Price Comparison site
Discussion
Sorry all but not a big contributor to the posts but would value some opinions on price comparison sites. Just wondered how many actually use them and if anyone is in the know about building one what price would you expect to pay for it and any tips you would share. I have had quotes from 3k up to 12k. I can't say what it will compare but it is something that has never been done yet and know it will take a lot of tweaking along the way.
Thanks in advance and hope to get a few replys
Thanks in advance and hope to get a few replys
I built what was effectively a comparison site - it was actually comparing bookmaker prices to find arbitrage opportunities.
My question would be this: Do the companies that you’re going to compare offer APIs to get the price info? If they do, it should be straight forward. If not, and you need to scrape the data, it will likely end up like my site did, where its a constant battle to keep the code working.
Feel free to PM me if you want to talk things through in more detail.
My question would be this: Do the companies that you’re going to compare offer APIs to get the price info? If they do, it should be straight forward. If not, and you need to scrape the data, it will likely end up like my site did, where its a constant battle to keep the code working.
Feel free to PM me if you want to talk things through in more detail.
Very difficult to give any meaningful comparison without knowing more information... we wrote one for a client in the financial sector and it cost a lot more than either end of your quotes so far...
If you are writing something simple that pulls from a couple of apis then you can do it cheaply, if you need it to be scalable then the costs rocket, we had to write unique and complex code for every company the system touched and then work out how to make the data comparable- the suppliers seemed to have zero interest in helping, even when their apis were fairly broken!
The costs in the big boys (eg compare the market etc) come in three places:
- coding
- infrastructure to support the number of users
- marketing (as above - don’t forget this!)
The big car comparison sites at the time (a few years ago) were spending c. £50-100m a year on marketing and their income was directly traceable to that spend
If you want to pm me with ideas or quotes - I am happy to look...
If you are writing something simple that pulls from a couple of apis then you can do it cheaply, if you need it to be scalable then the costs rocket, we had to write unique and complex code for every company the system touched and then work out how to make the data comparable- the suppliers seemed to have zero interest in helping, even when their apis were fairly broken!
The costs in the big boys (eg compare the market etc) come in three places:
- coding
- infrastructure to support the number of users
- marketing (as above - don’t forget this!)
The big car comparison sites at the time (a few years ago) were spending c. £50-100m a year on marketing and their income was directly traceable to that spend
If you want to pm me with ideas or quotes - I am happy to look...
I'm building something similar for vehicle parts. Everything said above is true!
We knew there would be mountains to climb and bridges to cross... The mountains have all being covered in 6 feet of snow and the bridges have been blown up. We battle on. Costs have quadroupled and time frames binned.
Enjoy the journey
We knew there would be mountains to climb and bridges to cross... The mountains have all being covered in 6 feet of snow and the bridges have been blown up. We battle on. Costs have quadroupled and time frames binned.
Enjoy the journey
boony said:
I built what was effectively a comparison site - it was actually comparing bookmaker prices to find arbitrage opportunities.
My question would be this: Do the companies that you’re going to compare offer APIs to get the price info? If they do, it should be straight forward. If not, and you need to scrape the data, it will likely end up like my site did, where its a constant battle to keep the code working.
Feel free to PM me if you want to talk things through in more detail.
Worth pointing out that if the companies DO offer an API, then triple check the assertion that it "has never been done yet" as that will almost certainly be in invalid assertion in that circumstance.My question would be this: Do the companies that you’re going to compare offer APIs to get the price info? If they do, it should be straight forward. If not, and you need to scrape the data, it will likely end up like my site did, where its a constant battle to keep the code working.
Feel free to PM me if you want to talk things through in more detail.
Also if you go down the scraping route you should read the sites T&Cs carefully as you may well find yourself in a bit of a grey area at best.
Thank you for the replies and i will drop a few messages if that is still ok. I can appreciate the lack of information doesn't help but just waiting on a few things being signed so i can give a bit more info. It is definitely unique but appreciate it doesn't always mean it will work but i believe it will so have to at least try. I will get the messages off asap and look forward to your replies thanks again.
Angmob said:
Thank you for the replies and i will drop a few messages if that is still ok. I can appreciate the lack of information doesn't help but just waiting on a few things being signed so i can give a bit more info. It is definitely unique but appreciate it doesn't always mean it will work but i believe it will so have to at least try. I will get the messages off asap and look forward to your replies thanks again.
feel free - always happy to have an initial look...Can only reiterate the above. I built a little comparison tool years ago, mainly for my own benefit to learn how to call APIs, manage multiple concurrent messages and so on.
If the data you are consuming is from an API or you can get companies to send you data in a format you can consume it is technically quite straight forward. However, comparison sites live and die by the depth of suppliers they search and the large sites have a lot of leverage to get the data they need.
If the data you are consuming is from an API or you can get companies to send you data in a format you can consume it is technically quite straight forward. However, comparison sites live and die by the depth of suppliers they search and the large sites have a lot of leverage to get the data they need.
Evening,
I have some experience of what it’s like to build a comparison site as my company built one for cruise holidays. It’s still active at https://www.cruisehq.co.uk Lots learnt from doing that, mainly that it’s far more complicated than we thought! Scraping data is not a very sustainable approach either as you’re at the mercy of poor quality data from the original source. Any typos etc will be a real pain to flush out.
Happy to answer any questions if it will be helpful.
Billy
I have some experience of what it’s like to build a comparison site as my company built one for cruise holidays. It’s still active at https://www.cruisehq.co.uk Lots learnt from doing that, mainly that it’s far more complicated than we thought! Scraping data is not a very sustainable approach either as you’re at the mercy of poor quality data from the original source. Any typos etc will be a real pain to flush out.
Happy to answer any questions if it will be helpful.
Billy
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