A guide to the world of price comparison sites
As a webshop owner, you're making a huge mistake if you don't use this tool!
Used well, these sites can be one of your best-converting channels, and a significant percentage of your revenue can come from here.
But which one should you choose from all the options?
What are price comparison sites?
Price comparison sites don't have their own products; they list the products of partner webshops. When looking for a given product, potential buyers can compare the prices of the companies selling it, the warranty they offer, the delivery time, and so on.
The best-known Hungarian examples are Árukereső, eMag, Alza and Árgép.
On top of the basic price comparison function, depending on the site, as a webshop you can bid to appear in a more advantageous position among the search results, and they offer other ways to stand out from your competitors too. Beyond that, through their partner programs they can also run Google Shopping ads for your products.
That gives your potential buyers even more opportunities to come across your products.
The types of price comparison sites
Classic
- You'll find products from a wide range of different categories on them.
- Sites like this include Árgép and Árukereső.
Themed
- They focus specifically on one or two product categories.
- Good examples are Favi, Glami and Shopalike.
Alternative
- Typically IT devices; beyond price, they compare the individual offers by other criteria too, and they even round up the last remaining units of certain products
- This group includes olcsobbat.hu, kirakat.hu and depo.hu.
Online marketplaces
- These aren't classic price comparison sites, but they have that function too. Alongside their own products, they also offer partner companies' products, which can be bought specifically through them.
- The best known are eMag, Extreme Digital and Amazon.
Google Shopping
- Not specifically a price comparison site, but it works in a similar way.
Read on for more information about each of the sites!
Classic price comparison sites
Árukereső
It has enormous traffic, with 20 million users a month. You'll find products from any product category here.
The products don't appear sorted (only) by price; at the top of the results list the paid placements take priority, and you can bid on these. You can also stand out from your competitors with a Reliable Store badge.
They also take on running Google Shopping campaigns for your products. What's more, Árukereső Marketplace makes it possible to add products to the cart and buy them right on the site, which speeds up and simplifies the purchase process.
Árgép
Unlike Árukereső, there are no paid placement or CPC bidding options here; products appear sorted strictly by price. The reviews your products receive can mean extra visibility on their homepage. On the product pages, a price chart shows the prices over the recent period.
It attracts an average of 3 million visitors a month, but you'll find almost as many products on it as on Árukereső. Products from any product category can be found on the site, and among these electronics and household appliances are the most numerous.
They also run Google Shopping campaigns in 19 countries.
Themed price comparison sites
Favi
A site focused on home decor and furniture, offering shoppers plenty of filtering options for their search, such as color, size or even style. It's also present in Romania, Slovakia, Croatia and Poland.
Glami
A fashion-focused site, primarily with female visitors. As with Favi, users here have plenty of filtering options at their disposal, such as size, brand, style and season, and they can even filter for the offers of specific stores. It's present in 18 countries, including Germany, France and Italy.
Shopalike
A site specializing in the fashion, household, home decor and beauty categories, with an average of 1 million visitors a month. They put a strong emphasis on content marketing too, steering their visitors to the site with blog posts. Here as well you can bid for a better position. Their Shopping ads appear in 13 countries, and you can run product ads within the site too.
Alternative price comparison sites
Olcsóbbat.hu
Primarily a comparison site for electronic devices, with an average of half a million visitors a month, but you'll find products in other categories on it too. You can bid for better positions, and instead of CPC there's also the option of a commission-based partnership. The products advertised here are added to Kirakat.hu as well. It can be effective even with fewer products, even as few as ten.
They work with a dedicated team of Google Shopping experts on running your Shopping campaigns. The product feed built for Árukereső/Árgép works well for it, as does Google's own. They make any necessary changes to your feed themselves.
Depo
Hungary's first price comparison site, with 3.6 million products from 520 retailers. You'll find electronics and household devices, cosmetics and health products, clothes, office supplies, food and even adult toys here. They also run Google Shopping campaigns for your products.
Appearing on the site is free; after clicks you pay a fixed fee.
Online marketplaces
These aren't classic price comparison sites, since they don't just list partner products but sell them, but they're worth covering, because you can buy the same product from several partner companies through them, so they have a price comparison function too.
eMag & Extreme Digital
The main profile of eMag (and Edigital, which recently merged into eMag) is electronic devices. Beyond that it offers clothing, sports equipment, books and office supplies, but also toys, cosmetics and even food. It's visited by 6 million people a month and is present on the Romanian and Bulgarian markets too.
Amazon
Last year the news came that this internationally well-known company would soon be arriving in Hungary too. It's not yet known when the Hungarian Amazon will launch, but within a few years it could substantially reshape the domestic e-commerce market. For now, it's worth using to reach Western European buyers.
Google Shopping
For a while now, alongside the usual results in Google searches, the search engine has also been listing product results with images and prices, where users can compare the different offers, just like on a price comparison site. Many users don't even search any further after that, but choose from the products displayed here.
One advantage of several price comparison sites is that they also run Google Shopping ads for your products, so those can appear here too.
Why it's a huge mistake not to use them
Users visit price comparison sites specifically with purchase intent, which is why they can have an exceptionally high conversion rate. Used properly, in some cases you can even achieve a 40% increase in revenue with them. On top of that, we're talking about a market that's constantly developing, and international trends show that these sites have great room for growth ahead of them.
It would be a mistake to let an opportunity this big go to waste.
What if my products aren't the cheapest on the market?
As the examples above show, not every site defaults to sorting by price; by buying paid placements you can get ahead of the cheapest available products, and you can highlight your offers even more with other tools. So it can be worth being present on price comparison sites even if your products aren't the cheapest on the market. It's important, however, to choose well which sites you feature your products on, and to apply a deliberately designed strategy.
For this, it can be worth getting help from an agency that also works with price comparison sites; with their experience they can help you make sure you pick sites that genuinely match your goals and fit your company's profile best, and that with the right strategy you can truly and effectively tap into the power of this valuable marketing tool.
Here's what to keep in mind
To effectively tap into the advantages of price comparison sites, it's important that everything is set up well, that the product feed is managed and monitored properly, and that the bids are set correctly. You have plenty of optimization options at your disposal, which are worth digging into more deeply, but as an agency with broad experience, we can help you with that too.