Guide To Create A Perfect Price Comparison Website

In today’s blog, we have decided to talk about price comparison websites. Why this topic? Well, to be honest, we content writers always prefer to write about something that is trending, and this is one of those trends.

And come to think of it, it makes total sense, why it is an influential topic.

Today’s audience prefers to be informed as it gives them the power of choice. And this is how the idea of developing a price comparison website took place. With price comparison engines, there are a variety of choices like the number of items on sale, choice or types of brands, diverse offers, and many more. 

If you are also an online buyer like me, then you can relate to how agonizing it feels when we can’t find all the products under one roof. And because of this, we either wind up abandoning the webpage or delaying our purchase plan.

However, online price comparison websites have made things simpler as we can shop online and even find suggestions, alternatives, and other new products in the same price range, making our online shopping a pleasurable experience.   

So let’s move further and know all the details about the price comparison website and how to create a perfect price comparison website. 

What Do You Know About Price Comparison Websites (PCW)?

“Price Comparison Website”- with the name, it’s pretty obvious. But still, we would like to outline it, to make sure that we all are thinking the same.

Such websites are designed with the motive to provide customers with key information: like its price (obvious), a quick description, product availability, ratings, customer reviews, and much more. Therefore, along with comparing prices, the customer can also weigh up other important characteristics of the product. 

Although, these aggregators or websites don’t actually sell products. They only stockpile the data and product prices on various websites. To buy a product, one has to visit the online store on their own (most often there is a link on the web resources that will redirect you to the main product site).

Advantages of Price Comparison Websites

After knowing about PCW, it would be great to look at some of the benefits offered by price comparison websites. The advantages of PCW can be seen in two ways- from the seller’s perspective and from the buyer’s perspective.

Advantages of the Seller’s

The first thing is that the price comparison engines for online shopping offer businesses an opportunity to scale up their sales. Moreover, the vendors also get a chance to use the aggregator’s information and set competitive prices for receiving additional traffic from the targeted audience.

So, the advantages of sellers are:

• Swift increase in online site traffic.
• More sales.
• An additional channel for audience interaction.
• The chances to view user reviews and work on the flaws without any help from a third party.
• Easy and economical functionality that enables working with price comparison and shopping websites without third-party helpers. 

Advantages of Customer’s

A perfect price comparison website is best for those who persistently make an online purchase and don’t have to spend much time finding out where the product is cheaper.

The advantages of customers are:

• You can watch a huge number of stores and products on a single platform.
• Can get reviews from actual customers.
• Selection of the most famous products on a single platform.
• Systematic sorting of product offers.

Statistics of Price Comparison Websites

These days, being the owner of an online price comparison engine is similar to finding diamonds in coal mining. And there are various statistical data that support this remark.

90 percent of online buyers first look for the best price in cyberspace before making any further decision. And 65 percent of online buyers prefer to look up price comparisons on websites on their smartphones while being in a physical store. 

So, there are no thoughts on whether a price comparison website will be successful or not. However, if you are considering building one then you have to do thorough homework first. Because although there is a good demand for price comparison websites the competition is also intense. 

This is because, like any other online business, this one also draws good traffic making it a challenging part.

So let’s take a look at how to create the perfect price comparison website.

Things To Remember Before Designing A Price Comparison Website

Since there are thousands of tech products and services and hundreds of these services/products come up regularly, you have to take careful steps to make sure you build a top-notch platform that guarantees acceptability in your preferred market.

A great way to accomplish the desired result is by providing a unique price comparison platform.

What does it mean? Confused!

By this, it means adding an appealing innovation to your price comparison engine.

Below are some tips for making your webpage stand out:

• Have a unique business framework.
• Use a different comparison strategy.
• It gives access to a unique marketplace.

At first, it can look pretty vague. But, don’t worry, we have prepared a detailed guide on how to create the perfect price comparison website.

ABC of Creating a Price Comparison Website

Developing the best price comparison site is not at all an easy task. It is similar to setting up a business website. In the end, only one thing matters, how much organic or inorganic traffic is there on your site?

To attract more traffic to your website, you should consider the following steps.

Decide your niche

Price comparison websites make it easy for online buyers to compare their products/services. There are well-established comparison sites in the marketplace, but you can look for a niche market to offer something unique, an idea that is worth exploring.

If the idea is monetized perfectly, your price comparison site could generate greater revenue. 

And if you already have a niche in your mind and you are allocating your website development to a web development company, your project head should help you with competitor’s research.

Create your data plan

Obviously, you don’t want to add data manually, so you definitely need smart methods of doing the same.

For a price comparison website, data collection is the most important component, and there are mainly three ways to get accurate data for comparisons:

• API connection: Link with a third-party platform through an API request and get updated data instantly. The only restriction with this option is that your data is administered by the owner. 
• Data service: Searching for a data provider is an effective way to request a one-time request for a collection of data. The limitation of this option is that frequently updating the data can be costly.
• Web scraping: There are web scraping services that use crawling bots to gather data from target sites, automatically pushing and updating data to your price comparison site so you don’t have to rely on merchants to get the information.

Price Comparison Website Features

Listings

Listings include the pages where comparisons are shown. These are the chief aspects of a price comparison engine. The listing should exhibit not only the product’s price and name but some product features to make things easy for the buyers.

Search and Filters

The search feature is the primary part of every website, so it is pretty obvious that the end-user looking to compare product prices should be capable of finding the whole product model.

And filters will be of great use for those who are not searching for a particular product but for a set of specifications.

Reviews and Ratings

Reviews are a vital way for purchasers to make a decision about which online store they should buy from. Your price comparison website should allow end-users to leave reviews from websites selling the products you are comparing.

Price History

Incorporating the information on price history can be an interesting feature for creating a price comparison website that shows seasonal and periodic price fluctuations. In addition to price history, you can also add a price alert feature for notifying end-users of price drops.

Additional Features For a Price Comparison Website

• Rewards program
• QR code scanner
• Product card
• Notifications
• User area
• Seller area
• Social media integration
• geolocation

Step-by-Step Guide to Make a Price Comparison Website

For developing a price comparison website, you should have good knowledge of the completing development process and the technical aspects of the development process. This may seem an uninteresting part for non-technical audiences. 

Let’s have a more detailed evaluation of how to design a price comparison website.

Step 1. Discovery Phase

The discovery phase includes data collection of project-related information to achieve the website-building goals. The results of this first step will create the base architectural framework for the web development process.

In addition to this, it will help in recognizing e-commerce platforms to associate with when creating a website for product comparison.

Some of the ideal checklists for the discovery phase are:

• Have a conceptual knowledge of the plan.
• Identify the favored niche.
• Authenticate the idea by performing customer research.
• Set a fixed deadline.
• Design a structure and a prototype.

Step 2. Design Phase

Many people consider the design phase as a peripheral step, but it’s actually important for the basics of the development process. I am saying this because it helps the team to contextualize the idea in a reliable diagrammatic manner.

The design phase allows the developers to create a functional guide for making sure that all lines of code are written to align with the organization’s goals.

Step 3. Development and Testing Phase

This is the essence of the full web development process, as it includes coding and the implementation of the deliveries from both the design and discovery phases. The role in this phase is generally controlled by backend and frontend developers.

After completion of the third phase, the result will be an MVP (Minimum viable product), or a customer-oriented, fully scaled website that comprises all the features and functionalities mentioned in the prototype.

Step 4. Website Launch & Maintenance

Now that you have developed a perfect price comparison website that makes appeals to your target audience, what will be the next step?

The next and final step will be to set in motion the website or application for easy user access. People mistake thinking that this step is for mere formality, however, it’s actually sacred with the existence of your website or idea. 

After the website’s launch, maintenance and improvement are like a never-ending process, and so it demands a fully dedicated team of developers.

How Much Will It Cost To Design a Price Comparison Website?

The total cost of creating a price comparison engine with a web development company will depend on various factors, such as the location of the web development company, the number of experts involved, the complexity of the platform, and more.

The experts that are generally involved in creating a price comparison site are:

• 1 project manager
• 1 UI/UX designer
• Frontend developer
• Backend developer
• QA analyst

According to Extern Labs team experience, an MVP development for price comparison engines needs 4000 plus hours. If you need a full-fledged website the development can also take 10,000 hours.

We here at Extern Labs offer mobile web development services at an economical rate based on per hour.

Technology Stack Needed For Comparison Website Development

To create a top-notch price comparison website you have to collect the best technology stack. It should be a solution that meets all standard parameters and is fine-tuned for inflated performance that will stay ahead of the mainstream.

Thus, the technology that our team will recommend for website development are:

• Front-end : React/ Angular/ Vue.js
• Back-end:  Laravel/Node.js
• Server: AWS
• Mobile: React Native
• Third-party Integration: Facebook Analytics, Google Analytics, and Retail APIs.

Conclusion

Now that we have given a deep insight into the price comparison website you must have got a clue of what is the process and what will help you in developing a price comparison website. 

A simple and functional price comparison website saves the time of us shoppers and sparks sales for companies and eventually becomes an effective tool for the site owners.

Nevertheless, price comparison website development is an intricate process and so it needs a considerable amount of time and money.

However, if you approach the development process in the right way you can create a top-notch price comparison engine and can generate good revenue.

So, now if you are all set to execute your plan, take your whole time but don’t waste it. We have tried to explain all details that you need to know regarding the price comparison website to proceed forward. And if you need a certitude tech partner to help you, please contact us. We will love to discuss the project with you.