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[MSE Dan]

Hi folks,

We've built a new tool, which we're calling the Mega Shopbot. It's aim is to help you find the web's cheapest price, by searching multiple internet shopping robots (shopbots) in just one click

It's currently in Beta mode. This means it is fully operational, but there's more to come; we've pushed it out in time for Christmas shopping, but it isn't the final version. More comparison sites & categories e.g. perfume & electronics are due. But for now we want your feedback on how useful you find it, any improvements you'd like, and any other thoughts (thanks to all the moneysavers for feedback in earlier threads for getting this far).

Also, if you get any functional errors, it'd be fab if you can include what web browser you are using in your reply, as this will help our techie dudes fix them!

If you’re wondering why it opens in multiple windows, its because the nature of the info each presents is so different and there are so many variables it cant be categorized. Also sometimes the results have commercial sponsors in them, and we don’t want anyone to think those are MSE's.

Here is the link – hope you like it, please play with it give us suggestions etc, let us know bugs etc

Mega Shopbot Tool - 'Beta version'

Cheers

Dan

P.S Thanks to everyone who helped us test the trial version last night on the forum, we got some great feedback and it informed a few alterations that went in today.

[fsdss]

after sorting out the blockers (firefox) - it threw up 3 new windows - better than last night for some reason, as then there were about 6. (still annoying for me tho')
although i checked mamma mia dvd - i could find this much cheaper in store than the £13 quoted as best price.
hope this helps

[MSE Dan]

Hi fsdss,

Thanks for having a go. The reason we have gone down to three is that we decided auto-selecting our top 3 gave as good results and made the whole process a bit friendlier.

You can still manually select others, and tomorrow we will be adding a Select All button to easily search all of the shopbots.

Cheers

Dan

[Tojo Ralph]

...
Searched DVDs for "Home Alone" looking for the Home Alone 1 and 2 disk set.

Kelkoo worked.
Find-DVD.co.uk worked.
Shopping.com worked.
Pricerunner worked.

[mountainchrisriver]

Still having to click on "show prices" with pricerunner pop up when carrying out a book search... (to see what I mean try: Author: Mark Haddon; Title: A spot of bother). Annoying that it doesn't just produce visible results...

Still getting a tiny pop up window that flashes open then disappears very swiftly when using the tool... This is why I don't like pop-ups... could you tell us why it happens?

[MSE Martin]

Originally Posted by mountainchrisriver

Still having to click on "show prices" with pricerunner pop up when carrying out a book search... (to see what I mean try: Author: Mark Haddon; Title: A spot of bother). Annoying that it doesn't just produce visible results...

Still getting a tiny pop up window that flashes open then disappears very swiftly when using the tool... This is why I don't like pop-ups... could you tell us why it happens?

To answer the last bit (my techies may correct me). We briefly open a pop-up window to test if your pop-up blocker is on. If it is you go to a new page which explains its on and how to turn it off.

[mountainchrisriver]

See where you are coming from Martin but this little window appears and disappears everytime I carry out a search when pop ups are allowed... does that make sense?

[MSE Martin]

Originally Posted by mountainchrisriver

See where you are coming from Martin but this little window appears and disappears everytime I carry out a search when pop ups are allowed... does that make sense?

Yes because for the search to know your pop ups are on or off it has to do a quick pop up. THen in your case it goes to open up the windows. If your pop up blocker was on it'd send you to a special page explaining that.

[mountainchrisriver]

That makes sense now... sorry not very techy...

Any ideas on the pricerunner links requirement to "show prices" ?

The tool in general seems to be working better this evening; only having 3 pop ups is certainly less !


ps. what is the "other" for in the drop down menu...

[poppy10]

Could you make the kelkoo search default to sorting by price order, rather than sorting by popularity (which isn't that useful for money savers - I'd rather be rich than popular )

i.e.
hxxp://films.kelkoo.co.uk/drilldown%7E149201/DVD?sortBy=totalprice&view=List&keyword1=shawshank+redemption

instead of

hxxp://films.kelkoo.co.uk/drilldown%7E149201/DVD?keyword1=shawshank+redemption

(Had to replace http with hxxp to get the whole URL to show without being shortened)

Thanks for the great tool, martin and team

[brummygirl666]

Am I the only person who keeps getting you have landed on a page that does not exist when clicking the link?

oops posted at the same time as Dan

[MSE Dan]

Hi folks,

Sorry about that, a technical glitch. It is working again now

Dan

[rpb]

Hmmm. I was expecting it to do a little more than just open up separate windows for each comparison site. I suppose that does save a very little typing, but to be honest I'd probably prefer to just search one or two comparison sites of choice, manually, rather than have these windows popping up all over the place, somewhat randomly.

I set Firefox to allow the MSE domain to open popup windows because you said to, but then got a bunch of advertising windows (LG and then Littlewoods) popping up as well. I never normally get these annoying things as I use Firefox's popup blocker set to default. I have therefore re-blocked popups from MSE again now!

[prudence41]

Useful service - it saves me having to use each site individually.

[McB]

Doesn't seem to work. Also, does it use google shopping which seems to be a major shopbot.

[RatBag]

Hey, it's great to see a new shopping comparison site! This could be a very useful tool.

I must admit I wept when they got rid of ShopSmart.com because that comparison site was perfect at getting the best deal every time; I relied on it a lot. (Conspiricy theory; maybe it was TOO good! )

There is a major design flaw with megashopbot; nobody with any internet awareness is going to turn ON pop-ups. Sorry to say it, but pop-ups throughout the rest of the internet are a pain, inconvenience and security risk. I just won't do it.

I remember that travel comparison sites like Kayak, Opodo, & Expedia used to use a lot of pop-ups, in years gone by, but if you visit their sites now; no pop ups.

[allenkj]

I don't like popups either.

I got Firefox to work by leaving popups blocked and allowing www.moneysavingexpert.com as an exception.

[MSE Martin]

Interesting on the pop-up issue. Of course MSE isn't doing any pop ups but the opening new windows for the comparison services can count as a pop up hence why pop up blockers need to be off.

[bhebbes]

1. POPUPS - most popup blockers allow you to make exceptions (eg. http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/megashopbot) leaving other sites blocked.
2. IE and Firefox are both now tabbed browsers, and it would be more convenient if new tabs were opened rather than new windows when possible.
3. Wouldn't it be good if all this information were available as a well organised wiki rather than a poorly organised forum?

[tootiefrooties]

i wouldn't want to disable my pop-up blocker, especially as it isn't actually necessary for this particular site to use pop ups.