AWS News Blog
Secret Prices
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I met Marc, the developer of Secret Prices, at Mashup Camp last week. Marc was eager to show me his site, and I found it quite interesting.
Secret Prices is a comparison shopping tool. You can compare product prices across multiple vendors in 18 different categories including books, movies, music, electronics, and event tickets. The results are shown in a very readable tabular format and there’s an inline shipping cost calculator, so that you can compare the true, as-shipped cost from each vendor. The Amazon Marketplace is well represented.
True to the site’s name, there’s a list of secret deals and also a so-called “tag cloud” of coupons. You can post any product to Digg or to Delicio.us.
Interestingly enough, Marc told me that the lowest priced vendor doesn’t always get the sale. There’s a strong preference toward Amazon among his user base. That’s good to hear, and there are undoubtedly many reasons for this. I’ll take a guess at a few. First, people are loathe to create yet another online account. Second, they would like to deal with a known entity where possible. Third, they have probably had some positive experiences with Amazon in the past — an easy shopping and buying experience, on-time shipping, and responsive customer service. Competing on price is almost too easy; doing a good job in these other areas requires vision, patience and a continued investment.
Nice work, Marc!
— Jeff;
Update 1: This post was edited to correct the name of the developer. His name is Mark, not John (sorry, Mark). Thanks to Nasser of Frucall for pointing this out.
Update 2: And he spells it Marc, too!