Online shopping behaviour depends on a myriad of factors – location, interests, age, gender, etc. – but all online customers compare prices to get the best option for their budget. That’s when competitive pricing analysis platforms come into play. With them, users can get all the needed info in a few clicks without a long manual web search.
Review and comparison websites have revolutionised product search to the point where users can find the best offer within a few minutes. As a business person, you can profit from people’s natural desire to get the best in the market.
A well-thought-out product comparison website with advanced features and functionality can earn you money in many ways, from classic ads to affiliate commissions to featured listings and more.
Without any further ado, let’s dig into how to build a successful price comparison site that will stand out in the highly competitive online shopping landscape.
The main aim of comparison shopping is to gather every available vendor for a chosen location. For each party involved, shopper comparison sites have different purposes:
Fortunately, the online shopping market is immense, with plenty of room for various online price comparison services. So, you can become the owner of a small local site or expand your business to the nationwide level. Users will appreciate such a diversity of comparison services.
Before you start building your own comparison shopping engine, it’s worth examining industry leaders. As of the end of 2023, the UK’s most popular price comparison websites were Comparethemarket, GoCompare, Confused.com and MoneySuperSmart. It is safe to say that they are one of the best price comparison websites since more than 80% of UK residents use those services.
Here’s the full comparison shopping portals ranking by Statista:
Source: Statista
Luckily for you, you don’t need to compete with these giants. As we previously said, the e-commerce market is so big that you can easily find your niche and launch your own successful comparison shopping engine tool.
To choose your niche properly, try the following practices:
The best way to create a sticking value proposition is by accurately addressing customers’ needs. Speaking of which, more than 40% of digital buyers in the UK reported that their main purchase driver for online shopping is free delivery. Another typical purchase driver is the absence of hidden fees.
Choosing a niche for your price comparison site can be much easier once you choose a comprehensive shopping behaviour analysis tool like HitMetrix. By leveraging the power of web analytics and data visualisation, HitMetrix unlocks the buyer persona in real-time across all touchpoints and interactions.
The proper revenue model for your comparison shopping website allows you to earn as much as possible while giving freedom to partners and providing a convenient experience for users.
| Featured Listings | Regular product listings are free on most price comparison sites, but you can leverage the comfort of paid listings to display partner products on your homepage, at the top of the search, and in other prominent places. |
| Affiliate Commissions | Affiliate marketing is a traffic monetisation model that brings most of the revenues to websites for price comparison. You can monetise any action, from traditional clicks and purchases to registrations, impressions and any other action of the lead. |
| Advertising | A time-proven monetisation option for most price-comp sites. You can monetise your traffic in traditional ways as long as your core offering – your product listings and search – is valuable. |
| Subscription Fees | It suits shopping comparison sites that provide personalised recommendations, exclusive deals, or other unique features your competitors don’t have. However, you should be aware that most users ignore the potential subscription and use only the free version of the service. |
Despite fierce competition, it is still possible to set your shopping comparison site apart from the competitors:
You have only around 8 seconds to catch users’ attention before they leave you for good. So, the homepage should be useful and look nice. The human brand processes images 60,000 times faster than text, so you don’t need a lot of words on shopping comparison websites.
The developer team of Confused.com was aware of the specifics of the human mind. That’s why one of the first things that users see on their homepage is a bunch of clickable pictograms that reveal the core categories of this service. Once users click on pictures, they will be taken to the specific comparison page.
Source: Compare.com
While people look for something on price comparison websites, they usually want to find the cheaper analogue of their favourite product. They need to fine-tune the search to ensure that they find the perfect match. You should provide technical solutions for it, giving them as many search filters as possible without ruining the user experience.
PriceRunner product price comparison website is a great example of in-depth search filters. At first glance, they look like an Amazon-like marketplace, so their users will intuitively know where to search for their favourite product.
Source: PriceRunner
Once a user opens the needed category, they can narrow the search even more, including product height, weight, and colour.
Social proof is crucial for any marketing campaign, but it especially benefits comparison pricing websites. Users are likely to choose products that other customers trust.
Here are some statistics:
When shopping online, users naturally look for a social proof of their choice. Social proof can be leveraged by integrating reviews, ratings, certifications, and real-time data like trending or popular products. For example, PriceRunner features popular products and searches to highlight the most wanted items.
Meanwhile, Which? shares the most popular expert-written articles among their users. That way, this price comparison business leverages the power of expert reviews and social proof simultaneously.
Source: Which?
Choose the social proof type that suits your niche and positioning. There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to websites to compare prices.
With only 3% of customers trusting salespeople and only 62% trusting companies in general, it’s crucial to provide an unbiased, trustworthy opinion on your products. They will make any price comparison more professional.
Here is how PriceRunner implements user and expert reviews on a product page:
Source: PriceRunner
Despite coupons known as the “American thing’, UK citizens adore this shopping practice. Over 70% of shoppers are willing to try a new product or brand with a coupon. You can use it to your advantage whether you are a seller or the owner of the product price comparison service.
Coupons can increase the traffic to your website, boost user engagement, and even improve conversion rates. However, we recommend you develop a reasonable couponing policy and collaborate only with authorised vendors. That way, your potential clients will be sure of the quality of the goods they can purchase using your price comparison search engine.
Not so many competitor price comparison websites allow on-the-spot purchases. Adding this feature to your service can give you an unprecedented competitive advantage. It’s one of the rarest comparison website features, which makes it so much needed among potential customers.
Be prepared to negotiate with every merchant on your platform. If you have a small niche website for price comparison, it won’t take long. Meanwhile, if you have hundreds of merchants, the negotiation process may take weeks or months.
Online shopping isn’t limited to products, and the best comparison sites already provide you the opportunity to explore various services. There are tons and tons of services you can aggregate, connecting customers with matching service providers.
A great example of a service aggregator website is MoneySuperMarket. Initially, they were the insurance comparison site. Later, they expanded to money services, business services, and utility deal comparison.
Source: MoneySuperMarket
If the user wants to compare insurance deals, they need to provide MSM contact information and specifics of their case. That way, MoneySuperMarket can gently collect insurance leads, which they can sell to local insurance providers later.
Source: MoneySuperMarket
It takes time and patience to create the best website for comparing prices. It’s important to gather as much technical data as possible to make this process more precise. Building a comparison platform may take months, as it’s better to do everything carefully without forcing events.
Ensure you can pull data from online stores and represent it on your website when comparing offers from different shops. The most popular features of price comparison software include API, scripts, data feeds, and on-demand quoting.
| Method | Pros | Cons |
| API Integration | Automatic data collection with structured data | Not all online shops provide API integration |
| Web Scraping | Automatic data collection from any online shop without permission | If dove without permission, it could be illegal |
| On-Demand Quoting | Product data from target online shops based on the customer’s quote | Requires a communication channel and takes time |
| Data Feeds | Structured, importable data | The data might not be fresh |
Launching a website that compares prices is just the beginning – the rest is much about tracking your performance and adjusting accordingly. Now, with dozens of performance metrics, you need a robust tracking and analytics system that screens the customer journey and decodes user behaviour insights into a thriving business plan.
Phonexa does it on a very high level. Comprising eight performance and affiliate marketing solutions, Phonexa examines each aspect of the buyer journey to help you close marketing loops and draw more customers.
The unique suite of performance marketing management software includes:
| LMS Sync | Lead tracking & distribution software |
| Call Logic | Call tracking & distribution software |
| E-Delivery | Email & SMS marketing software |
| Cloud PBX | Cloud phone system |
| Lynx | Click tracking software |
| Opt-Intel | Suppression list management software |
| HitMetrix | User behaviour recording & analytics software |
| Books360 | Automated accounting software |
Get your comprehensive software suite starting from only £250 a month, or schedule a free consultation to learn more about Phonexa.
Comparison shopping is the practice of comparing two or more similar products by their features, price, availability, and other factors that allow customers to choose the best option for them. Such comparison has become possible due to the invention of a price comparison engine that pulls product information from multiple online shops in real time.
It’s crucial not only to look for a price but also quality, features, availability, operation & maintenance costs, and ratings & reviews. It shows you where a product is worth their money, as sometimes a product just 5-10% pricier than the original can serve times longer than a cheaper item.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to the functionalities and security of comparison platforms. The answer depends on the needs of a particular customer. However, from a business perspective, the best price comparison websites allow them to convert random users into returning customers.
No, as you should have permission from the vendors to be listed on your service. You can use web scrapping tools as part of your monitor comparison shopping engine, but you still need to obtain consent from the vendors/shops listed on your platform.
Some of the most widely used comparison shopping ranking engines in the UK are PriceRunner, Google Shopping, Confused.com, Bing Shop and Shopzilla. Meanwhile, there is no best tool for all users since each service has its own strengths and merits.
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