Product Comparison Engine for eCommerce Online Marketplace

With the dynamic shift in the environs of ecommerce industry, customers have begun to realize the importance of staying eagle eyed. Theodore Roosevelt, the former American President once quoted, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” This quote however doesn’t seem to be the order of the day. Right from comparing features to prices, customers compare each and everything. So, at-least for ecommerce sector, this maxim doesn’t hold candle. With an increase in the number of people who are joining the cherished ‘online commerce’ bandwagon, a robust product comparison module will help you solve the ‘feature comparison’ and ‘price comparison’ conundrums and come up with novel paradigms.

In ecommerce niche, nothing works better than a feature rich module. You may be the customers’ hero and draughtsman of your country’s previous triumphs, but reputation is neither for success nor can it be the only reason to guarantee success. In short, you have to earn your loyal audiences by incorporating necessary features such as Product Comparison Module. Before delving deep into the subtleties and nuances of a robust Product Comparison module, let me detail out a few product comparison matrix tips that may come handy. Here is a quick run-down of the same:

1. Smart sort tools and filters: Ensure that your product comparison tool is well endowed with smart sort tools and filters. Why? Smart tools and filters allow customers to opt for better choices. But how can customers opt for better choices? Here is the answer- Customers can take better decisions if they are presented with a curated list of items. This curated list shouldn’t be exhaustive. Rather than including tens of thousands of items, it is better to include a few items that meet the requirements of your user(s). The best filters and smart tools should be tailored to the product specifications and attributes such as price, weight, custom attributes etc.

For example, in our ecommerce marketplace script Admire, we have many registered sellers who sell apparel, costumes and regalia. More often than not, for each and every costume, the sellers include attributes such as

• Material
• Brand
• Gender
• Price

For each and every apparel or dress, these attributes are editable (at least in our ecommerce marketplace). In products description tab, products are complemented with the values to material, brand, gender and price attributes.  If your ecommerce site sells mobiles, sellers may come up with interesting attributes such as

• Generation – 3G or 4G or 5G
• Camera
• Touch or Non Touch
• Internal Memory
• Expandable memory or external memory
• Screen- Corning Gorilla or corning concore
• Display size
• Price

By default, most of the attributes are set to ‘visible’ mode. However, if a seller wishes to hide a few attributes, he/she may select ‘Hide this attribute’ checkbox and hide the required attributes. Moreover, our comparison tool resembles a table in which images of the products selected are displayed in the columns while the values to the attributes are displayed in the table rows. On each and every thumbnail of the product that is displayed, ‘Remove from comparison’ button and ‘Add to Comparison’ button are displayed. Of course, it would be trivial to mention that a simple ‘Add to Cart’ button is also displayed.

What do I mean by smart sort tools? In our marketplace scripts – Admire lite, Admire digital, and Admire m-commerce, any typical sort tool allows a user to sort products by the following criteria:

• Recommended
• Most recently added
• Price
• Manufacturer
• Customer Rating and review
• Contract type

In our marketplace, we have introduced a smart sort tool feature called “Price Slider.” This allows users to select a specific price range whenever they search for products.

1. Positioning of the comparison callout button: Place “Compare products here” button immediately after the products listing. Do not place it at the extreme ends or corners of the products listing page. Positioning the comparison button in the sidebars is a strict no. Remember, place this comparison button that is well with-in the user’s workflow.
2. No ambiguity in call to action buttons: I shall explain this with an example. Let us suppose that a user wishes to compare the features of three mobile phones- A, B and C. If your call to action button says, “Click this to compare”, it would be absolutely ambiguous as you haven’t precisely mentioned the number of items that can be compared at a time. If the user were to compare only two items at a time, he has to rely on three comparison results:

• Compare A with B
• Compare A with C
• Compare B with C

and decide to buy/ not to buy. Hence, it is recommended to program a call to action button that lets users to compare more than two products simultaneously. This saves the time, energy and patience of your customers.

1. Feedback: What do I mean by feedback? Whenever a user clicks, “Compare this product” call to action button, a pop up window with a notification – “This product has been added to the product comparison chart” should be displayed. It is even better and convincing if you can furnish visual feedback. Visual feedback is all about displaying the image of the product that has been added to the product comparison table.
2. Links should be links: What do I mean by ‘Links should be links’? What distinguishes plain text from links is that links are clickable and more often than not, they are in a different color and in a different font. Here is our advice- Ensure that links are underlined. Links should redirect users to product specification pages and product comparison pages.
3. Search bar: A smart search bar is a must have feature. Let me illustrate this with an example- If a user wishes to search for mobile phones that are present on your ecommerce marketplace and are well within 600 US dollars, he/she must be able to search on your site. What do I mean by smart search? Well, your search bar should display alternatives. For example, if you type Moto G vs…, it should display following alternatives:

• Moto G vs Moto X
• Moto G vs Mi4i
• Moto G vs Moto E
• Moto G vs LG Nexus 4
• Moto G vs iPhone Smart 5C

And the list should ideally be exhaustive. Remember, the search bar should display the content that is curated to your marketplace site. It is all about scope-oriented smart searches.

• Highlight key differences: This is not an ‘absolute must have’ feature but a ‘can have’ feature. Come up with an action button called ‘Highlight key differences.’ Let me explain this with an example. Let us say, a customer Smith is unable to zero-in on to a choice between One Plus One and One Plus Two. It is highly likely that both the smart phones- One Plus One and One Plus Two may share several common features. The action button- ‘Highlight key differences’ will thus come handy as it assists Smith and other customers in making an informed choice and a better choice. Needless to say, allow your potential customers to print and save comparisons for future reference. You can take this feature to the next best level by including a link – ‘Need our expert opinion in choosing?’ Now, whenever this link is clicked, it should redirect the customer to your expert team board/panel.

• Hide similar features: Customers may get vexed with similar features. As an alternative approach to the aforementioned ‘Highlight key differences’ action button, you may come up with this feature- ‘Hide similar features.’ The functionality of this action button is same as the aforementioned ‘Highlight key difference’ one.

• Technical jargon- explanation: To a naïve user who isn’t well versed with technical jargon, an in detail explanation will definitely engineer a bit of comfort in his/her mind. Let me elaborate this with an example. Whenever a user visits products specification page of a product say- a smart phone, he will be confronted with technical jargon such as Mobile HotSpot, Mobile Broadband capability etc. A one-liner conveying the gist of the rhetorical word such as – ‘Mobile Hotspot allows you to create an Internet connection up to five devices on a 3G smart phone and up to 10 devices on a 4G smart phone’ should be mentioned. Implement such one-liners as mouse overs. If they are not implemented as mouse overs, they occupy a lot of space on UI screen.    

Some miscellaneous important pointers:

1. Ensure that your close button functions properly. It shouldn’t resemble the close button of the Skype application. Just For Your Information, Skype’s close button doesn’t close the window. Rather, it just minimizes the window which is indeed a scathing denunciation that can never ever please its users.
2. Ensure that you have embedded large thumbnail images. Larger thumbnail images will allow customers to visualize their choices and take better decisions. I would like to emphasize time and again that these thumbnails should be clickable. Otherwise, they are soul less. It is indeed a standard web convention to be followed religiously to embed large thumbnail images.
3. Let me talk about some metrics. So what are the metrics that can be incorporated? Nothing can beat customer reviews and customer ratings. In a nutshell, customer reviews and ratings are the ideal metrics that should be used for comparison.
4. Needless to say, mention the price and display it.
5. Ensure that your “Call to Action” buttons are of different colors and different backgrounds. Include “Add to cart” buttons both at the top and bottom of the product comparison table. Remember, your call to action buttons should stand out from the rest of the Interface and background.
6. Do not use too gaudy or too bright colors. Remember, the background should be eye catchy and not eye soring.
7. In your products description page, ensure that you include certain call to action buttons such as “Invite your friend”, “Send email”, and “Print Page”. These are social shopping marketplace hacks. To familiarize yourself with proven growth hacking strategies, I recommend you to read my insightful article on “20 Social Growth Hacking techniques for social shopping.” (
   Please place the link here).
8. Let me talk about all the collapse and expand sections. It is likely that the products description may take a few paragraphs. In such a scenario, enable expand and collapse sections. Make sure that links are clickable and distinguishable.
9. Let us say you have a single yet a robust site for all the nations across seven continents. It behooves on you to create localization experiences to your audiences. Include APIs that convert one currency to another, one language to another and one unit of weight to another. Please refer to the following write-ups to get an overview:

• Multi-level Affiliate Revenue Model for ecommerce marketplace script.
• Multi-language plugin for e-commerce marketplace script.
• Geo-Based Multi-currency convertor for ecommerce.

Your product comparison pages may be long enough. Have scrollbars in such pages. This will aid your users.

A brief note on Admire’s Product Comparison Module:

We have scripted our biggest story owing to our extraordinary customer service and bug-free robust products. I would like to emphasize that we have incorporated all the product comparison matrix tips. I would like to share the technology related and framework related aspects. Here is what I have for you all:

1. Technology and Frameworks:  We have build this product comparison engine in Python, if you want to integrate or build a custom product comparison engine – feel free to contact us.
2. Web Crawler: For all those who do not have any idea about what a web crawler is, here is a one-liner conveying the gist of it- A web crawler fetches data from multiple webpages. It is a fetch parser or a multi-page data extractor. By the way, we used Python and PHP as these technologies in themselves are a rich assortment of libraries.
3. Indexing: Glorifying our long term stand on each and every module we configure and develop, we have come up with the concept of Indexing to quicken the aspects of product categorization. We have invested a lot of efforts to make this a robust one.

In and each every updated version or a newer release, we ring in a few changes after galvanizing opinions of customers, maestros and technical evangelists.

Let us Talk

Do drop a mail to steve@ecommercemix.com to get your concerns addressed. You can reach Steve on +1-302-525-8125. Feel free to drop a comment or two in the comments section. 

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