Never miss a discount offer again
Online retailers are constantly experimenting with their prices. Prices are raised one week, only to offer the product at a discount the following week. Can't a tool be developed for this that automatically tracks this for you?
The concept of Pricepin grew out of a frustration of my own while shopping online: You buy something online and a week later you see that it's on sale or a discount promotion is being stunted. Keeping track of these promotions yourself just takes a lot of time.
This is where we wanted to develop a scalable solution so that you are up-to-date in real time with price changes of every possible product in every online shop. With Pricepin, you can track a product from virtually any online shop and the current price of the product is tracked daily. You will receive a push notification or an e-mail as soon as the price changes.
How does it work?
You can 'pin' prices from virtually any webshop via an extension in your browser, or on your smartphone via the share function. The price of your pinned product is then automatically updated in your personal 'wish list'. Through charts that are updated every day, you can easily see the current price of your pinned product. You get a notification as soon as the price has dropped. The app is available for browser, iOS and Android smartphones and tablets.
Our approach
Our developers started developing an algorithm to extract prices from product detail pages. With this algorithm, we started tracking about fifty products from different Dutch web shops and a Bitcoin index as a test.
We used the first interesting data that came out of this for a market research on interest in the product. When there appeared to be enthusiasm, we made it possible for users to PIN themselves. From there, the Android and iOS app soon followed.
The total amount paid for pinned products before the release of the app was nearly 45,000 euros. The average discount users received on a product was 14.2 percent. Up to 70 percent was saved on some clothing or electronics!
The release
After testing through, redesigning and tightening the branding, we launched Pricepin during the Uprise Startup Festival in Amsterdam. After the release, the concept was picked up by various media such as iCulture, Frankwatching, Product Hunt, Bright and Kassa.
And then it happened...
The first release had just taken place, user numbers kept rising and users had a positive experience. Unfortunately, the bookmarklet was suddenly no longer supported due to the addition of extra security features to several web shops. Reactions kept coming in that on all major (Dutch) webshops Pricepin no longer worked.
We were forced to program an extension for all browsers as soon as possible. We notice every day that browsers, web shops and software are constantly evolving, but that you always have to take into account a micro change in software again became crystal clear.
Conclusion
Setting up your own project requires full effort and commitment from the team, it is incredibly fun and educational to see how a new product is picked up after release, how users react and how your network broadens.