Price comparison

choosewisely

Technical questions now!

How'd you manage to get the postage added on - did the supplier just amend the price in their feed or are you calculating it (and if so how do you cope with different suppliers working different postage calculations)?

And I suddenly noticed whilst browsing around that all you pages look like they're in static html (except the PHP search) - I assume you automatically re-generate these pages (rather than manually edit them all!) so must have to re-generate them every time you get a new feed of prices?

I'm wondering if having one all inclusive price is the right way to go now though - By building in the postage but not showing the price without postage it could mislead - if you're buying 2 different products each product will have its postage inclusive price displayed but if some suppliers work on a flat rate per item and others base it on order value or weight then the postage cost for the whole order may make the cheapest supplier a different one to the one that appears to be cheapest using your all inclusive prices.

It's a sticky problem - I don't think there'll be a perfect way of doing it. I think showing the vat exclusive price would be useful for businesses though so whether you want that then the vat inclusive price then the vat and postage inclusive price is debatable.

Maybe you need more comments than mine as to what people prefer to see. You don't want to follow my advice too much - I could be out on a limb here!

pennymakespounds

choosewisely, fair points but i think for the vast majority of people having the vat and p&p included in the price is the best route... it will be the actual price someone pays to have it delivered.
Anyone in business just knows they can claim the vat back.
some sites prices include vat or p&p or both or neither !! so got to get as close to comparing like with like.
cracking potential for that site .. sure we all know what a minefield ink prices are .. there's certainly over 100% differrence between the best and worst prices on the 3 differrent cartridges i buy.

FindMeInk

choosewisely wrote:

Technical questions now!

How'd you manage to get the postage added on - did the supplier just amend the price in their feed or are you calculating it (and if so how do you cope with different suppliers working different postage calculations)?

And I suddenly noticed whilst browsing around that all you pages look like they're in static html (except the PHP search) - I assume you automatically re-generate these pages (rather than manually edit them all!) so must have to re-generate them every time you get a new feed of prices?

I'm wondering if having one all inclusive price is the right way to go now though - By building in the postage but not showing the price without postage it could mislead - if you're buying 2 different products each product will have its postage inclusive price displayed but if some suppliers work on a flat rate per item and others base it on order value or weight then the postage cost for the whole order may make the cheapest supplier a different one to the one that appears to be cheapest using your all inclusive prices.

It's a sticky problem - I don't think there'll be a perfect way of doing it. I think showing the vat exclusive price would be useful for businesses though so whether you want that then the vat inclusive price then the vat and postage inclusive price is debatable.

Maybe you need more comments than mine as to what people prefer to see. You don't want to follow my advice too much - I could be out on a limb here!

As for the prices, I just wrote a script that checks what shop the item is from and adds the relevent amount of postage to the price, as well as checking it VAT is already included, if not, it will add it. Good thing is with cartridge places, its flat rate postage, so it doesnt vary between order size and value.

Yeah, none of them are actually static .html files, I wronte some code so that it converts urls like https://www.foo.bar/index.php?id=213&cat=566&odr=2&src=1 into much easier to read URLs, like you see on the site. Its supposed to help search engines spider the site easier, as apparently, they dont read anything after the ? mark in a URL. All the pages are automatically generated yeah.

I think I'm going to stick with the all-inclusive price, its going to be mainly targetted at normal consumers and all they'll want to know is the final price to their door. You have a point about the buying several cartridges things, and having the illusion that you would be playing postage twice - I cant really think of a way around that... But then again, I dont really buy both colour and black cartridges at the same time much, I'm foreever just buying the black ones, and rarely a colour one!

Have to just see how it works I think, and make any alterations after a lot of feedback.

choosewisely

Probably a good move - there's no point tinkering with it too much until it's been running for a while.

robskillz

FindMeInk wrote:

Consumables comparison site I hear you say?
Heres the URL: Find Me Ink

Great effort - keep up the good work!
Rob

FindMeInk

Thanks for all of your comments so far guys, I have just got around to adding a merchant review system. As it is currently empty, if you have shopped with any of the following merchants, would you be as kind enough to give them a rating and comment on my site? Just to get the ball rolling...

Direct links to my rating pages:
7dayshop.com
CartridgeMonkey
Euroffice
inkClub
InkFactory.com
InkWorld
MicroDirect
Misco
Novatech Direct Ltd.
PicStop
PriceStorm.com
XLShop

Sheel

choosewisely wrote:

Does anyone know of a good price comparison engine for consumables? I know there's lots of cartridge sites mentioned in the forums but is there anywhere you can search for a cartridge and get a comparison between sites without actually having to visit each one and look it up?

pricerunner.co.uk

isayoldchap

choosewisely wrote:

Does anyone know of a good price comparison engine for consumables? I know there's lots of cartridge sites mentioned in the forums but is there anywhere you can search for a cartridge and get a comparison between sites without actually having to visit each one and look it up?

http://www.priceguideuk.com/index.asp

deanos

I like the idea of your site but it definately dosent list the cheapest place take for example a Canon IP4000 you list the cheapest as £1.99 without postage for Inkrite carts , where i buy mine from they are 99p each and even cheaper when you buy a set (https://www.northdevoncomputers.com)

choosewisely

That's the problem with comparison sites, even the big ones like dealtime and kelkoo - they only list sites that have chosen (and often paid) to be listed and fed their data into the comparison engines and so the cheapest place to buy may not be listed.

A site based on consumer recommendations might be more useful - a bit like the forums here where someone says they bought X for £5.99 and someone else then says you can get it for £4.99 wherever - but fed into a searchable database categorised by printer and cartridge rather than just text in a forum. Then again that's only as good as the amount of information people feed into it!