ShoppingPath.com is launching the beta version of its shopping comparison service. A
preview of the ShoppingPath technology is located (for some reason) at the domain www.CrispyShop.com. What caught
my eye was its unique, ipod-like, product comparison UI. It’s a mix of Ajax and Flash and
is quite interesting… maybe even compelling. Here is a screenshot, taken from a TV example:
How this works is that you scroll along either the blue dotted line (representing
price) or the bottom line (showing product images), until you find a product you like
that fits your budget. The scrolling is very reminiscent of using the scroll wheel on
your iPod – it’s the same kind of interface theory of being able to scroll through
hundreds of options easily.
During the scrolling, you see details of the product – e.g. the Pioneer one in the
screenshot above – and there are many ways to filter your search by feature, via tabs at
the top and drop-down boxes to the left. One good example is sorting by ‘Diagonal Size’
(I assume the tabs are different for each product type). It displays something like
this:
The green dots signify TVs
available with larger screen sizes for a lower price.
After you’ve chosen a suitable product, it displays more details and popularity
measures:
There is plenty of data available if needed: product reviews, ratings, pricing details, etc.
Conclusion
There’s a lot going on in the interface, but it all seems to work very smoothly. The
green dots were probably the only thing that needed explanation when I tested it. Note
that the product also uses the Yahoo Shopping API.
Right now ShoppingPath is hoping to be a meta shopping engine, pointing users to
retailer websites to complete purchases. It’s not clear to me what the business model is,
other than contextual ads. Certainly this kind of technology would be superb at
Amazon.com, so long term an acquisition of the technology could be the play. Or maybe
white labelling it to various retail websites.
