We have just released our newly developed Android app, and you find it on Google Play

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=PriceMe.Android

The app is ideal if you want to access PriceMe on your Android device. You can find local stores and distances to all the major shops in New Zealand, read expert reviews and search for more than half a million products available online.

We’re looking forward to your feedback.

PriceMe Finance, a new financial comparison tool, just launched today! Compare credit cards, home loans, savings accounts, term deposits and more at priceme.co.nz/Finance.

We currently mainly list banks and finance companies, but will add other types of financial providers like building societies and trusts at a later stage. We’ll also expand the number of categories shortly, so that you can also compare health- and car insurance provides, KiwiSaver schemes etc. Our goal is to offer a comprehensive financial comparison site that enables Kiwis to find the best financial product or service available in New Zealand.

PriceMe Finance is currently running in beta mode, and we would greatly appreciate if you could let us know what you think.

We released a new version of PriceMe recently. Here are some of the highlight’s:

- Sharing of wishlists via email, FB and Twitter. Here’s my wishlist for example
http://www.priceme.co.nz/MyWishList/n_Henrik,s_b39ada70-7838-4549-86fa-3b5f72b8eeb2.aspx

- Retailer pop-up when clicking ‘Retailer Info’ or retailer reviews on the product page. Hence, no need for the user to navigate away from the product page to the retailer page to view reviews, store info  etc.
http://www.priceme.co.nz/Canon-EOS-1100D/p-884785963.aspx

- Simplified fees next to the Visit Shop buttons (only shipping fee is shown)

- Channel Partner Page
http://www.priceme.co.nz/RetailerCenter/ChannelPartners.aspx

- Plural handling for search. Searching for ‘watches’ now returns all watches (previously only ‘watch’ worked)
http://www.priceme.co.nz/search.aspx?q=seiko+watches

- Stock level also shown when expanding and clicking ‘View more offers’

- Buttons for ‘Add to compare list’ and ‘Get price alert’ on the product page

- Performance improvements for maps and brand pages.

As always, please let us know what you think of the new version and if you have some suggestions.

Happy New Year to all our users!

We just sent out our Christmas newsletter to retailers. It contains some news and announcements. Please check it out here:
http://www.priceme.co.nz/newsletter/Christmas-2011-Retailer-Newsletter.html

The PriceMe team wishes all retailers and users a Merry Christmas! Thanks all for your support in 2011!

The PriceMe layout has been revamped in the latest 4.2 version released earlier this week. The main change is that we now employ a fixed width layout instead of the liquid one that we previously used. It’s easier to control the layout of fixed width pages, and we can also ensure that the pages look OK on most devices including smartphones. This is basically how PriceMe looked like until May of 2008 (for those of you that have been using PriceMe for a while). There are still a few minor issues with the new layout that we’ll resolve shortly.

Some users have comment that the dark background colour isn’t a modern web colour and ‘difficult’ on the eye. We agree to some extent, and have tried to employ a  white background. The current design doesn’t fit a white background though, so we would have to change the design before moving to a white (or lighter) background colour.

The new version also contains other useful changes:

Product page

Order switched on the product page between the retailer logo column and the retailer product column. Most shopping comparison engines (CSE) site display listings this way and it makes it easier for users to find a suitable retailer. In addition, paying retailers get more exposure when the retailer logo is displayed to the left.

Search
More interesting search result page shown for searches having no matches. We removed the filtering options and also added some tips on how to refine/alter the search.

As always, please let us know directly what you think of the new layout and any other suggestions that you might have to improve PriceMe.

We released a new version of PriceMe.

Product page:
—————-
- Offers from the same retailer grouped together for products that have many retailers.The ’see all’ link has therefore been removed since it isn’t needed anymore.
- Product page status bar.

- Price alert of retailer on retailer product level.
- Add to wishlist (perfect just before Christmas).
- Review analysis for expert reviews (browse by rating).
- Larger font size for the price.

Catalog page:
—————-
- Moved the review stars up to the right of the product name (for the list and search views). This change saves some space and makes the catalog list pages more contact and interesting.

Compare page
—————–
- Comparison of reviews from the same review source, so that you can easily see if the same person or site rates products differently. Analysing differences in rating from the same sources is a great way to find good products.

Retailer page:
—————-
- Standardise look-and-feel for retailer pages.
- Retailer list sorted by popularity by default.

Please let us know what you think of the above changes. We look forward to hearing from you.

It has been a productive month for the PriceMe development team: yet another version packed with improvements was launched earlier this evening. Here are some of the new features:

Support for Google Login
You can now use your Gmail account to login to PriceMe. No need to create yet another account. Why don’t you check it out and add a review to PriceMe? A few months ago we added support for Facebook login.

Bug fix in pagination for the catalog pages
There was an issue with the pagination when sorting was applied.
For example, viewing mobile phones and sorting by price worked fine for the first page, but the sorting was lost when viewing the second page.

Nicer looking tabs on product pages
We added some more spaces between the tabs both on the home page and on the product pages.
The whole tab area is now clickable, not only the text on tab. This will hopefully make it easier to navigate using the different tabs.

Like Us on Facebook campaign
We now provide easy access to our Facebook page from the product pages (please see the right column). Like us on Facebook, and you’ll enter a draw to win $100 every month.

Popularity cloud for related categories
You can now easily find the most popular and related categories for a particular brand by viewing our cloud. Popular categories are display in larger font size. The popularity is based on the number of views the last thirty days.

Performance improvement for price history page
We now load the number of retailers for the price history page separately from the price history graph. First the price history graph is loaded using Ajax so that users can view the most important information first, and then a second Ajax call retrieves the number of retailers.
Simplified registration page
Many PriceMe users have requested us to simplify the registration process. We listened, and removed a few fields. The only fields required are first name, email address and a password.

http://www.priceme.co.nz/Register2.aspx

Exciting news this morning: PriceMe is a Web Awards finalist!

We made it into the final round in the best shopping site category. Meet the finalists here:

mightyape.co.nz
priceme.co.nz
pricespy.co.nz
thewarehouse.co.nz
toggle.co.nz

The winner will be announced on the 25th of August.

We’re really happy and proud of making it to the finals, and would like to thank everyone that supported us! Big thanks!

Here’s our new Facebook page:

Please like us on Facebook. We’ll regularly post news, deals and other shopping info. Please share your thoughts and add a comment.

The PriceMe team has been hard at work recently. We just released some minor updates. Here’s a brief summary of the latest updates:

1. Facebook like buttons on most pages
You’ll find the Facebook like button including a count next to the product names and category names. Liking a product on PriceMe helps you to inform your friends of what kind of products you’re interested in or like. The product name, image and a product link is added to your Facebook wall. Please note that you need to login to Facebook to use this feature.

2. User reviews updates

• The most recent review is probably the most relevant one and it makes sense to list it at the top for products that have multiple reviews.
• Bug in formatting for reviews. Empty lines used in the reviews weren’t display on the product page, which made the user reviews look really unfriendly. We have now fixed this bug, and the formatting looks a lot better after this change.

3. Performance improvements
The price history tab has been loading increasingly slowly due to duplicate data being stored. We have now cleaned up the price history table in the database and duplicate data aren’t stored anymore. Furthermore, we optimised the code that loads the graph. The page load time has been reduced, but it’s still rather slow we think so will further optimise it in our next release.

4. Various minor UI changes

We fixed/updated 5 different user interface issues.

5. Fixed buying guide links

Some of the buying guide links to Consumer.org.nz were outdated and we have now updated all links. Please let us know if there’s still an issue.