Published April 24th, 2009
in Money Saving Tools.
Google just announced an update to its Product Search. It is now optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices. I gave it a spin today and I love its clean and simple interface. Here are a few screenshots to give you an idea. By the way, this is the first time I am taking screenshots from my G1, here is a very good blog post describing how to do it.
Search results
I took Jabra SP700 Speakerphone for an example. This is how the search results screen looks. The Options menu allows sortiing by price, product rating, and also offers a few basic filters.
Product overview
Clicking on the first entry in the list will open this overview screen. The overview is not available for all products and I can’t figure out what the criteria is. For example Nintendo Wii has it but iPod Touch doesn’t.
Product details
This screen opens when you click on the product image/description on the overview screen (if there is one). It shows a bigger product image and the complete product description.
Product reviews
This is a list of all the product reviews aggregated from different sources. I find the reviews summary with the bars very easy to read.
Technical Specifications
Not much to say here. This is just a list of basic technical details about the product. I usually don’t trust these and make sure to re-check the specs at the store before I but the product.
Optimizing Product Search for mobile devices is a very timely step for Google. Mobile web use is growing strong and missing out on that growth would be very unfortunate for the company.
Published April 16th, 2009
in Popular Sites Series.
This is March 2009 revision of the Popular Coupon sites list. You can find the previous revision of the list here.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to February results. This list currently has 33 sites - two more than in February (thecouponclippers.com and couponbug.com are in). On average the coupon sites have lost (5.13%) in March.
The best performer is couponbug.com (26.43%), which also moves up by 6 positions, and the worst result comes from retailmenot.com (-30.76%) which is giving up it’s earlier gains but holding on to the #1 position. Enjoy the complete list below!
Published April 14th, 2009
in Money Saving Tools.
My regular readers have surely noticed that my posting frequency went down significantly in the past several months. This is largely due to all the long hours I put into my new project. This leaves fewer and fewer time for my blogging. The good news however is that with my new hobby (and responsibilities that come with it) I now get exposed to a lot more deals which come from many different sources.
Yesterday we got a submission (which I in fact rejected) from a website called TradeTang. To give you an idea what TradeTang is, the best US alternative would probably be Amazon Marketplace. Sellers offer merchandise (new and used) at a fixed price and TradeTang acts as a proxy processing payments and order tracking.
The submitted deal was for an iPhone for just $176 shipped. You know the saying, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. So I went on and researched it a little bit online. It turned out that TradeTang as probably many places in China doesn’t bother to complicate itself with international copyright laws and as the result you can find there pretty much anything from a fake iPhones to counterfeit watches to “almost” brand name jeans for a fraction of what “the real thing” will cost you. Consider it an online extension of what a typical Chinese market would probably look.
However not all is gloom at TradeTang. Mixed with counterfeit brands sellers offer legitimate merchandise usually sold in wholesale lots starting from 5 or 10 items. The prices are much lower than in the US but shipping can by somewhat costly. There is for example a huge variety of wedding apparel and lingerie.
Is it safe to buy? I spent about an hour reading comments and reviews from multiple sources and opinions seem to vary greatly. Some reviewers are convinced it is scam and should be stayed away from while others claim you can find many good bargains if you are cautious (e.g. pick a seller with reputation points and ask questions before placing a purchase order).
I personally don’t think I will be ordering anything from TradeTang any time soon but I can see where some businesses would be interested to take a closer look at what this place has to offer even if the financial rewards come with a certain risk. What is your opinion about TradeTang? Please tell me in the comments
Published April 11th, 2009
in Popular Sites Series.
This is March 2009 revision of the Popular Price Comparison web sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to February results. The list has a total of 35 web sites which is the same number as the last month. There are 17 more sites in my database that don’t meet Alexa Rank < 100,000 requirement.
The best performer this month is dealio.com with a gain of (29.08%) followed by shopper.cnet.com (26.8%). These in fact are the only two websites with positive gains this month
The worst performer this month is shoplocal with a loss of (-51.63%) closely followed by ebates (-47.01%). Please enjoy the complete list below
(*) Note: traffic stats for these sites is an aggregate of all traffic to the top domain (e.g. Yahoo.com or Google.com) and thus cannot be used to judge how popular this particular price comparison service is.
(**) Note: the web site is a portal with price comparison engine being one of the offered web services. Alexa rank cannot be used to judge how popular this price comparison engine is.
Published April 8th, 2009
in Business Marketing.
The two last gadgets I bought were from Staples and Radio Shack. Both had mail-in rebates and both came in a form of a Rebate debit card issued by Visa. This is a move from rebate checks that the companies used in the past and I should add a move I don’t like.
In case of a check I would simply deposit it into my account and life goes as normal. In case of a debit card, I can’t just withdraw the funds. According to the instructions I have to use it as a credit card which raises a couple problems. First, I have to keep track of the remaining balance and make sure I don’t overcharge. Second, if I need to charge more than it is left on the card then I have to use partial charge - something online stores don’t do.
The overcharging is a bigger issue that it may seem. No, you don’t get slapped with a fee. Instead the retailer attempts to put a hold on the funds and you can’t use the card until the hold is released (a few days in my case).
So why retailers move to debit cards? Since using cards is not convenient for the customers it has to be done because it is convenient for the retailers. Here are a few things that cards enable retailers to do:
- They have your money until you use it - the balance on the card is in the retailers’ account until you actually use the card to buy something, and every bit helps the business especially in the kind of economy we are right now
- They make money off of your purchases - Visa typically charges a fee each time you use the card for a purchase. The company issuing the card may well get some charge backs. Even if they don’t, I am sure Visa will gladly cover the expenses for issuing and mailing out these cards, something retailers have to pay for themselves if they use checks
- They keep the remainder of the balance - If you discard or lose the card w/o completely using it then the issuer keeps the remainder of the balance. Why would you not use it all? Because of all the difficulties associated with calculating the remaining balance.
All of the above is a speculation based on my experience and common sense, so don’t take things for granted. The explanation however seems very plausible to me and I would really like to find out if I am right, so if you have any insider knowledge on how things work in the marketing department of these companies, please leave a comment.
Photo courtesy of licokao @ Flickr
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