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

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!

Related Stores

Price Hipster
Price Hipster

Comments

  • When I click on an item, It brings up the price history. That's great.

    But I don't press the close button, I tend to press my phones back button. So it leaves the website instead of just the price history pop up window.

    I find that annoying in websites, it's like imgur picture links within the comments where it pops up or hovers over the page. I always end up pressing back on the phone and it goes back a page instead of back to the comments.

    • +1

      Yeah I tried to take that into account but unfortunately there's no way for the website to know that you've pressed the back button.

      If you don't want to press the close button just press the grey are outside the pop-up.

      • Thanks. It's my laziness usually.

      • Couldn't you use pushState?

        • Well, yes, I do use it. I tried implementing it for each product modal but there were some issues with that. It ends up doing some things that might be confusing for the user considering it's just a pop-up. It's something I might revisit later.

  • +2

    It's a 'yes' from me.. I like it !

    • Thanks. Enjoy :-)

  • Website looks great.

    • +1

      Thanks, ShanB

  • looks great

    as a test:
    I searched using the word "latte", the result includes "mattel", "hatters", "lantern", "litter", "latex", and on and on; which kinda irrelevant to what the intended keyword search is.

    is this functioning as your expectation?

    • Well, it's a balance. I can easily tweak how forgiving the search is, but if you're getting such loose matches then that means there are few good hits. The better matches are shown first.

      Edit: I just searched for "latte". I had to scroll down a long way to get to anything but a direct match on "latte". That is definitely what I expect.

      • Maybe a better example is typing in "fanta" gives 2 results for Fanta followed by 20+ for Fantasic branded products, another 2 for Fanta then more Fantastic products followed by Fantales and Fantasy games and then finally the bulk of the Fanta.

        • That's an excellent example. I can see how that could be better. Thanks.

        • hi durd0008. Just letting you know that there has just been a major update. I've also addressed the issue you mentioned. Now all you have to do is hit the spacebar after "fanta" so it knows you've finished the word, and you'll get the results you seek. :)

  • To answer one of the WA latency questions - it's not bad - the web page loads fast, when searching through all the items to match keywords, that takes time. but I think that's just the way it's coded.

    When we make posts we have to search Past Ozbargain deals (google etc.) to compare best prices, you should make something that can go through all previous OzBargain posts and display it for a product. this would help so many people by speeding things up, saving a lot of time.

    • It's coded the same for you as it is for me and everyone else here. ;-)

      I suspect you're feeling the latency due to distance, or maybe a slow internet connection.

      • No I know that… maybe bad grammar on my part..

        Btw not too interested about the Past OzBargain deals site?

        • Well, I think that's what OzBargain is for. That's not really the purpose of Price Hipster.

        • @jazoom: Price Hipster is cool, Good work. When you search up an item in OzBargain, it may have 5-10 pages from the last few years, different websites, different prices. Sometimes it might take 15-30 minutes to make a post, collating all the price comparisons. this could be reduced, you should make a seperate page/script to help Posters here at OzBargain using your skills.

        • @zeckem: Or I could spend my time improving Price Hipster. ;-)

        • @jazoom: Definitely, how about after Price Hipster is smooth sailing? It's ok if it's not of your interest..

        • +1

          @zeckem: Well, I think OzBargain is doing a great job. Perhaps suggest to the developers of OzBargain the idea?

  • Good Job, mate. All the best.

    • Cheers

  • Also, got one important suggestion:

    Rating/Product review of item: I found this very crucial as we don't want to mislead by the price (whether it's cheap or expensive). Sometime reasonable-price stuff turn out to be more useful (The tier-1 Chinese Brand like xiao mi) than the expensive one but not as durable/reliable. I found most of the ozbargainer or myself do a "decade" of research before buying some item with plenty of chrome with youtube or review-website page like engadget & amazon opened (even the cheap stuff) which i found is extremely inconvenience.

    I reckon that this is what OZB member's inconvenience/struggle is as some of them not quite happy with the product they bought in the bargain. I've got some inspiration to create this web called TryFirst (Not Happy? return it before period of time) but doesn't want to re-invent the wheel. Perhaps try to add this as one of the major feature of your web.

    • That's definitely on my todo list (reviews), but it's part of the long-term plan. I'd need a lot of users first.

  • Heya, I tried a search for (Razer) "Kraken" headphones and noticed it doesn't seem to search eBay stores? There are two Sydney stores selling on eBay that are selling for almost $40 less than the cheapest result your site came up with.

    Any plans to search eBay stores as well?

    • I have thought about that. I'll focus on more traditional stores first and see how we go.

    • Hi Maltopia, just updating you that there are now 15 stores indexed. No eBay yet, unfortunately.

  • +1

    Kudos to you for using the fastest text search technology around, I'm impressed with speed! I hope the site will bring you enough revenue to keep it up and extend services!

    • I really hope so. It's got the potential to be super useful. I'll do everything I can to keep it running. It certainly ain't cheap.

  • Website needs more beard to be hipster authentic…its more hipster doofus atm…

    btw love the site :)

    • Yeah that's how my original logos were. Unfortunately I had to choose between the beard and the glasses, and the glasses have much more meaning in the context of Price Hipster.

  • Good job creating this site man, looks basic yet very informative! Awesome job!! Camelcamelcamel for Aussies.

    Edit: Latency is not bad from WA.

    • Thanks. I'm glad it's useful in the far West!

  • +1

    Love the website. Looking good so far!

    My suggestion to add to that list is EB Games (though it is a big one, I think).

    • +1

      I heard they like to have sales every now and then.

      • +1

        You mean 'everyday', right? :)

    • Hi silverrat23. Just updating you that there are now 15 stores indexed. Unfortunately EB Games didn't make the cut this time, but hopefully in the future.

  • Is this a website to see which online store has the cheapest price of a product?

    • That's certainly one function.

      • Pretty cool, however, some of products i looked up can be found at a better deal/price instore…

        • hi bargin, there are now 15 stores, so your chance of finding a bargain will be greatly increased :)

  • Good Site. But i was thrown off at first glance as i thought you only had Halloween stuff listed.10 minutes later i came back to the site after reading other comments then realising thats not all you have in here. I tried the search for 65, then a heap of TVs came up. Good.
    You should have some basic categories, like Electrical, groceries etc just to get people to look. I feel its just like when you have to kill some time and say to your self, what am i gonna look up on the net? If there are pictures like new TV's or stun guns or what ever to click, it will make the initial search a snap and keep the users attention. Anyway, just my 2 cents worth. Good luck. I'll bookmark your site.

    • Thanks for the feedback

  • +1

    Can you do eBay stores of the same company like DSE, the good guys and so on?

    • That's probably possible. I'll keep it in consideration.

      • Would be great as I find it a pain to search between them especially multiple tabs can get confusing

        • Hi Hotkolbas, just letting you know that there are now 15 stores, but no eBay as yet, unfortunately.

  • would be nice if model numbers were in the description, looking at 55inch TVs some just say for eg Panasonic Viera 55" Full HD LED LCD Smart TV. That could be any model and you can't tell until you go to the sellers web page.

    • Thanks for the suggestion

  • +1

    Absolutely incredible product! Well done! What framework and technologies do you use?

    • +2

      There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle, but the website itself is built on React.

      • Ahh I hadn't heard of that before but will definitely give it a go now. What about the backend?

        • All backends do the same stuff. It really doesn't make a difference for the user. It all comes down to which language you want to code in.

  • Really like the new website! Can I suggest one thing? On the product view, once you click on something, it would be great if you could mouse over the graph and it shows you the actual price and date for each day on the graph, sort of like a popover? When there has been a lot of fluctuation, or the price difference is small, its hard to read the price point off the graph.

    But overall amazing job! Good work mate!

    • +1

      Thanks. That's something I'm going to implement. It seems like a popular suggestion.

    • Hi adzzz, just updating you that the graph hover feature didn't quite make the cut this update, but it's on my to-do list for the next one.

      • Hi adzzz, just updating you (belated, sorry) that I added the graph feature you requested. Thank for the suggestion!

  • Great site, the technology behind this looks very well thought out.
    I am a student and would love to hear about the algorithms, design etc you have used for this.
    Wondering if you would be able to PM me (or I PM you) with regards to this.
    Kudos for the work!

  • +1

    My God! That speed is incredible!

  • Some prices are wrong. Eg) Canned Mackerel at Woolworths is $1.69

    • You may have caught it between them changing the price and Price Hipster updating it. :-)

  • Super fast website! love it. Just something which i couldn't get over was how big the search banner is (the grey part). Maybe making it smaller to two rows of products could fit ? might look more appealing.

    • +1

      It collapses down as soon as you type something in the search bar and gets out of the way. It's actually so I can fit some other stuff in there soon.

  • +1

    Very nice, just did a search of "Xbox One" and three characters in I already had my results.

  • +1

    Love it! Thanks for creating! I think the price graph for individual items is a really neat feature. Gives good insight as to whether or not you should hold out until the lower price returns.
    Perhaps provide time period filtering on the graphs? I would be interested to see the different seasonal changes over 12 months.

    • That might come in future but I don't have 12 months of data on anything yet. ;-)

    • +2

      Yes - very good for visualizing the Coles / Woolworths specials cycle.

      Eg. Peters Drumsticks (Super Chocolate):

      Woolworths
      Coles

      A big thumbs up to the OP!

    • hi tristanmarsh, just updating you that I just released a big update, but graph improvements didn't quite make the cut this time. They are pretty high on my to-do list now.

    • +1

      Just updating you (belated, sorry) that you can now manipulate the graph to zoom in on time periods and see exact pricing. Thanks for the suggestion!

  • Maybe in the future, an option to choose State\Territory because Woolworths and Coles prices will vary depending on this.

    • Yeah that's a quirk of those 2 sites. I might take that into account in future, but they seem to be moving towards more consistent pricing across the country.

  • Fantastic site man.

    • Thanks, nish!

  • In terms of possible stores, have you thought about the different liquor stores (Dan Murphy, LiquorLand, etc.), major retail outlets (Myer, David Jones etc.)?

    • +2

      I think of the different liquor stores every day, or at least those i'm not banned from yet.

    • Added to the list. Thanks!

    • Major retail outlets done :-)

  • Looks good. I like the graph showing the recent price history. Super fast results also.

    I also vote for Officeworks to be added. Always good to know when they have something in stock priced higher than the competition so I can hit them for the 5% discount.

    • Yeah that's a good point.

    • Officeworks added. :-) Along with many other things.

  • +1

    Anything that helps me to find the lowest price is great! Thanks for the hard work Jazoom! :-)

    • You're welcome.

    • show weight in the description instead of having to goto source site. this is useful since if you're looking at items of the same type, instead of relying on the images which is sometimes impossible to tell. Edit: 90g chips don't have yet 175g chips do
    • show weight cost ratio, e.g. $1 per 100g
    • show related items or comparable items when clicking on the item, sorted by cheapest weight cost ratio
    • what is the x-axis of the graph? can it show the days since significant changes? e.g. if i want to know how long i should wait for the next round of specials

    Nice site.

    • +1

      what is the x-axis of the graph?

      The months should be written at the bottom of the graph.

      I've seen some browsers (Eg. FF 41 on Mac OSX 10.8) have the bottom of the graph cut off (but Chrome 46 shows it OK on that machine).

      • +1

        Chart should be fixed now.

    • As spaij said, the graph isn't displaying correctly on all browsers at the moment and the x-axis values don't show.

      The weights should be there. Can you please give me an example of a product that it's missing on?

    • Chart should be fixed now.

  • Hi I love the site. Only peev that stops me from actually using it, would be that the products with no discounts are at the top of the list by default. I searched for "Games".

    • Actually the products with the best discounts are at the top. I'll look into that search term.

      Update: Hey, you're right. I'm not sure why that particular search is like that.

      • Hope you find out that bug :)

        • I just released a major update. Hopefully that bug is fixed…

        • @jazoom: I've typed in "games" again. It seems to be exactly the same; none discounted items are still at the top of the list. Oh well.

        • @phana007: okay, I'll keep looking. Thanks for letting me know.

        • @phana007: Hi, I've changed search technology now and the search appears to work more predictably. Thanks for your feedback!

  • How big has your to do list gotten after this thread? Haha nice site though

    • +1

      Yeah, most of these things were already on my todo list, but now I'm feeling the pressure!

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