ShopParadiso – A Site To Help You Shop Better

Thanks for reviewing the site.

1) @SGEntrepreneurs:- One of the early problems encountered with the site is that listings do not get updated when the product is no longer found on an external site.
@ShopParadiso:- There are two ways a shopping search engine can generate data. Option one (A) is to have the participating merchants provide data in a pre-defined format. The second option (B) is to crawl websites and scrape the required information like price, product name etc.

Of the above, Option one (A) is the best to handle price change and product not available issues. It is because merchants would ensure an updated version is provided whenever there is a variation in product price or a listed product is no longer available for sale. In US and other countries, search engines use merchant feeds to provide information.

We use Option two (B), to generate data for our site. The problem with this approach is a product spidered at 10AM could be removed at 10.10 AM. Since this is a new service, it will take some time to persuade merchants to provide data. Till such time there will be issues like this.


2) @SGEntrepreneurs:- Based on a casual perusal of the sites linked to, another problem with the site is that most of the stores listed probably would not give a potential customer any sort of confidence.
@ShopParadiso:- This is why we have provided, contact details of merchants in the product copy page. Customers before proceeding to the merchant site should check and verify the information provided. Anyway we will review all sites and add a Warning Note below the merchant listing, if contact information is not provided.


3) @SGEntrepreneurs:- Missing - comparison of product specifications, features and accessories for each store’s offering of a product.
@ShopParadiso:- Search engines from matured markets like US, Europe etc provide all these services. But an important point is when the first shopping engines started appearing (e.g. pricegrabber.com and many such sites) in the late 90s, they were dependent on spidering the websites directly and were only providing price comparison features. They all had these issues stated above. Once market started to mature i.e. investment and users started to flow in, these sites were able to provide more services like product feature comparison etc.

Our market is pretty much like the late 90s in US (this does not mean we will experience similar growth in the next ten years). First we wanted to concentrate on price comparison, as there are lots of pure vertical sites like GSM Arena available where users normally head for product study, product feature comparison etc. This is the reason behind, we not starting with the ability to compare product features etc. Another issue is it is a huge maintenance task. But surely we will address these issues in the near future.



4) @SGEntrepreneurs:- Frankly speaking, I wonder if there is still a need for mega-aggregation sites like ShopParadiso which try to cover all product categories?
@ShopParadiso:- You would have found very few sub-categories under Gifts, Books, Apparels etc. Though there is lot of scope to include such categories, we have not included sites that exclusively deal in gifts, apparel etc (except for one Singapore based site). These sites are quite popular too. But we have made a conscious decision to stay away from such sites and concentrate only on Electronics, Computers, Big/Small Appliances etc. Whatever little we have covered under gifts, apparels etc is because a few sites that we scrape data for electronics and appliances, also deal in gifts, apparels etc.


5) @MalaysiaCrunch:- it does not even crawl those established e-commerce sites in Malaysia.
@ShopParadiso:- One reason might be because many sites in Singapore and Malaysia are not search-engine friendly. But we keep adding sites to our list and maybe the sites that you have in mind could be found in the next release.


6) @MalaysiaCrunch:- Design of the site.
@ShopParadiso:- We are reworking on the design. The site has become cluttered in the last 2-3 months. The issue should be addressed shortly.


7) @Marshall:- Full of ads, doesn’t have images for anything
@ShopParadiso:- We are reworking on the design. But one issue we have found with many sites are they are not search-engine friendly or they do not provide access to images directory (in such cases we will not be able to do much). More images will also be provided, where possible.

Thanks,
Barry

Looks like they are still not quite ready to launch.

The concept is solid. If they do it right then there is definitely room for it in the marketplace (like pretty much anything).

However, at the moment it's full of ads, doesn't have images for anything, is slow and is missing a lot of stores.

Maybe in a month or two it will be ready for another look but first impressions last.

I think price comparison engine is pivotal for e-commerce growth in a certain market. ShopParadiso claims to be the first one in Singapore and Malaysia. I am not so sure whether it is in Singapore, but it seems not ready to be a truly first one in Malaysia.

Design aside, it does not even crawl those established e-commerce sites in Malaysia. It is just plain wrong to launch a service publicly when it is not ready, first impression does matter.

I guess it is alright to cover (almost) all product categories, but by phases basis. Make sure you are good in a certain vertical, then progress from there.

I have just posted an article regarding price comparison service last week, feel free to check it out:
http://malaysiacrunch.blogspot.com/2009/05/pric...