Interview with Price.ME Team: What Makes a Comparison Site Stand Out
Editor’s note: Since writing this article, Price.ME has ceased to operate. This post remains as part of their legacy. However, you can read our story about a similar .MEr here.
.ME is proud to present the newest social shopping comparison engine Price.me. It was created as a tool to connect top brands and merchants with shoppers looking to compare prices, and to allow shoppers to find the best deal online and share their experience. The service, formerly known as Pricehole.com , was created by Dmitry Nartov, e-commerce marketing director and Google certified AdWords specialist, and Benjamin Kotler, an experienced business developer and launched in August 2013.
Customers of Price.Me will benefit from query responses from a robust internal database displaying large feeds of inventories to create a unique shopping experience. The service works with merchants by responding to a customer’s search query and presenting products, pricing and store reputation allowing the customer to make the final choice of where to make the purchase.
The comparison engine uses sophisticated marketing technology to allow merchants to drive highly targeted traffic to their site. Built in social features allow customers to share their shopping experience. Built in social features allow customers to share their shopping experience on facebook and other channels to get feedback and give recommendations to friends.
We recently interviewed the humans behind Price.Me to find out what makes them tick:
.ME – What inspired you to create Price.me?
Dmitry Nartov – When I started working for Ecommerce companies back in 2001, the market was completely different. People just started realizing that purchases can be made online and it’s actually really convenient and fast. I’ve been able to see the industry from inside and I realized that a growing number of online merchants will create a situation when merchant information, goods prices and reviews about merchants will need to be organized.
I remember how the first Shopping Comparison Engines went online and I had a feeling that my idea was taken by someone and used. I also didn’t like how it was used. I believed that shopping comparison can be simplified and be accessible to all people from Teenagers to Housewives. Years after I met my partners – Dmitry Zaev and Benjamin Kotler, – amazing people inspired by technology like me.
.ME – How is Price.me different from other price comparison sites?
Nartov – We created Price.me looking at other Price Comparison Engines looking for the ways to simplify search, find better sorting options and give useful buying information. The Unboxing Videos Feature was born like this – for each item on the site we have unboxing video where people can actually see what they would get after they buy products. We collect price data using various methods, including those that are not used by any competitor.
.ME – How does Price.me work?
Nartov– There are 2 parties involved in Price.me functionality – Buyer and Merchant.
Merchants – storeowners or marketing companies representing online stores register their accounts with Price.Me, upload store logos and general information and their product feed. Price.Me processes the feeds and puts each product on specific pages – we call them “Compare Pages”, where users can compare prices on the same product from various merchants and based on their reviews, rating and price make final purchase decision.
.ME – What makes a price comparison site stand out?
Nartov – I think for last few years one major trend was – simplicity. With the current level of available technology everything can be simplified; navigating, search, purchasing and billing. Some comparison engines we compete with were established more than 10 years ago and didn’t really change since then.
When building Price.me, we used the latest technology available and our developers keep working on simplifying price comparison daily. I think the most important factor that makes price comparison software stand out is the level of its simplicity along with ability to perform all regular comparison engine functions. We also spent a lot of time working on new things – we are about to roll-out new feature – Social Affiliate Commission Feature – where people can get paid for recommending their purchases to their friends.
.ME – How did you choose to brand your company with .ME?
Nartov – When looking for a company name we wanted something very straightforward and obvious. Also idea was to stress that we make shopping personalized. Domain .Me was a find and once we found out that Price.me was part of Premium Domain Program we understood that this is what we were looking for. Catchy, Simple, Personalized, – just like the software we created.
