
There are many price comparison sites currently available. They all suck in one way or another. The main reason why most are terrible is that they only list affiliate sites. This means bias towards one or more companies, and an exclusion to others that might be selling the same product. This means the price comparison results are inaccurate and incomplete.
The feature set is about 50% complete. But I think it's already better than most of the competition.
Current features include:
- Direct cross shopping against multiple stores. If PZ knows about a webcam that is sold in more than one store, that one product will be listed with all known stores on the same page. There is a tabbox on the left with the stores and current price.
- Watchlist. You can't sit around all day watching prices on things you want. On each product page is a watchlist entry. Enter the price you want to buy the item for, and PZ will email you as soon as that price point is reached. If you're a registered user, you will have a nice list of all your watched items in one place. What they originally cost when you added it, what they cost now, and if it's ready for you to buy.
- Historical data. Knowing the best price where you can buy something now is only half the battle. Knowing if it's a good price based on past pricing will be a really good indicator if the current price is actually a good deal or not. Many stores will fluctuate pricing on items multiple times during the day. Some items have regular price drops based on time of the year. PZ has a price range for each store, as well as a price chart. The chart is zoomable and clickable.
- Screenshots. On the price chart, you can click to get a thumbnail of the website when it was indexed. Sometimes prices are too good to believe, and so the screenshot will function much like google's cache of a website for shoppers.
Known deficiencies:
- Product listings take time to acquire. It is in it's infancy, so it will take a few months to grow and gather historical info.
- Only about 8 stores indexed right now. As the parser is fine tuned and resource management refined, the store list will grow exponentially.
- Categories: this is a really difficult thing to do. Each store has it's own category system. It's hard to merge them together because one might have: TV > Pop Culture > DVD, another might have: Media > DVD > Pop Culture. Or completely different words. I haven't cracked this yet, so category browsing is somewhat limited.
- Search results need a way to limit based on category, otherwise if you search on "nails", you will get hardware/home building stuff and women's nail polish. The user will only be looking for one of them, not both.
http://www.PriceZombie.com
Let me know what you think. If this post is too spammy, please delete. I figured it isn't motorcycle related, so it would be OK.
