Hot Deal? Product Price History & Store Comparison

[jmackay]

Hey guys, I've been working on this website for a few months now and its most of the way complete. I wanted to get it out there to you guys since I created it as a consumer looking for the best deals. I was hoping to take away the daily task for others of searching multiple sites and trying to remember what a good price for a product / item was.

The website is http://www.♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥/

I am planning on adding some new features (such as user creation and quick tracking of products.. kinda like a favorites list)

I was also thinking of doing some kind of hot deals section, but was unsure on how I should set it up, so I was hoping some of you guys could help me out with ideas.

Idea 1 for it:
Auto put products in this section if their price is XX% cheaper now than on average. Say 20% less than usual.

Idea 2:
Have users "vote up" hot priced products. Put a link on product pages that allow users to say "This is a hot deal!" type of thing.

Idea 3: Merge the two, have it auto assign products and also allow for users to add to the section / "downvote" not hot priced items.

Ideas? Comments? Please let me know what you think! :)

Also what are some of the other major stores I should grab info from?

[XL69er]

Wow, awesome work! Good luck with this site, it looks like a winner to me.

I vote for Idea 3.

[RussianHAXOR]

This is like this one site i used to use. It may have been price grabber or some other site. They did trend graphs like that. I used it to build my first computer. :D

[jmackay]

Thanks :)

RH what site had history? I couldn't find one when I was buying which is what prompted me to create one heh

[farfromhome]

I think he's referring to NexTag, which still does. Yours looks better though, as the trends are the focus and not just a sideshow to the price comparisons. Keep up the good work! :D

[bassman]

This is a great idea and well laid-out. I'd certainly use it. How are you collecting the pricing information?

How about adding some advanced filtering/graphing? For example, let a user setup a filter that graphs the pricing of all the 500GB 3.5" SATA hard drives you have info on.

[w1retap]

Very awesome! I like it.

+1 to the filter idea. Sort of how newegg has it how you can filter things once in a sub-category.. like bassman said. ^^^

[jmackay]

This is a great idea and well laid-out. I'd certainly use it. How are you collecting the pricing information?

How about adding some advanced filtering/graphing? For example, let a user setup a filter that graphs the pricing of all the 500GB 3.5" SATA hard drives you have info on.

Currently I have to run scripts each day that grab the info from each of the sites, so it takes a while and I wish there was an easier way tbh.

I was planning on doing a "View others" type of graph as well, but was unsure how to neatly layout each of the products as well as having each of the stores on a single graph w/o making it too confusing. Maybe I'll just settle for comparing 2-3 products.

Sadly I'm in the middle of moving right now so I can't really work on it from my main computer.

I really want to get the product images up as well.

Any other ideas / suggestions / comments? :)

[bassman]

Currently I have to run scripts each day that grab the info from each of the sites, so it takes a while and I wish there was an easier way tbh.

Too bad the RSS feeds from some of the stores aren't complete. Still, that might be something to try.

I was planning on doing a "View others" type of graph as well, but was unsure how to neatly layout each of the products as well as having each of the stores on a single graph w/o making it too confusing. Maybe I'll just settle for comparing 2-3 products.

Yeah, you could get a pretty complicated graph. As I think about it, I wouldn't be looking at the graph overall if I had more than 2-3 products up at once - I'd be looking for the lowest point on the graph. From that point of view, maybe the visual complexity isn't a problem.

How about putting checkboxes next to products in a filtered listing page? (Kind of like the "compare these products" features you see on some sites.) You could use an explicit POST to generate a new graph. Or, if you're a true web wizard, use some AJAX magic to update the graph when a product is selected.

Yeah, easier said than done. But you asked for suggestions. :p

[RussianHAXOR]

Thanks :)

RH what site had history? I couldn't find one when I was buying which is what prompted me to create one heh

http://www.pricescan.com/home_computers.asp ;)

Here is an example...

Scroll Down for Graph.

http://www.pricescan.com/items/item180190.asp

[Indignity]

I likey m8 .. a very useful tool to use!

[GoldenTiger]

This is one heck of a good idea...!

[RussianHAXOR]

This has already been done, by price scan. I remember because it helped me find a cyclical point where it was cheapest to buy my videocard. :P

[aggiestudd07]

it may not be "original", but its still an AMAZING website. good work

[jmackay]

it may not be "original", but its still an AMAZING website. good work

Thanks :)

And ya, I didn't know about pricescan, but oh well I'll still work on it and add new features. Hopefully I'll be up and running in the next few days.