Price Comparison?

Hello,

I have a completely prospective question regarding the development of a price comparison script.

How much would such a script cost, in the same vein as www.confused.com and www.moneysupermarket.com.

I know this is vague, but a brief quotation would be appreciated.

Sites like these need a complete business plan and concept, before even writing one single piece of code.

It’s not just a "script". You’ll need to think about how to attract insurers / sellers / financial institutions to give you their data in the first place. You need to think how you will be collecting data and make sure they’re correct and always up-to-date. You need to decide which "items" (products/services/categories) you want to include.

Here’s a hint: MSM has 500 employees
http://corporate.moneysupermarket.com/mony/company/keyfacts/

Quote from: ganeshXL at Mar 17, 2008, 07:32 AM

Sites like these need a complete business plan and concept, before even writing one single piece of code.

It’s not just a "script". You’ll need to think about how to attract insurers / sellers / financial institutions to give you their data in the first place. You need to think how you will be collecting data and make sure they’re correct and always up-to-date. You need to decide which "items" (products/services/categories) you want to include.

Here’s a hint: MSM has 500 employees
http://corporate.moneysupermarket.com/mony/company/keyfacts/

Absolutely, I agree 100%.

This is just an area the company I work for wants to dabble in. We are just after an expandible system with the basics in place.

The functionality is what we are after as opposed to the marketing. The functionality is fairly consistent throughout all of these and it is this which we wish to replicate.

Any advice/estimates would be appreciated (estimates in time not money).

I suppose this doesn’t really answer your question, but I worked for Dealtime.com (before they became Shopping.com) for three years as they were starting up, and I wouldn’t touch this with a 10-foot pole. This is just based on my experience, YMMV.

Quote from: sottwell at Mar 17, 2008, 11:21 AM

I suppose this doesn’t really answer your question, but I worked for Dealtime.com (before they became Shopping.com) for three years as they were starting up, and I wouldn’t touch this with a 10-foot pole. This is just based on my experience, YMMV.

Okay thanks; I’m guessing this would be a general consensus amongst most experienced developers.

Would this be for commercial reasons or web development reasons that you wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole? Surely if such an application was developed with the scalability that we now know is required (due to the success of other comparison sites) it would be straightforward? Especially if ongoing maintenence and expansion was handled inhouse?