JOE compares price comparison websites

Price comparison websites are used by shoppers every single day, so why not put them to the test and instead compare the websites themselves?

By Emmet Purcell

How much is that doggie in the window?’ goes the classic novelty song, but thankfully for shoppers these days, we don’t have to ask anymore and we can certainly call animal welfare and have that particular pet shop’s archaic practices out of business – honestly, a poor dog left pining for attention in a shop window?

Now, whenever shoppers need anything, there are a ton of price comparison websites to get buyers the full picture and ensure they can scoop up a bargain, so we decided to put the top Irish sites to the test.

CompareIreland.ie – Since the full extent of our research involved a quick ‘price comparison’ Google search, we had high hopes for our first result, which is a bright and colourful site and features icons for each potential category one might want to search. A great feature that we found is buried at the bottom of the website, a 24hrs section that allows users to see what gyms, car parks, pharmacies and internet cafes are open till late.

The biggest problem for CompareIreland though? The lack of a search engine. Believe it or not, while my plan was to search for the best prices for Friday’s videgame release, Fallout: New Vegas, CompareIreland doesn’t have the search engine to do so, and it’s ‘Xbox 360’ and ‘Playstation 3’ sections only provide details on sites selling the full consoles, not their software. A huge missed opportunity.

Similarly, the ‘Pets’ section doesn’t have a section for exotic pets of any type – if you don’t own a dog or a cat and need insurance/boarding/vet services for them, you won’t stumble upon anything that you’re looking for. Until a simple search engine is incorporated, we can’t recommend this site for now.

Compare.ie – Now this is more like it. Compare.ie has an immediately more attractive purple and green colour scheme, a search engine, recent price comparison searches at the foot of the homepage and even discount codes, a sure sign that Compare understands the price-conscious audience visiting its site. Sadly, although the site bent over backwards to offer me every Fallout game that has ever been released, Fallout mountain bikes and even trips to Las Vegas – Compare.ie had no idea what Friday’s Fallout: New Vegas was. This was a disappointing result and an indication that behind the flash, this site’s search capabilities, the core of its usefulness, is not entirely up to scratch for now.

Bonkers.ie – Bonkers gives a fantastic first impression for its users, with its front-end flipping between vital services that shoppers may not typically use in comparison searches – credit cards, broadband, savings accounts and personal loans. The site also features testimonials from Irish tech site Silicon Republic, an Ask the Expert section and nearly 1000 ‘Likes’ for its Facebook page, which trounced upon the 100+ Facebook fans for its aforementioned rivals. With such an array of features and content, I had nearly forgotten what I had came to search for.

Sadly, the inclusion of a Google custom search engine had me wondering just how extensive Bonker’s search might be, and sure enough, my Fallout: New Vegas search returned no results. In fact, I quickly discovered that Bonkers specialised solely in Broadband & Phone, Electricity, Saving Accounts, Credit Cards, Personal Loans and Current Accounts, with extensive detail and parameters to assess your own current situation within each section. Bonkers had no idea what Fallout was because it was a much more specialised site yet despite my lack of success, I came away hugely impressed with the overall service

Compare4me.ie – Compare4me has one of the most obvious taglines we’ve ever seen in a website – ‘We compare prices so you don’t have to’. Well congrats guys, that’s exactly why people use price comparison websites. However, Compare4me, as seems to be a trend among Irish price comparison sites, features no search engine whatsoever. Unlike Bonkers, Compare4me forgoes any searches and also forgoes any degree of uniformity – its chief services vary wildly from flights to broadband to supermarket deals.

Since the supermarket deals caught our attention first, we decided to have a gander. Unfortunately, Compare4me simply provides one gigantic webpage and has a number of checked boxes for whatever category of product you may be searching for. This is essentially like a reverse Google search, where you work through every single result that isn’t yours instead. Unfortunately, we found that the Compare4me service was severely lacking in user-centric intuitiveness and of course, we came away with no results for our increasingly fruitless Fallout search.

TopPrice.ie – TopPrice immediately won us over with the strange advertising that took up the middle portion of its (very slow to load) home page, which had everything from harem pants to 3 in 1 trucks and self seal manila envelopes. Sadly, it too had no idea what our Fallout request was and we quickly lost interest in the site’s outdated presentation and reliance on its dull blue colour scheme.

Overall Verdict – Price comparison websites are huge business these days and we’re sad to report that in general, Irish comparison sites failed to cover themselves in glory during our findings. It’s unfortunate that the best sites we could find were the ‘.ie’ versions of international sites (Expedia, Pricerunner), when we knew that there are Irish equivalent shops for the product in question we searched for – New Vegas is available on Irish games shop Gamesnash.ie for a reasonable price, yet Gamesnash products can’t be found on Irish comparison sites during our research..

Aside from general price comparison sites, Irish sites hold up a lot better when they specialise in a specific area or product, such as the aforementioned Bonkers.ie or Cheapflights.ie, yet for basic searches it’s difficult not to recommend the big guns that have ruled this lucrative market for years. With the ongoing recession increasingly fostering an entrepreneurial spirit, a truly comprehensive Irish price comparison site that services its customers and in turn, informs and helps tune its users into emerging small businesses’ product is yet to emerge, but the domestic market is clearly there for the taking.