Hi there,
I came accross this web site while doing a google search for "Price comparisson Scripts"
So far, what I know about price comparisson is that it requires co-operation from the individual players in the particular market that you wish to provide a price comparitive portal for.
With regars to this question I have a fe questions to ask:
1.Is it possible to implement a price comparitive portal with out the co-operation from the individual stores?
ie. I doubt that the companies for which I am going to provide price comparissons for will actually give me access to their webservices and/or databases.
Following on from this......
2. What are the legal/ethical implications of doing this with out the consent of the stores under scrutiny?
Thanking you in advance
Wesley
Hi Wesley,
If you are planning to create your own data feeds for each merchant then i'm sure the script will work for you. In fact, you could argue that this is infact easier than working with affiliate datafeeds because you are are in control of the product name (which is all that Price Tapestry matches on) and so you can guarantee that it will give you a good comparison.
The files you would need to create (one per merchant) would need to contain the mandatory fields of Product Name, Buy URL and Price. You can also provide a description and an image URL.
To create the files, you could use a spreadsheet program such as Excel, and then save them in CSV format (using the Export function) which you can then import into Price Tapestry through the admin area.
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
David.
Hi Wesley,
It sounds like you're interested in working with stores which do not have an affiliate program, which is not really what Price Tapestry is about. In answer to your questions;
1)
Price Tapestry is a basic datafeed to website script that has the added benefit of being able to offer a simple price comparison function where merchants happen to use the same product name. The datafeeds would normally come from affiliate networks (i.e. Commission Junction, Trade Doubler etc.) or occasionally from the merchant directly.
2)
In terms of the legal aspects of using affiliate datafeeds; all merchants have their own terms and conditions of participation in their program, and therefore if they did not want their data used on Price Comparison sites they have every opportunity to say so (just like they often limit the use of PPC advertising). This does not apply in the case of using data from stores without an affiliate program (with official data provided through that program) - so I'm afraid I cannot comment at all on that situation.
Hope this helps,
Regards,
David.