I spent the past year creating Price Hipster, a product search engine and price watching website for the OzBargain community!

Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 11:45
Last edited 13/11/2015 - 12:45

Update 13/11/15: Thanks everyone for the support and feedback! I realise there are heaps of comments here and no one wants to read through them all. If you have a suggestion, it has probably already been raised. I'm currently working on a big update and I'll be sure to let you all know when I release it. I'll be keen to get further feedback and suggestions then. :-)

Hi fellow OzBargainers!

I've spent the past year creating a powerful tool for you all.

https://www.pricehipster.com.au/

These are the reasons I created Price Hipster:

  1. Searching for products across multiple stores is painful. Sometimes you don't even know which stores to check for a product. Wouldn't it be great to conveniently search all stores from one place?

  2. Even if you want to find a product in one particular store, most store websites are very bad at searching their own products, and they're slow at it.

  3. There is no convenient way to find out the previous prices of products, making it difficult to hold vendors accountable for false claims of discounts. Some products vary wildly in price. Some change price nearly every day. For example:

https://www.pricehipster.com.au/product?id=NJNmxsZ3k5n

I really appreciate those OzBargainers who have taken the time to use internet archives to dig up previous prices, but it's less than ideal, and hopefully will now be a thing of the past!

Price Hipster currently includes 5 websites in its index. That will expand in the near future.

Questions for you all:

  1. Which stores should be added next?

  2. OzBargainers in Western Australia, how is the search latency for you? The search servers are in Sydney. I live in Brisbane and the search is pretty much instantaneous here.

If you find any issues with the website or have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

General Discussion

Related Stores

Price Hipster
Price Hipster

Comments

  • holdenmg on 01/11/2015 - 11:52
    +2

    How does your site compare to http://www.lasoo.com.au/home.html

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 11:56
      +55

      1. Much faster search.

      2. Cleaner.

      3. Price history data.

      4. Daily email of biggest discounts (I don't know if Lasoo does this. Maybe they do).

      5. Many more features incoming, like price drop notifications.

      6. Indexes ALL products, not just those in catalogues.

        • frondono on 01/11/2015 - 16:30

          price alerts on products too

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 17:15
          +103

          Cool. Don't subscribe.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 17:16
          +2

          @frondono: Don't set up any price alerts then?

        • frondono on 01/11/2015 - 17:51

          @jazoom: I didn't read that last part properly. I meant price alerts on products would be handy, but I see you already have this planned

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 17:55

          @frondono: Ah, I understand now. :-)

        • johnno07 on 02/11/2015 - 12:23
          +19

          @frondono:

          I didn't read that last part properly anything.

          FTFY.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/12/2015 - 16:52

        Just updating, that now price-drop notifications are implemented, along with many other improvements. More info here.

    • supersabroso on 02/11/2015 - 22:56

      It seems that jazoom's website is much more relevant for us as the consumer. This is extremely useful for price cycles and local stores that we can go to. I'd much rather buy a phone that's 20% off at a local store than somewhere online with no physical store.

      Yes, please expand, and two, can you add a date scale on the x axis (currently blank). Furthermore, seems like there's a bug, eg. Samsung Galaxy Note Edge - Charcoal Black; it doesn't show when and how far under $1000 it was as the y-axis isn't properly scaled. This is like camelcamelcamel except for much more than just amazon.

      If there was an option to plus this, I'd definitely do it.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 03/11/2015 - 15:51

        Hey, I'm guessing you're using Firefox? There's a bug with the graph at the moment. It's not supposed to be missing the bottom bit.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 04/11/2015 - 18:17

        The chart should be fixed now.

  • wanga1983 on 01/11/2015 - 12:03

    Looks good, will give it a go. How are you monetising (or planning to)? Advertising, PPC, Donations, Subscriptions?

    Good luck with the venture!

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 12:20
      +9

      Thanks!

      I'm not terribly concerned with monetisation for the time being, but the plan is to allow some vendors to advertise genuine deals among the initial products that load.

  • Axelstrife on 01/11/2015 - 12:20
    +10

    I love the design and speed but 5 stores is extremely small and currently useless to be useful.

    Which stores should be added next?

    Answer: every single one you can find.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 12:21
      +8

      Yes, certainly, but it's just released today dude. Which ones first?

      • Axelstrife on 01/11/2015 - 12:26
        +20

        officeworks
        big w
        kmart
        eb games
        masters
        bunnings
        the good guys
        retravision
        applianceonline

        just to name a few.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 12:28
          +10

          Thanks. They're on the list. I'll add the most popular ones first.

        • Axelstrife on 01/11/2015 - 12:29
          +6

          @jazoom: cool
          good luck i really do love the speed when searching very fast.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 12:30

          @holden93: Thanks!

        • Adamiam on 01/11/2015 - 17:56

          @jazoom:

          Is it possible to search online stores as well? It would be useful to have some of the Ozbargain favourites.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 18:07

          @Adamiam: You can only search stores that are indexed in the database. More are coming!

        • ily on 01/11/2015 - 20:42
          +1

          @jazoom: If you can archive the main staticice ones that would probably be better. there's nothing MSY, ARC, or MWave would have more expensive than Harvey Norman.

        • exit on 01/11/2015 - 22:00
          +4

          @jazoom: Put all the cheap computer stores on staticice: msy, mwave, scorptec, pccasegear, centrecom, ple etc.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 22:32

          @shot:

          Added to the list. Thanks.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 22:32

          @ily: Added. Thanks.

        • exit on 02/11/2015 - 07:56
          +1

          @jazoom: also add cplonline.com.au, mightyape, shopping express and freeshippingtech.com.au

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/11/2015 - 16:07

          @shot: Thanks! Added.

        • AncientWisdom on 02/11/2015 - 19:42

          Also PLE (computer store)

        • exit on 04/11/2015 - 18:36

          @ory_zm: already added

        • hahaboy on 05/11/2015 - 21:41

          @jazoom: down the track, include car places like repco and autobarn?

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/12/2015 - 17:03

          @Adamiam: Hi Adamiam, just updating you that there are now 3 times as many stores indexed. More info here.

        • Adamiam on 14/12/2015 - 09:57

          @jazoom: Thanks mate, is there a list of all currently indexed stores? I'm having trouble finding it. When I search for a GTX 970 (common graphics card model), I have nothing show up, so I'm guessing you haven't added online PC parts stores?

          Cheers

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 14/12/2015 - 10:03

          @Adamiam: Correct. Not yet. To see a list just check the filters (right side of search bar). :-)

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/12/2015 - 16:53
      +1

      15 stores now :-) More info here.

      • Axelstrife on 10/12/2015 - 17:04

        Nice keeping adding more it's looking alot more usable now though.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/12/2015 - 17:05

          yep, it's starting to get useful now :)

        • Axelstrife on 10/12/2015 - 17:08

          @jazoom: couple questions/suggestions.
          Are you thinking about a mobile app? not mobile website but app?

          Have you thought about adding the latest catalogs for every store you have added that has catalogs?
          i know others do catalogs aswell but ive found none are very good.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/12/2015 - 17:10
          +1

          @holden93: Those are considerations for future me. I've still got a bit to do for the core offering.

          • ozy on 21/08/2021 - 22:41

            @jazoom: Hello future Jazoom!
            Future grass roots consideration here ;)

            • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/08/2021 - 13:07

              @ozy: Thanks for following up. Are you referring to an app? What benefit do you imagine an app would bring over the mobile website?

  • indium on 01/11/2015 - 12:20
    +19

    Great website! I've bookmarked it :)

    Just a suggestion, maybe have an advanced search option which allows sort by price and also an option to enter a price range eg. $500-$600

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 12:22
      +3

      Yup, that's already half-implemented. ;-)

      Thanks for the support!

      • [Deactivated] on 01/11/2015 - 22:34

        Also, exclude certain keywords, sort by price/price per unit (including shipping or not including shipping if pickups allowed and in the same state/within x km), and do a generic product search (eg: for example with Computer Memory, filter with - DDR3, 1.5v, non-ECC, 1600mhz PC-12800, 240-pin DIMM)

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 22:37
          +5

          Whoa, now you're stretching it! :-P

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 10/12/2015 - 16:53
      +1

      price-range and store filters are now implemented :-) More info here.

      • indium on 10/12/2015 - 18:17

        Legend! Will check it out :)

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/02/2016 - 09:37

          Update for you: You can now enter a custom price range and change the sorting. :-)

  • Diji1 on 01/11/2015 - 12:36
    +3

    Heh, I was tossing this very idea/concept for a site around in my head - so terrible idea mate, please stop it. Joking, all the best and if you do it right great idea ;)

    Also catchy name but it might get too mainstream and people will hear about it :D

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 12:48

      Did you have any ideas about this concept I haven't thought of yet? ;-)

  • rainbow612 on 01/11/2015 - 12:36
    +1

    It's a great idea! I like it a lot

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 12:48

      Thanks :)

  • GordonR on 01/11/2015 - 12:54

    Just out of interest, how do you make this sort of tool?

    Presumably these places don't provide an API to accommodate price lookup, so I assume that you'd have to find some way to automatically parse pages and then extract the correct fields?

    (I'm not about to make a competing one, just interested in roughly how it's done)

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 12:56

      It's roughly done the same way Google or any other search engine gets their data. It's known as crawling or web scraping.

      • blighst on 01/11/2015 - 22:54
        +2

        Just curious I know lasoo have agreements in place with the stores. Is web scraping off these sites a breach of their TOS or is it legal?

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 22:56
          +13

          Price Hipster is a search engine. If it was illegal then Google would not operate in Australia.

          If stores don't want their data indexed I'll take them out, but a store would be pretty dumb to request less visibility and less traffic. I don't think shareholders would appreciate that move.

        • ckc on 02/11/2015 - 14:12
          +6

          @jazoom:
          I took one of your 5 indexed sites (JB Hi-Fi) and skim-read their Terms of Use which directly contradicts your position (and is what I think @blighst was getting at):

          Copyright
          This website and its contents are subject to copyright. The copyright is owned by JB Hi-Fi, or in the case of some material, third parties.
          You may view this website and its contents using your web browser and electronically copy and print hard copies of parts of this website and its contents for personal, non-commercial use. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) or similar statutes that apply in your location, any other use (including any adaptation, reproduction, broadcast, decompiling, disassembling, downloading, copying, storage, distribution, transmission, printing, display, publication or creation of derivative works) of any part of this website is prohibited.

          So perhaps not illegal but you are at least in breach of JB's stated "Terms of Use" and I'd be very surprised if it's not the same or similar for all of the sites you've indexed thus far.

          You might get away with this if you really are doing this "for the greater good" in that you will (probably) fly under the big corporation's radar. But if you ever do monetise the site (especially if it gains significant popularity) I reckon you'd best investigate the legality of your site and proposed business model.

        • blighst on 02/11/2015 - 16:13

          @jazoom: Yeah but with a robots.txt file webmasters can choose not to be scraped. As @ckc said JB Hi-Fi does not permit this so probably something to look into.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/11/2015 - 16:13
          +3

          @ckc: Yeah, I wouldn't want to make a profitable search engine. That didn't seem to work out too well for Google.

          I'm not selling anything. All I'm doing is sending people their way.

        • blighst on 02/11/2015 - 16:15

          @jazoom: Anyways nice website - what's the backend written in?

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/11/2015 - 16:16
          +3

          @blighst:

          This is their robots.txt:

          User-agent: *
          Disallow: /Static/*
          Disallow: /Products/Product-Detail/AddedToCart/
          Disallow: /My-Account/
          Disallow: /Search/results/
          Disallow: /Stores/Store-Finder/?Initialparams*
          Disallow: /aspxerrorpath=
          Disallow: /productid=
          Disallow: /ReturnUrl=
          Disallow: /refferer=
          Disallow: /id=
          Disallow: /keywords=
          Disallow: /initalparams=
          sitemap: https://www.jbhifi.com.au/sitemap.xml

          Where does it say they don't want their products indexed?

          In fact, they provide a sitemap to all their products to aide indexing.

        • Typical16-bitEnjoyer on 02/11/2015 - 17:53
          +3

          @ckc:

          Yeah nah. If JB were to sue (which they wouldnt) they would need to establish a loss they're suffered.

          I don't see how sending more customers JB's way would cause a measurable loss, probably more sales!

        • ckc on 02/11/2015 - 20:43
          +1

          @zeggie:
          Sue? Unlikely.

          Cease and Desist? More likely (in my non-lawyer opinion).

          My assumption is that the bigger stores aren't interested in a race-to-the-bottom with ever-slimming margins against online retailers with truly cut-throat operations. They want to control their own messaging, and heavily discount when it suits (e.g. used volume to secure greatly reduced wholesale) and still make a healthy profit on their "regular" items.

          I could be wrong

          And OP: I don't reckon they are "against indexing" per se. I just reckon you are (probably) in violation of their terms. Read it again and explain to me how your use is "personal" and doesn't involve "copying", "transmission", "distribution" and/or "displaying" of their proprietary data?

          But I'm reasonably sure we could go a few more rounds and not agree on this point :-)

          I do have a suggestion: why not ask them?
          If you are confident you aren't in breach then get in contact (email or letter) and get in writing they are on board. Then I'll be able to sleep at night knowing you have covered your arse!

        • blighst on 02/11/2015 - 20:53

          @zeggie: Measurable loss perhaps from the increased web traffic they experienced from the scraping. Going out on a limb but could hold up.

        • ckc on 02/11/2015 - 21:02
          +1

          @jazoom:
          Google make (most of) their money from advertising.

          You already said in this comment that you were considering monteising by advertising.

          That means you are planning on selling advertising. Or have I missed something?

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/11/2015 - 21:50

          @blighst: It costs peanuts to serve even large traffic nowadays.

        • Typical16-bitEnjoyer on 04/11/2015 - 07:55

          @ckc:

          Ceast and desist? Yeah nah.

          Wouldnt Ozbargain with 10000x more traffic be a target first?

          Your non-lawyer thinking missed the important factor. What are the potential rewards? A website run by one guy? Not much there.

          JBs outsourced legal probably charge $250 just to send a C&D.

        • AncientWisdom on 04/11/2015 - 11:30

          @zeggie: Yeah I'd be more worried about actively blocking his crawlers then legal action.

        • nowlan on 04/11/2015 - 12:43

          @zeggie:
          I looked at the headers, and all the images are hotlinked, which might annoy webmasters, who still pay for traffic. If he kept local copies, he might have copyright issues.

        • SirFlibbled on 05/11/2015 - 15:02

          @blighst: I once wrote an opinion for a client on the legality of web scraping (a few years ago now). To summarise about 20 pages of legalese, we were of the opinion that it was actionable as a trespass to chatels - ie the trespass was on the servers that they were accessing.

          There has even been a few successful suits in the US on this exact topics (one was regarding Ebay and an auction sniping service). So it's possible.

          Ultimately, before a law suit there would be a C&D. As long as the OP has a policy of removing stores that request it he should be ok. Some might but I doubt most will care.

  • leiiv on 01/11/2015 - 13:02
    +1

    There has been several price tracking sites mentioned here in ozb. I have never heard of any them again recently so I assume they were all gone now. Anyone knows what happened?

    • zhenjie on 01/11/2015 - 19:11
      +1

      Upkeep and monetization is generally not as expected

      • Gecko on 02/11/2015 - 10:04
        +19

        100% this.

        AUS Retailers don't see it the way the US Retailers do. We were threatened several times by big retailers. They don't see that the people you're referring to their site as highly-relevant traffic (they're going to the retailers site to look at an item that you've shown them is good value).

        In fact, whilst running one of these sites, I had to maintain an active proxy list to get passed lifetime IP bans placed by the big retailers of the country.

        The amount of traffic I was pulling through in a night for the 15 or so retailers I was tracking was in the 10's of GBs. We had to come up with an algorithm that only checked items that changed frequently, and that still only brought it down to 4-5 GB in a night. And this took a long time, at 100% CPU and about 32GB of RAM completely maxed out, we're talking 10-12 hours to get all the information necessary.

        In the end we sold all of our algorithms and site database to a company. We ditched the user database as per our privacy policy and moved away completely from price tracking, there is just no money in it if retailers aren't willing to play ball by offering a price feed.

        Good luck out there mate, you can choose to take on board some of this or find a nicer way to implement it all.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/11/2015 - 20:42
          +2

          Thanks for the info. I really appreciate you sharing your experience!

        • blighst on 02/11/2015 - 20:54

          You mind sharing which company you sold the algorithms to?

        • Gecko on 03/11/2015 - 00:58

          @blighst:

          Unfortunately I'm not in a position to share that. It wasn't a large amount and didn't recoup anywhere near what we spent on the site ;)

        • galapogos01 on 04/11/2015 - 12:13

          Some retailers offer a price feed for Google to get their items listed on Google Shopping.

          Find this feed URL and you have all of the products they list in one handy XML feed…

      • damnscenekids on 03/11/2015 - 03:21

        Not to mention the cease and desist letters from the big retailers I'm sure we never hear about.

    • savexyz on 05/11/2015 - 08:09

      There was a really good one with price tracking feature
      https://www.poachit.com/
      http://www.wired.com/2014/08/poachit/

      but seems to be closed too now :(

  • Forenti on 01/11/2015 - 13:35
    +5

    Good idea, nice website - great work!

    Just with the price history graphs, maybe make it so that when you hover over a date it will give you an exact price? (Very) slightly inconvenient going across and having to approximate the price it was on a date.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 14:13

      Thanks for the feedback. I'll add that to my to do list.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/02/2016 - 09:39
      +1

      Hi Forenti, just updating you that the graph feature you requested has now been implemented. Sorry, I did it several weeks ago but I forgot to get back to you.

      • Forenti on 11/02/2016 - 12:29

        Looks really good now - nice job!

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/02/2016 - 13:35

          Thanks :-)

  • rgr on 01/11/2015 - 13:40

    hey jazoom,

    I'm really interested in the dev stack you're using. Feel free to send me a PM. Are you using a cache mechanism to get the fast search happening?

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 01/11/2015 - 14:16
      +1

      My stack is actually pretty lean. I've spent a lot of effort to minimise dependencies, do things efficiently and keep everything as lean as possible (the whole site loads with only 125kb down the wire). I'll send you a PM with more info.

      • bdubba on 02/11/2015 - 16:09

        Hey, would you be able to send me that info as well? Thats some really nice optimisation you have going.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/11/2015 - 16:19

          Sure.

          Update: Actually, I can't send you a PM for some reason. Why would that be?

          Send me one.

        • AncientWisdom on 02/11/2015 - 19:46
          +1

          @jazoom: Probably has PMs disabled.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 02/11/2015 - 20:43
          +1

          @ory_zm: Thanks. I don't know why I didn't think of that. Maybe cos he asked me to PM him lol.

      • mozface on 13/03/2016 - 18:26

        Hey jazoom, love the site! Was really surprised at how fast the search is. If you don't mind, could you PM me some info about your tech stack too?

    • itsmemeow on 03/11/2015 - 12:18
      +5

      The implementation looks like:

      • algolia (for search)
      • react (interface and model)
      • cloudflare w/ rocketloader for caching/inlining assets such as JS

      Further the product images are actually stored on the content provider (aka woolworths).

      So really the main work is writing crawlers that parse and build an algolia index which includes historical pricing data.

      A great example of using SaaS.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 05/11/2015 - 09:24
        +1

        Actually, I inline my own schtuff. Lucky, since I had to abandon Rocket Loader due to it causing issues. You'll be pleased to know that the site loads just as quickly without it.

        • vasus on 11/03/2016 - 11:52

          Hi Zazoom,

          I am really impressed with quick search results from this awesome site.
          I have little curiosity to find the way you implemented
          1. When user search for a product, are you directly hitting the sites for search or fetching form pricehipster DB?
          2. How frequently are you using crawling to query data and fetching into DB?
          3. Did you used node.js to implement the crawling or any third party tools used?
          4. I believe, you were maintaining database to store all the information daily which will help for trend graphs( for price comparison)

          Sorry for too many questions.. but your response will really helpful for me.

        • matt_will_fix_it on 11/03/2016 - 12:24

          @vasus:

          Your post comes across like you are someone from one of the sites been crawled and want to find out more info so you can stop it.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/03/2016 - 13:12

          @matt_will_fix_it: I can't imagine anyone wanting to stop it since I provide quite a lot of traffic to them. I'd think it's more likely someone wanting to do something similar themselves.

        • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 11/03/2016 - 13:20
          +1

          @vasus: Hi Vasus,

          1. Searches go directly to my database, otherwise the searches would be slow and the results poor.

          2. Many times per day.

          3. Yes. I designed my own crawler in NodeJS.

          4. True.

        • vasus on 11/03/2016 - 14:06

          @jazoom: Thanks a lot Jazoom..

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