Website for Finding Heavily Discounted Buys

AssociatedLNinjaiShopper @ bargainspot.com.au on 10/06/2016 - 14:24
Last edited 10/06/2016 - 14:34 by 1 other user

Hi OzBargainers,

I have been developing a website that spots really heavily discounted buys. I've partnered with a range of online retailers, and our software tries to find their biggest overstocks, clearance and sale lines. It has been a project that my father and I have been developing over the last 18 months (he is a software developer and I'm a web designer/front end developer). We managed to launch a beta (BargainSpot.com.au) just before Christmas. It's been the most difficult project we have ever undertaken together, and is still very much a work in progress, so I'd love to get some feedback from the OzBargain community.

Aspects we are currently working on are:

  1. Improving Data quality - this has been a constant challenge.
  2. Providing Price Notifications on ALL products - we currently provide the ability to set notifications only on products not on sale (found through search or brand pages).
  3. Providing price change data - showing notifications if a price drop has just happened, or if it is at its lowest point that we have seen.
  4. Providing a way for users to 'like' and 'dislike' products, and this will contribute to the ranking algorithm.

Really keen to get some thoughts from you all :-)

Justin,

General Discussion

Related Stores

bargainspot.com.au
bargainspot.com.au

Comments

  • cypher67 on 10/06/2016 - 14:40
    +3

    As long as these bargains make there way onto this website, I applaud any and all efforts.

  • dasher86 on 10/06/2016 - 14:43

    seems to be a good idea.
    My frustrations are it still highlights a lot of items that are showing as out of stock or not available once you get to the retailer.

    • AssociatedNinjaiShopper @ bargainspot.com.au on 10/06/2016 - 18:07

      Thanks for the feedback. This is a major frustration for us too. It's something we are working on. For the most part we know if the product is out of stock, but it's really tricky to keep all the data 100% realtime.

  • spychiatrist on 10/06/2016 - 16:31

    Save $9870 for a Carrom set!!!

    • AssociatedNinjaiShopper @ bargainspot.com.au on 10/06/2016 - 17:33

      Thanks for letting us know. Some of these product feeds we are working with are a real challenge. I think I'm going to have to change the software so it assumes that anything >97% off is a mistake.

  • nocure on 10/06/2016 - 16:31
    +1

    Receive our top picks straight to your inbox!

    you have been here for a little while so you would have came across "pricehipster"…. now i don't want to give jazoom a swelled head ( old schooler's will know what i mean by that) but its no nonsense emailing system is nicely customized to only send emails at the request of the user. I have already signed up to Bargainspot with my email but fear i will be spammed with alot of items i am not interested in.

    Providing price change data - showing notifications if a price drop has just happened, or if it is at its lowest point that we have seen.

    That should be priority.

    Website for Finding Heavily Discounted Buys

    Define "Heavily"

    I would love my next deal to be something that your site found for me..Keep up the good work.

    • AssociatedNinjaiShopper @ bargainspot.com.au on 10/06/2016 - 18:27

      Thanks for the reply nocure. Yea, I've come across Price Hipster. In some ways we are a competitor. Similar concept but approached in a different way. For example we also offer a 'price alert' emailing system but only for product results that aren't on sale. We are in the process of changing this for all products (on sale or not).

      Pushing our mailing list is one of our main strategies for growth so we do try hard to encourage signups :-) At the moment I send out twice per month (with general top picks broken into categories). In saying that, I will eventually introduce some more advanced software that helps segment it, so users can define where their interests lie (and I'd like to amp it up to weekly emails). I just don't have the resources to do that quite yet.

      Defining "heavily" - the idea behind it is to try and "spot" the top buys from each retailer(primarily based on the level of discount). And give the user control over what displays and how much they want to pay, so for example we have a refine dropdown where you can change the results to only show 40% or 50%, 60% off etc. Changing this will refine the whole website.

  • AssociatedNinjaiShopper @ bargainspot.com.au on 13/06/2016 - 08:40

    Thanks for the responses guys. I'd love to hear from others too if anyone has had a chance to take a look?
    www.bargainspot.com.au

  • exc3113nce on 13/06/2016 - 17:58

    I think the question for people here is - why are you better than pricehipster? What are you doing better than them? Why should we use your service?

    • jazoom on 14/06/2016 - 06:11

      Creator of Price Hipster here. I think both can exist side-by-side since there will certainly be people who prefer one over the other, but it sounds like they will share many of the same features (I can't confirm because the Bargain Spot website is down at the moment). Indeed, many of their future plans sound like things I've either tried or am in the process of building.

      • AssociatedNinjaiShopper @ bargainspot.com.au on 14/06/2016 - 14:35

        I agree with being able to exist side by side. This thread wasn't intended to turn into a YOU vs US. Our website spots heavily discounted buys, and your website provides historical price data (also very cool). In my opinion, we both provide a good use to consumers wanting to save money.

        • jazoom on 14/06/2016 - 16:28

          Your website looks nice. Great stuff!

          Heads up. You've got Strawberry.net in "Office and Software" category.

        • AssociatedNinjaiShopper @ bargainspot.com.au on 14/06/2016 - 17:40

          @jazoom: Thanks :-) Your site looks great too. Your search speed is killer!

          BTW, I'd recommend that you strip out any really low priced products (for example <20c). I came across a 1c David Jones product on your homepage earlier (which must have been a pricing mistake from DJ's). The link directed to a Page Not Found so they must have picked it up on their end. If any of your retailers see products like those, they will be less inclined to let you keep their products on your website.

        • jazoom on 14/06/2016 - 18:24

          @NinjaiShopper: Thanks. Yeah I know about David Jones' $0.01 products. They've been like that for the past year (they haven't picked up on it) and I haven't yet decided what to do about it. I think I might just prevent crazy discounts like that from showing up if they are from a store that has incorrect prices like that, as you suggested. I've been rebuilding a lot of things recently so haven't gotten around to that issue just yet.

        • AssociatedNinjaiShopper @ bargainspot.com.au on 15/06/2016 - 10:15

          @jazoom: Yeah, it is incredible how many products like that we have to omit. It's important to keep the retailers happy as well as your users.

    • AssociatedNinjaiShopper @ bargainspot.com.au on 14/06/2016 - 14:26

      We are different because our angle is to spot overstocks, clearance lines, heavily discounted sale lines which are searchable via categories or keyword. Their angle is more focused on providing historical price data for your search queries. However like Price Hipster, we also give consumers the ability to receive price alert notifications. We have found this to be one of most popular features since we launched last year. Like Jazoom said, we can both exist side by side. I'm not going to try and convince you to use my tool instead of his because like myself, he has taken a lot of time out of his life to try and create something new. It is pretty daunting to work for nothing for a long time with the hope that people will use what you have created. Both tools aim to give consumers more control over what they want to pay. And although we do share some of the same features, our approaches differ, and so I hope Ozbargainers can find uses for both tools as they can be used in different ways.

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