Quote Comparison Similar to GoCompare etc?

[Ben3991]

Looking for people’s advice please.

Is anyone aware of a piece of web software/plugin for any of the main CMS’s that would be able to deliver instant quote comparisons in the same way as GoCompare etc?

I can do a bit of coding but nothing on this scale. Ideally looking for something pre-built that I can customise to my exact needs. There are lots of product comparison plugins for wordpress but nothing that mimics the function of GoCompare, MoneySupermarket etc. I would users to input their details, and based on information supplied by various local companies, provide a list of prices based on the info they have entered.

Thanks!

 

[Hades]

Are you writing gocomparethesupermeerkat.com?

You could use web scraping.

 

[Ben3991]

I fear the TV advert that would produce! But the principle is the same.

Unless I have the wrong understanding of Web Scraping, which is more than possible, that is a method of 'getting' data, not so much a system for building functionality?

 

[Hades]

Yes you fire a web request and then parse the output instead of displaying it. The server would parse the output and present it as a unified response back to the user.

 

[Hades]

To give a bit more of an explanation, the correct way would probably be to contact the various sites and ask whether they have an API that you can connect to. They may or may not want you to connect to them and there will be several factors such as whether they would see you as a competitor or whether you could drive additional traffic to them, the load you may put on their server, etc.

The likelihood is they probably won't want you to connect to them. So you could then consider web scraping as I outlined above. But those poses other issues. Firstly they might change their web pages occasionally (either intentionally to block you or just to add extra features themselves). Also, if they decide they don't want you web scraping then they could just block your server IP. So it's a bit of a risky business model if you are depending on it to drive revenue.

 

[Ben3991]

Thanks for your reply, however this site won’t be comparing insurance. These insurance sites were just examples, the data will be new, it doesn’t exist elsewhere yet.

What I was asking for is if anyone was aware of a system that exists that can allow me to input the data and has the functionality to then produce quotes based on information that the user gives.

So in your example, yes, I could scrape the data, but I need the system that I would then use to allow users to search for the best quote based on the data.

 

[touch]

You dont store the data. You'd use the API like @Hades mentioned to search the data based on the details the user entered.

In the insurance comparison example, the user would enter their details (age, make of car, etc) and this would get sent to the search function of each insurance company's API. The API returns a price and the comparison site orders the results by price and displays them. The comparison site doesn't hold a list of prices and search through them based on user input.

 

[Ben3991]

You dont store the data. You'd use the API like @Hades mentioned to search the data based on the details the user entered.

In the insurance comparison example, the user would enter their details (age, make of car, etc) and this would get sent to the search function of each insurance company's API. The API returns a price and the comparison site orders the results by price and displays them. The comparison site doesn't hold a list of prices and search through them based on user input.

Understood, however my dataset that I want to compare doesn't yet exist. It's a new idea. So either way, I would still need a system ready made (due to limit of my coding skills) that can accept data manually entered or gathered from an API or other source.

 

[touch]

Ok. In that case, it's a very simple thing to do.
If you're going to store all the data yourself and add it manually, all you need to do is search it and order by price.

Just guessing at what your data might be like, but you could probably do it very easily in WordPress:
-Add a custom field to posts for price and anything else you need.
-Use categories, tags and the free-text content box for data to search.
-Use the default search or an advanced search plugin to search based on user input.
-Order results by price.

You'd only need plugins for custom fields and maybe advanced searching. Maybe a little bit of custom code to get things working together but it would all be straight-forward stuff that you'd find code snippets online.

 

[Ben3991]

Ok. In that case, it's a very simple thing to do.
If you're going to store all the data yourself and add it manually, all you need to do is search it and order by price.

Just guessing at what your data might be like, but you could probably do it very easily in WordPress:
-Add a custom field to posts for price and anything else you need.
-Use categories, tags and the free-text content box for data to search.
-Use the default search or an advanced search plugin to search based on user input.
-Order results by price.

You'd only need plugins for custom fields and maybe advanced searching. Maybe a little bit of custom code to get things working together but it would all be straight-forward stuff that you'd find code snippets online.

Thanks for your suggestion. I had experimented with and 90% there but fell over when the price may change because of X input from the user. The best example I could give is car insurance price may change depending on the users age.


Custom fields works fine when the price never changes and you are effectively just searching a list, but don’t offer much functionality (that I could find) when needing to calculate prices based on inputs.

 

[touch]

Depending how complex your calculation will be, you might be able to store the base price and apply calculations to that based on user input. Or if it's a simpler, like a price for members and a price for non-members you could store both of those price fields.
I doubt there will be anything pre-made which does what you need though. You're either going to need to learn how to do it yourself or get somebody to do it for you.