Get more traffic, attract potential buyers and increase sales: An additional listing of your offers on a price comparison website makes exactly that possible. On price comparison portals, the items of various merchants are presented sorted by price – your offers can also become part of a price comparison. To list offers on such a platform, merchants must submit them first to the respective platform via a data feed.
For many (online) merchants, the use of price comparison portals is an elementary part of their sales strategy. You too can use a price comparison as an additional marketing channel, so that your offers can be presented to a larger number of online shoppers via another channel in addition to your own website. This way, you as a merchant can reach even more potential buyers during their search for specific products.
Online shoppers use price comparisons to find out about specific products and their associated prices, delivery times and suppliers. Since the process of getting informed can be very time-consuming, many are glad that price comparison platforms facilitate precisely this search for them and support them with the right information in the decision-making process.
Good price comparison platforms make the search as easy and pleasant as possible for potential buyers. Online shoppers can use various search functions to identify the winning supplier of their product.
In addition to product images and variants, the potential buyer receives concrete information on the price for all offers listed in the price comparison. In many cases, possible payment methods in the merchant’s shop, the exact delivery date of his desired product and the customer ratings from all shops are also displayed. As a result, the potential buyer can now select his favourite from the comparative overview.
SUMMARY
1. Potential buyers love convenience
As a merchant you should be aware that online shoppers want to find the best supplier of their desired product as easily as possible. Many online shoppers use price comparisons for this reason. Here they can quickly and clearly inform themselves about certain products and their prices. Many start the information process without already having a specific supplier in mind.
By searching via price comparisons, almost every offer has the same chance of being selected for purchase by online shoppers – including your offers. You should not miss out on these potential buyers either.
In addition to the price of your product, you should also make sure that you are remembered by your potential buyers, for example, through punctual delivery with a positive shopping experience. This includes, for example, providing delivery times that you as a merchant can meet.
Important to mention at this point: Even if you offer your deals on another platform besides your own website, you still handle the shipping of your products yourself.
2. How does the listing of offers on price comparison website work?
You can easily list your products on a price comparison site. To do this, the first step is to choose a price comparison of your preference and register. Next, you submit your offers to the platform. There are various options, most of them are platform dependent. Then, your offers are automatically sorted into the offer page of the respective price comparison website. The sorting is based on the lowest price. As soon as your offers are online, online shoppers have the chance to order their desired product directly in your shop via a button.
But the price is not always the only decisive factor for the purchase. For many potential buyers, the payment methods offered in the merchant’s online shop, the availability and delivery time of a product, the product photos shown, and the services associated with the offer also have an influence on the purchase decision. So always try to present yourself and your offers in the best possible way to potential buyers.
3. What you should consider when using price comparison pages
There are a few things to consider before listing on a price comparison site. Firstly, you should ask yourself whether a listing of your offers as part of price comparison is suitable at all. One of the prerequisites is that your shop is an online shop. Furthermore, your product range should contain physical products. These products should be “comparable”. In addition, a listing in the price comparison is usually only worthwhile if your products are relevant to potential buyers and at the same time you do not offer too expensive compared to the competitors.
Once you have made the decision to list in a price comparison website, we recommend a test phase of about three months. During this phase, you can use a small selection of products to analyse various price comparisons in terms of the performance you have achieved with them. Test the different price comparisons for user-friendliness, range, the terms of the contract and the costs that you have to incur. Also pay attention to special features such as any connection fees or a required minimum monthly turnover.
💡 Important to know: Price comparisons finance themselves via different models. You should consider which model works best for you here. Used quite often is the “pay per click” model, where you as a merchant only pay when an online shopper using the price comparison website is interested in your offer, i.e., clicks on your offer. Less frequently used models are “sales commission” or “revenue share” models. Depending on the product category, a different model or even a combination of models may make sense for merchants.
4. Using feed management software to submit your offers in a relaxed way
If you as a shop would like to list your offers on other portals, such as a price comparison, in addition to selling via the website, then the necessary offer data must be transmitted to the respective portals in a first step. The required data includes, for example, the brand of the offer, the product category, an item description, the price and the delivery time.
It is your decision whether you transmit the data manually or automatically to the platform. However, you can reduce your workload and thus maximize profits if you make use of feed management software. In addition to importing and exporting data, feed management systems can handle the modification, analysis and monitoring of data for online shops. For example, once formatted, data can be automatically posted to different price comparison portals via a tool.
As a merchant, you can choose from many tool providers with different features. You may also already be using software that allows you to transfer data to platforms. Find out which software provider would be suitable for you, or which advantages the software you use already offers you.
Product feed management systems as BeezUP relieve merchants of work so that time resources can be used elsewhere. In addition, the tools ensure a high quality of data, because feed management systems check your data for completeness and ensure that data records are always up to date. As soon as an offer from your shop is sold, the stock level is also automatically adjusted on all portals. In addition, each tool comes with certain additional functions. These can be, for example, analyses to improve your success. When choosing the appropriate feed management software, make sure that the provider also supports the price comparison website you have selected. In addition, you should keep an eye on the features offered, the costs, the user-friendliness and the customer support. As a merchant, you alone decide which price comparison suits you and your offers.
5. Every price comparison has its special features
At this point, we would like to introduce idealo as one of the leading price comparison platforms. In addition to idealo shopping, there are also price comparisons for hotels and flights. The price comparison portal, which was tested by TÜV Saarland in 2022, offers (online) shops the opportunity to present their offers to a large target group on idealo.de in addition to their own website. Merchants could list their offers in 10 categories. Costs are only incurred when a potential buyer clicks on the listed offer.
The special features of idealo include, for example, the personal merchant area idealo Business, which provides merchants with insights into their listing in the price comparison and the possibility of including coupons in the price comparison, so that the offers of the competition can be undercut at short notice.
Do you want more traffic for your offers? Then a listing in price comparison website is exactly the right marketing channel for you, because with price comparisons you can reach potential buyers with high purchase intentions at low cost. The connection to a platform like idealo is in most cases risk-free and easy for merchants to equal. So, just follow a few tips for using price comparisons successfully.
Kristin Paul
Kristin Paul has been working at idealo since 2022. She is working in the B2B Marketing department.
About idealo
idealo internet GmbH is one of Europe’s leading price comparisons with over one million visitors per month in the UK Market, and more than 70 million site visits per month in all idealo countries, making us the price expert in online commerce. On idealo in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain and UK, consumers can compare up to 400 million offers from over 50,000 merchants. As one of the biggest brands in e-commerce in Europe, we stand for transparency and fair competition in online shopping.