Online shopping is a rage now. The main thing that attracts the customers sitting at home are the discounts that they get sitting at home. However, the prices in the online “shopping centers” are always fluctuating. Unlike in real life, you do not have big banners and advertisements letting you know about the upcoming sale or the sudden dip in price. The only option open seems to be the most annoying one- which is checking all the websites daily. This, however, is humanly impossible. However, if you are also suffering from the same distress, then in this situation, Pricify is your much needed dose of relief for you.
What is Pricify?
In layman’s term, Pricify.com is a website that allows all the shopaholics (like us) to watch prices of the products on various stores. That is not all, the best part is that when the prices drop, they notify you via email or Facebook. Pricify also helps you discover products that are liked by your friends and others! That’s not it, when a product you are monitoring reaches the all time lowest price since the time you started monitoring it, Pricify will send you a separate email alerting you about the same!
The Pricify team
Pricify has a small but tightly knit team, the entire product is built and managed in house. Kiran and Ajay have previously co-founded GoVisually.com – a visual collaboration tool for designers that’s seen good traction in the last 12 months.
Kiran Kumar is the CEO and Co- founder, who is based in Sydney, Australia and heads up strategy for Pricify.Kiran is involved in everything from strategy, PR, marketing and Growth Hacking for user acquisition. Ajay who is the CTO and the co founder is based in Bangalore and runs the product development team and heads the engineering team. Ajay is also the UX and Interaction design strategist, plus the chief UI designer.
How does Pricify work?
Pricify lets you “watch price” of products you love from almost ANY online retailer around the world. As new sites come up, Pricify automatically learns and supports the site on the fly.
When retailers discount or drop prices, the users registered with the website are instantly notified via Email or Facebook. In addition to notifying when products go on sale, Pricify is also a fantastic discovery platform for exciting new products.
Pricify currently supports hundred’s of sites from Amazon, Etsy, Asos to popular sites in India such as FlipKart and Jabong. To know all the websites that Pricify support, please refer- http://www.pricify.com/supported
Pricify works using a Chrome extension that strategically embeds a “watch price” button right below the price of a product enabling the user a seamless experience.
More about the Chrome Extension
The most exciting feature of pricify is its ability to create a seamless experience by injecting a call to action to “watch prices” without taking away from the overall brand experience.
As can be seen in the above image, the developers have strategically placed a button within Forever21.com without affecting the overall brand.The “watch price” button was iterated extensively before being released to market. The button is always strategically placed below the price of a product.
The developers have taken note of this behavior and ask the consumer a simple question “price too high?”, if the consumer loves the product and feels its too high in price they then click the “watch price” button which is placed below “price too high”. On unsupported sites, consumers can still watch the price by simply clicking the extension next to the address bar.
You can watch the extension in action here:
The journey so far
Pricify was opened to private beta in the end of September to a select few consumers, by mid of October they were in public beta. They have been driving a steady stream of users over the last 6 weeks and now starting to see exponential growth, specially after the recent release of the Chrome Extension. They are also seeking constant feedback and examining user behaviour, interactions, patterns and aggressively optimizing the product on a daily basis.
Key Challenges
As the team began the journey, they took a Lean Startup approach to Customer Discovery and Validation by surveying friends, family and acquaintances about their online shopping patterns, challenges and a thorough research was done on how important a role pricing played in their purchasing decisions.
One of the key challenges which was faced by the developers was to create a tool that “just works”. Almost all online retailers support multiple currencies, and users see prices in their local currency or a currency of their choice. Pricify allows users to watch prices in the currency of their choice,and the feed is personalized to their locale.
Future Plans
Currently the entire team is working on allowing users to create ‘collections’, to help personalize their Pricify and sort their added or monitored products. They are also working on a mobile app to make Pricify available “on the go”.
‘Collections’ is to roll out by end of this year, and the mobile app should be available in the app store by the first week of March 2014
On the long term, they plan to introduce better features to better engage the user and add further value.
From a retail side, the developers are building a powerful re-targeting platform to engage users at the right location, at the right price point to optimize conversions and sales.
TTP’s take on Pricify
Given that mostly people now resort to online shopping, and with umpteen online shopping sites cropping up, a platform like Pricify is very helpful indeed! However, one thing that the consumers need to bear in mind is that Pricify is not a price comparison engine. They focus on the brands selling their products under their own brand umbrella. Pricify is extremely user friendly and also helps saving a lot of time. They have built a strong team in a very short span of time and with the upcoming features that they have in their mind, this is surely going to be the “to go” website for all the shopaholics! We wish the Pricify team all the best!
