"I bought it on the internet!"
One of the most common answers we've heard in recent years when we ask someone where they bought a product. So there must be a reason why more and more consumers are choosing to shop online. The question is how do they find the products they are interested in and how do they compare prices to find the lowest one?
And somewhere in here, here come the price comparison websites. Two of the main ones in Greece are the Skroutz.gr and Bestprice.gr. Whatever product we search for on Google, these two websites will certainly appear in the first results.
This is due to their high popularity, as hundreds of users view products there every day, thus boosting their ranking in Google's directories. And since these sites appear first after a product search, the user will most likely visit them. All this creates a vicious circle, which makes these pages stronger and stronger.
What exactly do price comparison websites do?
These websites collect products from various online shops (eshops) and present them according to their price.
This procedure is carried out as follows:
Product information is provided by the online stores, processed and grouped by the price comparison website and ready to be displayed when someone searches for something relevant.
For example, a search for Nike shoes will show all available categories related to it (Nike men's sneakers, Nike women's sneakers, Nike football boots, etc.) and all products related to the search term with the possibility of displaying them by ascending or descending price.
When you "open" a product, the price comparison website shows you some basic information such as pictures, possible variations, some user options and other things as well as the online stores that sell the product. The shop that provides the product at the lowest price appears first followed by all other stores, with the last one providing the product at the highest price.
So you choose which product, at which price and from which store you prefer and with one click you are taken there.
From there you will complete your purchase, there you will pay, there you will provide the contact details and shipping address of the product and the administrators will make sure to contact you and send it to you if it is available. So the price comparison website acted as a mediator, as it just took you there.
How can I promote my business on sites like skroutz.gr and bestprice.gr?
To begin with, we should mention that an eshop is not to say that if it exists online, it exists on price comparison websites. We are talking about two different things, essentially a link between an eshop and a website that acts as a search engine for its products, which it ranks and presents in relation to other products from other stores.
So, an online shop will initially have to provide some business details on the price comparison page in order to be listed on it. More specifically, you will need to provide:
- Store name
- Address (URL) of the online store
- Store logo
- Type of business
- G.E.M.I. number (provided by the competent chamber)
- Tax Start of Operations in electronic form
- Contact details (within the website)
- Terms of Use of the e-shop (within the website)
- Shipping and payment terms (within the website)
- Payment methods (online credit card required in cooperation with Hellenic Bank)
You will then need to provide a product file to link your business and its products to the price comparison website. It is a Archive XML, which includes all the information that will be presented to the customer. This file, every time you add, delete or modify one or more products, should be updated through your eshop, so that the information is also updated.
Costs & Statistics
Of course this whole process it is not free, since there is and one-off cost participation and initial purchase of stock as well as a charge per click every time a user clicks on one of your products and goes to your website.
Costs as listed on the official websites (until 16-1-2020)
Skroutz.grOne-off participation cost: 248€
Minimum initial stock purchase: 100€
Cost per click: 0,06€ - 0,23€ (depending on the product category)
6.552.000 unique users
977.000 searches per day
788.000 clicks per day
BestPrice.gr
One-off participation cost: 100€
Minimum initial stock purchase: 50€
Cost per click: 0,06€ - 0,09€ (depending on the product category)
2.305.526 monthly visitors
2,092 stores
9.585.702 products
4,544 categories
Is it in my business's best interest to participate in a price comparison website?
The answer is subjective and depends on the type and especially on the the budget of the undertaking.
A company should know its objectives, and how much money it is prepared to spend on its promotion and to increase its sales. If you are willing to spend some money in order to increase your sales, then yes, it is worth it.
But you will need to constantly monitor the prices of your competitors and give the best possible price so that you can get a good price to sell and make a good profit at the same time.
If you still see that the cost of clicks exceeds your sales profits, you should probably lower your prices to keep the user moving on to purchase, or even rethink the design of your online store, since a cumbersome and user-unfriendly eshop tends to have an increased abandonment rate before the purchase is completed.
Conclusion
So you can look at all of the above and see which is the most advantageous option for your business. One thing is for sure, the promotional opportunities through price comparison websites are many and if exploited properly and methodically, they can bring you quite high profits.
Source: https://merchants.skroutz.gr/merchants/
https://merchants.bestprice.gr/
