Product Description
Price comparison is something truly lacking in Woocommerce and WordPress. If you are promoting affiliate products, it’s no longer enough to just provide your users with 1 price source – they need to know they’re getting the best price. The only way to reassure them that you’ve found the best price for them is to give them price comparison. That’s what this plugin is all about.
WordPress Price Comparison Pro adds 4 new pairs of fields to your woocommerce products – paste in up to 4 URLs for pages where your users could buy this product and the plugin takes care of the rest – whenever your users visit that product page, the price comparison plugin will check those URLs and fetch a live price.
The second URL for each of these lets you enter an affiliate URL so you will earn affiliate revenue for any purchased made through these links.
If you don’t enter a URL in the Affiliate URL box, Price Comparison Pro will attempt to use Skimlinks to monetize your link. Simply enter your Skimlinks ID in the settings for Price Comparison Pro. If you don’t enter an affiliate URL or a Skimlinks ID, Price Comparison Pro will fallback to just using the raw unmonetized link. If you don’t know already, Skimlinks is an affiliate merchant aggregator. They have pretty much every website that has an affiliate program on their books so if it’s possible to monetize it, it’ll be monetized. This saves you signing up to each affiliate network and then applying to each merchant.
You can see a basic version of this in action here: http://dev1.affiliatewebdesigners.com/product/yeti-microphone/
Here’s a quick video I made to demonstrate WordPress Price Comparison Pro in action:
Installing WordPress Price Comparison Pro
Installation is very straightforward – once you’ve made your purchase, click the download link in the email you receive. Then in your WordPress admin, click Plugins -> Add New and then Upload. Choose the file you downloaded.
Configuring WordPress Price Comparison Pro
The first thing you need to configure is your Skimlinks account. Sign up for a Skimlinks account here.
Once you’ve signed up, log into the Skimlinks hub, visit Toolbox -> Tools -> Link Generator, enter www.google.com in the URL box and click Generate. You will see a URL like this:
http://go.redirectingat.com?id=76167X1526475&xs=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com
The part in bold is your Skimlinks ID – copy that into the relevant box in the settings page for WordPress Price Comparison Pro.
Setting up your first product
Visit a product on your website for which you’d like price comparison to be enabled, and click ‘edit’ to view the Woocommerce product page. You will see 4 new boxes on this page called Product URL 1, 2, 3 and 4. Into these boxes, paste the URL for a page which sells this product and from now on your product page will pull the price from that page and present it to your user. Repeat this and add another 2 or 3 URLs then save your product. Add affiliate URLs for each of these to monetize them unless you wish to just use Skimlinks.
Now when you view your product, price comparison will kick in and each link will be monetized.
Configuring Logos
Version 1 doesn’t pull logos automatically, so if you want a logo to appear you have to go to the settings page for WordPress Price Comparison Pro and enter a suitable URL you find for that web pages logo. (If you don’t do this, it’ll just display the name of the website rather than a logo)
Configuring CSS selectors
Normally you won’t have to do this – I’ve written some very cool code which figures out where and what the product price is from almost all websites, but it doesn’t work on every single website. If you find a website where the WordPress Price Comparison Pro plugin is pulling the wrong price back then you need to add a CSS selector for this website into the settings page.
- Visit the product page which contains the price you need using Chrome
- Right click the price and click ‘Inspect element’
- Look for the ID of the element, and then enter this, prefixed by #, into the settings page next to the logo
Support
Unlimited, lifetime support and upgrades are included for the first 25 sales of this plugin. Thereafter, standard 1 year support and upgrades will be the norm so if you want this plugin, buy it now.
If you have any support related questions, please ask them in the Q & A tab on this page so other users can benefit too. I look forward to hearing from you all!
Upcoming Features
To discuss any new features you would like to see added to Price Comparison Pro, please comment on the blog article here: http://www.affiliatewebdesigners.com/2016/07/05/price-comparison-pro-1-2-released/
Adil –
I have crawlers for the sites from which I need to scrape product information, images, price and the URLs. I need a wordpress plugin which I could use to display the prices of a product from different e-commerce websites with their website logo on each product page. The prices of a product from different websites is in csv form and I should be able to upload the csv file feed. Could I use the WordPress Price Comparison Pro to do this? and could the price comparison table have more than 4 rows? ( I have around 15000 products.)
Dave Hilditch –
Hi Adil – soon it will be able to do this. The next development release will include the ability to automatically check through your products for similarly named products, run a cURL on the affiliate link to get the destination URL (save it) then use this for price comparison.
The limit of 4 rows is only temporary too – just so I could get version 1 out – that will be lifted in future versions too.
Greg –
Do you have a demo site set up so I can check this plugin out more? Specifically I am interested in what happens with the buy product button.
Dave Hilditch –
You can see an example here: http://www.droners.co.uk/product/hubsan-x4-with-camera/
Leo (verified owner) –
Hey there! Just an idea. How about something like auto-price adjuster according to our defined competitor’s site?
So let’s say I’m selling a DJI drone and my competitor dropped his price, then the plugin auto adjusts unless his price is below my reserve price. What do you think?
Leo (verified owner) –
Hey Dave! Any news?
Dave Hilditch –
Hi Leo – it’s a neat idea but sounds very dangerous! I take it you’re dropshipping? It’s not something I’m planning for this plugin but it’s something I *could* code up for you if you wish – send a quote request if you want this custom code.
Leo (verified owner) –
Hey David, am doing partial drop shipping until we get enough monthly sales to hold stocks. Btw, I tried purchasing the plugin, but found that VAT is included, even though I’m a Malaysian based in Malaysia 🙁
Leo (verified owner) –
Also, have you heard of Riseforums? Come join us for discussions, ideas and the likes. It’s by Kevin Muldoon
Dave Hilditch –
That’s odd – it’s definitely not set up like that – were you possibly on a UK VPN?
Leo (verified owner) –
Hey Dave! I’ve purchased the plugin. Other than creating external/affiliate products, how about something like this for those who want to sell via their shop but also earn via affiliate programs?
http://www.woothemes.com/products/product-retailers/
Dave Hilditch –
Yeah – this is where I see this plugin going. I want it to be able to go through your entire product list and automatically go find affiliate links from ebay/amazon/datafeedr so it can do the price comparison.
Shai Polinovski (verified owner) –
Hello,
I was wondering if you have created a CSV import so i wouldnt have to add a links to each item. I can crawl for links and then add it to a CSV or XML for bulk uploading.
Dave Hilditch –
That’s a good idea – it would be possible to import this data using WP All Import – I’ll add it to my list and try and get a tutorial on this out.
Shai Polinovski (verified owner) –
One More thing. A nice feature would be if it would grab those prices once a day or once a week. I usually get a lot of traffic i feel this would be too much for the webhosting service i currently have.
Dave Hilditch –
Agreed – I’m adding a caching system to cache the prices for X hours before it will automatically update again.
Quentin –
Hello,
Is this tool can be used on multilingual ? I mean can we chose which price/product to display based on the ip of the user ?
Can any price from any website be reference or does it need to be part of an affiliate network ?
Thank you
Dave Hilditch –
It doesn’t currently let you choose which products to display based on the IP of the user, BUT you can price compare across multilingual websites – e.g. you can price compare Amazon.com vs Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr etc.
Ivan –
Hi Dave, do you have any update as to when it will be possible to run a cURL on the affiliate link to get the destination URL (save it) then use this for price comparison? I would like to use your price comparison plug-in but not with Skimlinks (as their coverage is very low in the Netherlands).
Dave Hilditch –
I have a bunch of work I’m lining up on the price comparison plugin – it’ll hopefully be completed in June including the ability to do price comparison against any products from any source, not just skimlinks.
Jasper –
When i trying install this plugin:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘[‘, expecting ‘)’ in /public_html/wp-content/plugins/price-comparison/wordpress-price-comparison.php on line 118
Mario –
Hi Dave,
I’ve downloaded a free version of the plugin to give it a test as I’m about to build a price comparison website. I do have some questions regarding the premium version of the plugin and some features that would be nice to have.
1. What features does the premium version offers?
2. How about integrating some styling options in the plugin option panel? Currently, the widget integrates on the top of the product section just below the price. It would be nice to display it below the reviews section in the full width or in any other place that user prefers.
3. In my case, I would like to use the plugin without any affiliate association (Skimlink). Just plain: “You can also buy at: ” and manually enter direct link to the stores
4. CSS selectors works on some pages, but I tried at least 20 local online stores and I wasn’t able to pull the price from any of them as on many websites “Price” doesn’t have it’s own class. Or is it just made to work with the stores you have predefined? As I see it fetches the prices if they are set to GBP.
5. Following #4, it would be nice to have an option to manually enter the price from the specific store, if automatic pull fails.
6. Even when I delete some of the predefined stores (eg. eBay) from the list, it still shows up in the product page.
I really like the plugin and I’m very much into purchase but those are the things that makes me unsure at this point. Hope you can provide some answers. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Jack –
I agree with Mario on most of the points as they are what I would like to see.
In my case I have a very niche site where there are perhaps 100 or so online retailers at the moment. Most if not all are not linked to any affiliate network but I would still like to pull prices from them.
Also in my case I am not selling anything, I am just providing a service to the community by showing the latest (best) best pricing from these e-tailers.
Again as Mario suggested a few different display options would be great. Say a page wide multi column (multi detail), product picture (yes or no), etc. etc.
Also to help out a product mapping tool when the script cant pull pricing from the page (website) that was specified.
Anyhow, I’m in if we can get this on board, im sure most of it is done already.
Jack –
Also forgot to mention, that say there is no affiliate link or id for a particular merchant right now and you’re running it without such a link, the option to add a affiliate link (id) when it becomes available (when the merchants say creates such a program).
Sarvesh –
I have installed the wordpress free plugin on my site, but its looking that the plugin is now not supporting or is not compatible with the wordpress version. There is a problem of ‘save’ button not working, because of which i am unable to save my skimlinks id on plugin settings page, and because of which the whole plugin is of no use at the moment.
I think there is a definite need of a new version to be released as soon as possible for this great plugin.
Erick –
Any idea when (or if) a version will be released where you don’t have to use SkimLinks?
This is exactly what I need but I’m not going to share 25% of earnings with SkimLinks!
Jack –
Any news on this, haven’t heard from the dev in about a month now
Jo –
When is there going to be an update for this plugin please?.
If you have a large website it is rather a slow process of doing this by hand, copy & paste:
“Simply paste in up to 4 URLs for pages where your users could buy this product and the plugin takes care of the rest”
Auto-populate price comparison fields for eBay and Amazon.
Market-aware price comparison – check prices from your users local stores.
Integrated affiliate basket – keep users on your site longer and give them a far better experience by allowing them to add each product into their basket. When it comes time to checkout, price comparison will run again to offer them the best links for their products.
jay –
I think this is a nice idea
when is there a new update?
Dave Hilditch –
Beginning of Feb there will be an update, first week of February
bj choi –
hi dave, it’s a presales question.
i have a interest about make a price comparison site. with datafeedr .
i saw you’ve said this plugin will be updated this february . is it done??
and… can this work with datafeedr ? not with skimlink
Dave Hilditch –
Hi – I’m aiming for deployment of the upgraded price comparison plugin soon. It will work with any affiliate source, i.e. not just skimlinks. It’s being held up by other plugins I’m releasing simultaneously – a super fast filters plugin, an auto-attributes plugin, an ajax product search plugin and an affiliate basket plugin as well as a fast affiliate theme. What I intend to do is release upgrades to the price comparison plugin to those who have already purchased first, let them review it and then I’ll release all of these plugins at the same time to the general public in early March.
Jack –
Excited about the update. Is it almost here?
Dave Hilditch –
Yes – it’s almost here. Not quite the first week of February, but should be out next week.
judo –
i was looking for your plugin for longtime
when is your plugin update??
is it compatible with datafeedr?
and which is getting more benefits of purchasing your plugin now or after your update??
and final question is.. i heard you have plan to launch new hhvm ansible. is it better than current mercury stack??
Jerry –
Hi Dave,
I am interested in getting the early buyer bonus but before buying I have a question.
I tried the free version of the plugin but this one is not receiving the price info for my product. I am not using it with skimlinks but a random site.
Your plugin is exactly what I need, but it needs to work without a skimlinks affiliate account.
Can you please confirm this? And when will you release the plugin?
Dave Hilditch –
Hi – I have a bunch of plugins I’m launching early March and the new price comparison pro plugin (which doesn’t require skimlinks) is part of that release.
If you can wait until then you’ll get a great solution. If you’re interested, I can also give you early access if you’re willing to put up with some bugs and provide me useful feedback?
Jack –
I’d be up for that…shoot me a mail on how to get rolling with it I can help you track bugs down.
Jack –
Forgot to mention in my previous posts. The last iteration of the script (free version) had a very hard time pulling prices from Shopify stores. Would it be possible to fix that. Thanks
Jonas –
Hi,
Looks like a best and probably the only one simple solution. But there is one issue: design is not very attractive, this will have an impact on conversions. If design would look something like this(unfortunately it’s not responsive): http://demo.powerthemes.club/fbar/?theme=Compare
I would say this plugin would be The One…
John Allsopp –
Hi, just stumbled across this as I have a real need for this type of plugin. The droners.co.uk website is not working so i couldn’t see a demo install – do you have another?
Specifically i was wondering what happens on WooCommerce archive pages (shop/category pages) – what does the price show there (cheapest/none/all)?
Thanks
Cleopatra –
Hi, I want to get this plugin, but because of my country and the fact that eBay and Amazon products dont move here…. I would like to be able to manually input my affiliate links for each of the sites, and example of these sites are Jumia.com.ng, konga.com amongst others…
And it would be nice if i could decide which position the plugin stays on my site…..
Dave Hilditch –
Hi – there’s an overdue upgrade due out imminently – probably another couple of weeks before release. It will let you manually add affiliate links of your own as well as price comparison between products already in your database.
cleopatra –
hi, i want to get this plugin, it would be nice if i can manually input my affiliate links without the help of other plugins, as my affiliates doesn”t include amazon or any of that.
it would also be nice if there could be a search button where users can search products and it will be compared for them perhaps in a new tab like dohop.com (a flight comparison example).
Dave Hilditch –
Hi – an overdue upgrade is coming out – originally slated for early/mid-march, it’ll be out in April. It lets you compare products you already have in your database, plus with the existing functionality you can insert direct affiliate links on a per-product basis.
Adam –
Hi Dave,
Any sign of the update yet? I’d be interested in buying the pro version but based on my usage of the free version I’m struggling bringing prices in from non skimlinks sites.
Dave Hilditch –
The update is out today – there is a bug in the automatic updates so please reply to your order email and I’ll email you the latest copy
Adam –
Its now May, can you give an update on the upgrade? Y
Dave Hilditch –
The update is now out.
Anthony –
Hi Dave
I have a quick question about your plugin.
Can it be used to just check the main price for each product, without having the comparison table part with multiple retailers and prices?
Thanks!
Dave Hilditch –
It is what it is at the moment – there are so many suggestions for this plugin it’s unbelievable! I can’t morph it into solving EVERYTHING. There’s an update out today which adds caching, lets you use your own affiliate networks (fallback to Skimlinks if you have the ID entered) and fixes display issues – e.g. if you only use 1 URL, it will only show that 1, or if you enter no URLs for a product, the box won’t display now.
Damian –
When is the update ?
Dave Hilditch –
Updated today – caching added, you can use your own affiliates, plus display issues fixed
Dave Hilditch –
Updated
adie (verified owner) –
Would love to know when this plugin will be officially updated, i am sure every customer is feeling the same, April? , May ? june? july?
Dave Hilditch –
Sorry about the delay – I tried to put too much in it and it became cumbersome. I’ve released an update today with hopefully what everyone is looking for, although definitely not everything I had planned.
Dave Hilditch –
Update released
Jerry –
Hello Dave,
Any news when you will release this update? It is a great product you have with great potential, but you have to release it first.
Dave Hilditch –
Update released
Chris –
Hello Dave,
Any news when you will release this update?
Dave Hilditch –
Update released today – blog article to follow shortly.
Dave Hilditch –
Update released
Youri –
Update was to be out in March. (After a year of waiting for an update). Looks like a dead project.
Dave Hilditch –
Update released today. I’d been really trying to add a lot to it, but in the end to get the update out that most people wanted I’ve gone with an interim update to keep the majority happy.