A cool idea by Visuali.se: visualizing comparison data

Here is a newly launched (seems still in Beta test) comparison-shopping site (powered by Shopping.com) that could visualize the comparison information.

When you select a product category, all available products in this category will be displayed on the top of the page.




By clicking one of them, its information including price and technical details will be displayed in a new tab of the center page. You may select multiple products and each of them will be displayed in a new tab.



Once you want to compare them, you may click the "Click Here to View Important Product Features" and then a drop down menu appeared. You may select as many features to comparison as possible. Once you selected a feature, the information about them are displayed as bar graphs on the left or right side of the Page immediately.



When you decide the product to buy, you may click the "Buy it Here" tab and you will see all vendors that offering this product.

Though still kind of crude in design, this is a good multiple feature visual comparison shopping interface I've first see.

a comparison-shopping site created by a stay at home mom

We all know the entry barrier for comparison-shopping site is low but probably no one expects it could be created by a stay-at-home mom with no knowledge of coding and website design. Following is a news release about Shophilia.com from the Web:

Shophilia.com, a price comparison shopping website, launched on August 20, 2008. The price comparison website was created by a stay at home mom, with no prior knowledge of coding or design.

Since launching, just over one month ago, the site has been converted from html to php coding, to implement gzipping, which results in faster page loads. The site loads approximately 70% faster now, which is sure to please any shopper.

Computers with lower resolutions can shop with a better view due to new coding in place. "We are constantly working to improve the shopping experience by checking functionality from all angles. We rely on feedback from our customers," says Angela.

In the near future, the site will have new features for their "stores" tab. This section of the site contains over 4,700 stores, and soon you will be able to sort by name or number of products. It will have a first letter index with count of how many stores per first letter, and a search engine to search merchant, store by store name or keyword. "We are very excited about this feature, it will be a tremendous benefit to the consumer," says Angela.

Hurricane Ike caused outages across the web, including Shophilia.com. "Our partners are located in Texas and are still recovering. We just received an update today, and they're still without power. They said that the servers are as hot as an oven and that Centerpoint Energy is doing all that they can to restore power. I'm just thankful that they're alright," says Angela.

They have a "free shipping" tab, and can save you even more money by clicking on their "rebates, coupons and deals" tab. With the rising cost of fuel, what better time to take advantage of these features.

When you shop there, you're shopping with all of your favorite retailers, no more going from retailer to retailer or from comparison site to comparison site, now that it's all in one spot. Just in time for the Holiday season, http://www.shophilia.com, has over 5,500 stores and over 34 million products.

For additional information on the news that is the subject of this release contact Angela Meadows or visit www.shophilia.com.

About Angela Meadows:
Stay at home mom and founder of Shophilia.com

Contact:
Angela Meadows, Founder
www.Shophilia.com
1-712-432-0055 ext. 58790#

Pronto.com uses AppBeat DC

Pronto.com is a social comparison-shopping site. It allow shoppers to not only review a product but also create all kinds of product list based on their preference. This looks like an idea borrowed from Amazon. It also allow people to make friends with each other by making their product rating and list public.

In early September 8 news brief:

Crescendo Networks, Ltd., the recognized performance leader in accelerating and optimizing Web applications, today announced that Pronto.com is using AppBeat(TM) DC to ensure the performance, efficiency and availability of its Web applications for shoppers worldwide. Pronto.com is the Web's fastest growing comparison and social shopping site with more than 15 million monthly users, 70,000 Web retailers and 70 million products. It is an operating business of IAC, which owns more than 35 Internet businesses including Ask.com, Citysearch, Match.com and Evite.

So what is AppBeat DC? it is essentially a second generation load balancing solution. Using the golden rule of division of labor, it separate the application task with overhead processing. It also using the dedicated thread to process the aggregated same http requests, e.g. a keyword search on "iPod." Compared with previous load balancing solution, this one is more intelligent and could conduct global load balancing.

Anyway, it seems Pronto is experiencing fast growth and felt the needs to increase its system scalability.

Measuring the satisfaction of comparison-shoppers

Recently, Foresee Results, a consulting company founded by Professor Claes Fornell from University of Michigan, was engaged into the measurement of the ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) for Shopping.com and eBay.com users.According to ForeSee Results, customer satisfaction could be used to reflect changes in company revenue, stock price, etc. It seems some statistics method like SEC (Structural Equational Modeling) is used to establish the relationship among them.

According to TC: "mySupermarket, which has been around since 2006, claims to be the first comparison service that allows users to compare a cart of multiple items across retailers—in its case, groceries, across British supermarket chains Tesco, Sainsbury’s Ocado & ASDA."

In addition, top online grocery sites are:

Alice.com: consumer oriented personal shopper, could help find best deals for groceries including coupon and free shipping deals.
Amazon.com: offer a wide range of groceries, subscription for regularly delivery is free
MySupermarket.co.uk: UK-based comparison shopping
Freshdirect.com: mainly for New York metro, food from local farms and dairies, organic.
Netgrocer.com: has been in this category for a long time, mainly for health and beauty, organic food, babyfood, delivers to APO/FPO (military) addresses
AllSuperStore.com: offer standard grocery store items
ShopFoodEx.com: bulk order, large inventory, seasonal specials
ExpatExpress.com: specializing on oversea delivery
GoBioFood.com: organic and high quality food
Safeway.com: cover many US areas because of its physical presence