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

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Price Hipster

Comments

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 14:55
            +1

            @Hotpotcorn: @Maki: Thanks Maki. The problem with that is I want all stores to be indexed and I don't want there to be any barriers in their way. Keeping stores out of the index because they won't give me a referral bonus would be unfortunate.

            As long as more and more people keep using the site I'm pretty sure I can make it profitable. Just probably not like that.

    • sircrumpet on 22/02/2016 - 12:06

      Looking great, and loving the updates.

      I agree that some support for model numbers would make a huge difference, especially when setting up price alerts for products that everyone seems to name ever so slightly differently.

      Any immediate plans for supporting new stores, by the way? It'd be great to see Appliances Online up there.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 16:13

        After tidying up a few things I think my next project will be putting things in place to quickly scale up the number of stores indexed. :)

    • BillyZ93 on 22/02/2016 - 18:28

      I use it often. Get's a bit dicey to use on my iPhone but all in all, pretty bloody great.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 19:12

        Do you mean the performance is not good on your iPhone (which one?) or do you mean there are bugs?

        • BillyZ93 on 22/02/2016 - 19:33

          Performance is fast. Buggy is what I meant, the popup you get when you click a product isn't always centred and you're still able to scroll in the background which apparently messes with the location of said popup, sometimes making things hard to click. iOS 7.0.4 on iPhone 5 if that helps.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 20:10

            @BillyZ93: That's good to know. I don't own any iPhones so it's difficult for me to check everything works on them.

            Is that using the Safari browser? Do you get an orange message saying the browser isn't supported? Apple has been pretty shoddy with their Safari browser, not keeping it modern, etc., so it has a lot of issues that other browsers just don't.

          • BillyZ93 on 22/02/2016 - 20:15

            @BillyZ93: @jazoom: No orange message. Yes Safari but seems to be persistent to Chrome for iOS too.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 20:36

            @BillyZ93: @uwishbillyfish: Okay. I believe Apple doesn't allow other browser developers to use their own rendering engines on iOS, or something like that, so I'm not surprised you have the issue in Chrome too.

            Using this and loading Price Hipster in the Safari browser I can't reproduce your issue. I'm guessing it's because that's iOS 8.4 and you're using 7.0.4.

          • Stoz on 26/02/2016 - 00:20

            @BillyZ93: @jazoom:

            I don't own any iPhones so it's difficult for me to check everything works on them.

            This might help: https://www.pricehipster.com.au/product?id=4JrgprcnN7x

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 26/02/2016 - 02:49
            +1

            @BillyZ93: @Stoz: Oh man, those things are so expensive. I'd rather my Nexus 6P and it cost me less than half of that.

            Also, that would have a recent version of iOS so it won't have the bug. :-)

          • Stoz on 26/02/2016 - 08:02

            @BillyZ93: @jazoom:

            I'm still using my iPhone 5 due to the cost of the new ones.

            Also, there doesn't seem to be a way to link to the results of a specific search (which is what I originally tried to do for you), only the individual products.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 26/02/2016 - 08:21

            @BillyZ93: @Stoz: that's true. That's something on the to-do list.

    • kev98 on 22/02/2016 - 19:02

      Great site, thanks for your hard work!

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 22/02/2016 - 19:13

        You're welcome, kev98.

    • maxdba on 23/02/2016 - 01:29

      Search speed is great. Database is limited. For example, I search "Canon 6D", it only give me one result from JB hifi, while the same search in Getprice or Shopbot could give me more than 20 shops.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 01:36
        +4

        Yup. There are only 15 stores indexed so far. More will come.

    • gormsby on 23/02/2016 - 09:18
      +2

      I use the site all the time and find the new feature that allows sorting by biggest % discount to be a great improvement for me. I've recommended the site to many friends with positive feedback so keep up the good work!

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 09:50

        Thanks very much for spreading the word 🙂

    • jubz on 23/02/2016 - 09:31

      Jazoom, great work, using it every day to compare prices. I have advertised word of mouth to my friends. Keep the good work going…

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 09:52

        Awesome. Thanks!

    • Slippery Fish on 23/02/2016 - 09:36

      Great site, one issue. When you search for shops from low to high it will only display x amount of items then I need to do a new search… It rarely got past the $1 items before cutting me off, great site though.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 09:55

        Hi Slippery Fish, can you please give me an example?

        There will be fewer overall results because only exact matches are included when using a sort.

        • Slippery Fish on 23/02/2016 - 16:05

          I searched in multiple stores from lowest to highest price and scrolled down through alot of pages but then it stops loading new pages of items.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 16:24

            @Slippery Fish: Oh okay. If you scroll through hundreds of results it stops loading. If you are keen on a certain price range use the price range filter. It works instantly.

          • Slippery Fish on 23/02/2016 - 16:42

            @Slippery Fish: @jazoom: I was actualy just testing features for you, I like what your doing with the site. Have you considered a open entry version for small businesses to enter the product/price info them self? And then from that data base you could update their product info to site.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 17:03
            +1

            @Slippery Fish: @Slippery Fish: Yes. That's exactly what I'm working on next. :) That has always been the aim.

    • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 09:54

      meant to be a reply

    • Rodo on 23/02/2016 - 11:24

      Great site. Makes it very easy to track prices of things I buy when on special (i.e., most supermarket items).

      Anyway of removing a vote? I clicked on one of the voting arrows for an item this morning by mistake and when I clicked on the other button it did not remove the vote. It just changed the vote to the opposite one.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 15:07
        +1

        Not at the moment. You reckon I should make it if you hit the same arrow the vote is removed? I'm not sure if that's the optimum user experience or if the current behavior is.

        • Rodo on 23/02/2016 - 22:09
          +1

          How about pressing the other arrow removes the vote? e.g., if push up arrow gives +1, then press down arrow removes vote, then can press down arrow again to give -1 or up arrow again to give +1 again.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 23:38

            @Rodo: I like your idea better. I'll consider doing that. Thanks.

          • hayne on 24/02/2016 - 13:51

            @Rodo: @jazoom: Hey Jazoom - great site. I think Rodo is right and it would be good functionality to allow removal of a vote but I actually think your way is more intuitive - a pretty typical reason for a user to remove a vote is if they clicked on it by accident and didn't think it was worth upvoting. Many other websites which have voting functionality allow you to click on the "vote" to remove it so that almost becomes a user reflex. More intuitive before you literally do not have to move your mouse, you just think "oops, let me click on it again".

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/02/2016 - 16:59

            @Rodo: @hayne: Hmmm… that's a good point. It seems that is how Reddit works, and I can't argue with that.

          • scupper on 24/02/2016 - 23:44

            @Rodo: @jazoom: How about changing the graphic so once it's up/downvoted, the only option is to clear the vote?

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/02/2016 - 23:49

            @Rodo: @scupper: That is another option. Thanks for the suggestion. I want users to be able to see the vote they made, though. I actually like the idea of making it function the same as Reddit, the largest forum on the Internet.

          • OzJD on 25/02/2016 - 03:03

            @Rodo: @jazoom: green = up, red = down, and an orange horizontal bar in the middle (default). B&W if not selected. Then down would make sense to cancel the upvote.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 25/02/2016 - 05:05

            @Rodo: @OzJD: I'm trying hard not to have too many colours

          • OzJD on 26/02/2016 - 05:16

            @Rodo: @jazoom: I was just talking about a horizontal bar in the middle of the two arrows. The colors were just to indicate what was selected.

            The alternative would be to thickeb/darken the selected item

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 26/02/2016 - 07:15

            @Rodo: @OzJD: okay. Thanks heaps for the input.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 29/02/2016 - 08:13

            @Rodo: @hayne: Hi hayne, just letting you know that you can now retract votes. :-) Your feedback was very helpful.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 29/02/2016 - 08:14

            @Rodo: @scupper: Hi scupper, just letting you know that you can now retract votes. :-)

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 29/02/2016 - 08:15
            +1

            @Rodo: @OzJD: Hi OzJD, just letting you know that you can now retract votes. :-)

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 29/02/2016 - 08:12
        +1

        Hi Rodo, just letting you know that you can now retract votes. :-)

        • Rodo on 29/02/2016 - 09:36

          Thanks

    • No ONE on 23/02/2016 - 12:05

      What happens if there are some name associated with - e.g. D-link or any other. Should we not type - and will the result show accurate result?

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 15:08

        Try it. :-P

        Just don't put a space between the D and the -

        • No ONE on 23/02/2016 - 19:15

          Ok thanks. Tried and worked.

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 19:17

            @No ONE: I'm glad to hear it :-)

    • sunset_on_the_101 on 23/02/2016 - 13:34

      only occasionally this occurs (mostly with DJ's) they price their items $70-$100 (different models of same product) and we get weird results like it was $70100 and now $50-70 now $5070. just the silly way they price some items. Makes the price look interesting on the homepage.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 15:12

        I can't seem to find that product. What's it called?

      • Limitless on 24/02/2016 - 10:21

        Yep DJs is the worst. At times i feel like they price error just to get hits in their site

    • rvsure on 23/02/2016 - 14:46

      Never heard of this website before. Just had a look and am really impressed with the design and speed. It's really is easy to use compared to other price comparison websites. Great work Jazoom. You got a new subscriber :)

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 15:15

        Awesome! Thanks.

    • [Deactivated] on 23/02/2016 - 15:13

      You might want to delay the AJAX searching so I can type a product name without to trying to search for every sub-word for all the letters within a given name.

      e.g. if a type anything into the search box, it should delay searching for 100-200ms

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 15:16

        What's the reason you want the search delayed?

        • [Deactivated] on 23/02/2016 - 16:30

          It makes firefox stutter and thus makes the website appear "laggy".

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 17:01

            @[Deactivated]: Which device? It works great on Firefox for me on my desktop. I don't use Firefox on my mobile, but Chrome on Android works without lag as well. I'd have a difficult time significantly reducing the quality of the user experience for everyone just so slow devices don't appear laggy. The fact is, slow devices are laggy. If I delayed the search it would "appear laggy" for people with fast devices and that would be infuriating.

            I do understand your concern, though. I'm just not sure how I would sensibly address it.

    • [Deactivated] on 23/02/2016 - 16:10

      Should add Chemist Warehouse to the list

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 16:25
        +3

        Yup, pharmacies are towards the top of my list. :-)

    • chefdillu on 23/02/2016 - 18:09

      Would love if you could do Coles , Woollies & Aldi Price comparison ( including Unit price too like per gm /ltr)

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 18:46

        Unfortunately Aldi doesn't publish prices except for a handful of products. :-(

    • DrDollar on 23/02/2016 - 19:12

      How often do you scrape each retailer?

      Would you consider doing Coles/Woolies?

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 19:14
        +1

        Every few hours.

        Coles and Woolworths are already there. You can see the list in the store selector in the filter bar.

        • DrDollar on 23/02/2016 - 19:34

          Apologies, missed it.

          Great site, great speeds.

          I think a comparison tool could truly be a big driver for this site. A good example is specout.com. Not saying you would implement it in the same way. You are scraping the data, why not put it to as much use as possible?

          It is extremely difficult matching all items from one retailer with another. Technically this can be difficult as the titles, descriptions, sizes, weights etc may all be slightly different from each other yet still the same or equivalent product.

          Rather than build the logic to attempt matching items from different retailers (although this is a good start, and you should do it). A good example is Coles vs Woolies where Coles keep their brand names seperated from the product name. Whereas Woolies combines the two, difficult to match with logic!

          You could do something similar to GroceryCop where end-users can do the matching for you.

          For example, by this I mean - Give registered users the control to match homebrand toilet paper from Woolies to the equivelant homebrand toulet paper from Coles. You could have an approval system in place where yourself or moderators could approve matching rather than having to do the manual matching required yourself.

          Same would go for other retailers too of course. You would be surprised by the assistance you could achieve by incorporating your end-users into the site's foundation.

          Business logic would only get you so far, some human intervention is necessary - But you already knew that.

          Just my thoughts.

          Separately, you are off to a great start. Keep up the enthusiasm and perseverance!

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 19:44
            +1

            @DrDollar: Thanks heaps for the great feedback!

            You are scraping the data, why not put it to as much use as possible?

            Pretty much just because this website has only been live for a few months and I can only work on so many things all at once.

            Regarding product matching: I am not convinced manual labour from Price Hipster's users is the answer. There are currently over 400,000 (with only 15 stores) products indexed and they change quite frequently. New products are added daily and it wouldn't be great waiting around for a human to find the product and apply it to many others. Once Price Hipster indexes hundreds of stores it would just be pointless.

            To me, it makes much more sense to create an automated system that can do it for me.

          • DrDollar on 23/02/2016 - 19:54

            @DrDollar: @jazoom: Absolutely, automation is the end-game. This is where it should start, ideally it would be great if you could automate matching against all products vs all other stores.

            Sadly though, I don't believe you will be able to do this with all products :) - Hence the end-user matching suggestion. The deeper you get into this the more variables you find between stores and products. Exponentially more roadblocks are added.

            It all comes down to time ;)

            Good luck!

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 23/02/2016 - 19:57
            +1

            @DrDollar: @DrDollar: Thanks. We'll see how we go!

          • Unrvl on 25/02/2016 - 15:19
            +1

            @DrDollar: @jazoom: This looks great. i used to have a similar site (with a crappier design) that indexed about 15 shops, 400k items. silly me decided to log prices twice a day and leave them in the db for up to months. thats a lot of unnecessary db entries especially when the price does not change. i look back at it now and feel i could have done it a million times better. well done this seems very useful!

            id be curious about ur method of scraping the data. i manually had to write specific code for each different website to pull the data i wanted. ive always wondered if theres some special program or something people use to get it all for them!

          • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 25/02/2016 - 15:33

            @DrDollar: @xEnt: Thanks for the kind words, xEnt. I have re-done many things myself. We learn as we do new things. That database must have been out of control haha.

            I also create a scraper specific to each site, but I have created a framework to make it fairly straightforward. A lot of upfront time saves me time creating each scraper.

    • folken on 23/02/2016 - 22:12

      @jazoom great site. Very quick to search and looks good on mobile too. Can't wait for more sites! That's the main thing it's missing. Need the Myer, Kmart, etc. Keep it up!

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/02/2016 - 00:16

        Myer and Kmart are there already. You can see the list by opening the store selector in the filter bar.

        Thanks for the support!

    • belongsinforums on 24/02/2016 - 00:25

      Helped me find $5 soccer balls and basketballs at big w recently. Thank you!

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/02/2016 - 00:31

        Another success! You're welcome.

    • j5ive on 24/02/2016 - 00:27

      Would be cool to sort all listings with % discount. So you can just spot the crazy clearouts.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/02/2016 - 00:30
        +2

        That option is available in the filter bar. Hit the icon on the right of the search bar.

    • BargainCowboy on 24/02/2016 - 14:50
      +1

      How about adding baby stores? Toys R Us, Babies R Us, Baby Bunting, etc?

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/02/2016 - 17:00

        You're the first person who suggested that and I really like that idea. Thanks!

        • Unrvl on 25/02/2016 - 15:19

          yeah the baby mamas would appreciate that for sure!

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/02/2016 - 20:07
        +1

        Thanks heaps for the heads up

    • Hotpotcorn on 24/02/2016 - 23:12

      need more stores like ebgames :)

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 24/02/2016 - 23:47

        More stores on the way. :-)

    • Olokun on 25/02/2016 - 17:00
      +1

      Have you thought about adding filter to only show prices currently being sold at the lowest recorded price?

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 25/02/2016 - 17:11

        That's an interesting idea. I think it would be a bit confusing to users and I'm not sure how useful it would be in a practical sense. I'll keep it in mind, though.

    • treeman on 26/02/2016 - 12:10

      I love your site and it's easy and quick use. I am checking it daily at the moment so you are definitely doing something right.

      More stores would be great.

      The only annoying thing is when David Jones advertise those fake 1 cent items.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 26/02/2016 - 12:39
        +1

        Thanks treeman!

        Yes, that is annoying. As people downvote them Price Hipster will learn not to trust deals from David Jones so much. It's sad, but I know of no better way to deal with it.

    • basilv on 26/02/2016 - 12:15

      I'm fairly sure that when I used to search for "Gatorade 1L" I used to get results that included 1 litre bottles of Gatorade. Now, as soon as I add "1L" onto the end of the search term I get no results. Has size been removed from the search fields or something?

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 26/02/2016 - 12:58

        Hi basilv, the entire search database has been changed so I had to rewrite everything. The old one wasn't flexible enough. I haven't yet implemented searching by size field in this one.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 06/03/2016 - 18:31

        Basilv, just letting you know that I've made some improvements to product search and you will now be able to find your preferred size of Gatorade more easily. :-)

        The update will be live in a couple of hours.

    • [Deactivated] on 26/02/2016 - 13:57

      Great product, use it all the time! I agree with the post above re. Spotlight. Would there be a way I could simply ignore results from Spotlight so I never see them? Or any other shop for that matter?

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 26/02/2016 - 14:30

        Not presently, but that might become a higher priority as the number of sites increases. If you are looking for a particular store you can select just that one, but doing the opposite is not possible yet.

    • tomleonhart on 26/02/2016 - 15:50

      Hey I like it! Super fast search.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 26/02/2016 - 17:04

        Thanks! That's the aim. :-)

    • agentsmith on 26/02/2016 - 22:11

      Love the site Jazoom, glad it's doing well. I've mostly used it thus far to find whether Woolies or Coles have had a particular grocery item on special, and finding out which stores stock a particular product.

      Do look forward to new stores being added soon, and second the above suggestion of adding the baby stores in.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 27/02/2016 - 04:27

        Thanks for the support and the baby stores +1. I'll see what I can do. :-)

    • Rodo on 29/02/2016 - 09:58

      Hi jazoom, this one is a bit left field and might be hard to implement but thought I would mention it anyway.

      Something my wife asked about the other day was can you set this up as an app for mobile phones with notifications for your price drop subscriptions which are sent to you when you go to a particular store. So for example if you have saved item 1, item 2, item 3 and item 5 all for Woolworths and item 4 for Coles. When you go Woolworths (i.e., physically enter the store) a notification is sent to you notifying you the prices of item 1, item 2, item 3 and item 5. And when you enter Coles a notification is sent to you notifying you the price of item 4. The notifications could be sent for any price or only for your set price.

      Thanks.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 29/02/2016 - 12:24

        That's a cool feature. The tricky part would be knowing when you were in a particular store (GPS doesn't work indoors). That kind of technology is emerging, so it may be a possibility in future.

    • Rodo on 29/02/2016 - 10:07

      Any chance you could include the percentage discount for items on the main search screen. The normal price is listed with the current price but it would also be good to see the percentage discount too.

      Another thing that would be good is can you include the screen which shows the graph, normal price and percentage discount when you click on your price drops. The other day I was on my way to the supermarket and thought I would check the current price of my price drops and whether they were on special. The only way I could tell if they were on special was to search for the items again.

      • Store Repjazoom @ Price Hipster on 29/02/2016 - 12:28

        1. Maybe, but it would require a redesign of the tiles, and they are surprisingly tricky to get right.

        2. Yes, that would be better. I need to rework the way that works. Thanks for reminding me. :-)

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