PriceInspector Web Site
Matthew founded this uniquely branded Start-Up Price Comparison Company in 2007, and proceeded to manage it full time from mid-2009 to 2012/13. The original premise was to achieve 1% of the existing affiliate market worth around 150 million pounds; over a 4-5 year period. It did not succeed in this, despite a very strong start. Critical mass was not reached in time to grow the company as envisaged. PriceInspector was one of the first Comparison Sites to offer a Login, Search History and Changing Price Alerts. Its planned USP of crowd sourced pricing (you would be the PriceInspector) never materialised as a Business Model change was brutally enforced with Googles release of Panda / Penguin updates in early 2010. Matthew was involved in ever aspect of the business with a strong focus on the Technical side. This project is sadly, no longer live and viewable.
- Imaginately Branded
- Canine Sidekick - Sherlock Bones!
Architecture
The Technical side of the business can be considered a success as it reached its objective to scale with the business growth, reaching 20 million products for the USA version of the system.
Matthew achieved the Full architecture, design and implementation using .NET 2-4+, c#, N-Tier, ORM and Web Forms (as originally designed in 2007 pre-MVC).
High Quality Graphic Design, HTML, CSS Front End and SEO was produced by 3rd Parties.
Back end Admin Solution uses ASP.NET Ajax Telerik Devcraft for rapid development.
Collaborate with Web Designer / 3rd party Contractors to direct overall creative branding of the site.
Backend Data Import solution uses Windows Forms and nightly XML / CSV data feed aggregation.
SQL Server 2005/2008 Full Text Index and Search Parser for UK dealing with over 12.5 million searchable records (and up to 20 million for USA version).
Strong Use of LLBLGEN 2-3.5+ Tier Code generation, for improved implementation speed and reliability.
This design and usage was far in advance of the widespread usage of ORM toolsets such as Entity Framework.
SEO URL rewriting, Google Analytics, SiteMaps and other search engine optimization techniques used throughout site.
Social promotion management and techniques and Usage across Facebook, Twitter …
- Server 2008 Full Text
- LLBLGen Pro 2.0+
- ASP.NET, WebForms, IIS 7, .NET 3.5+, Linq
- Windows 2003-2008 Dedicated Server
Statistics
- 300,000 search queries per day at peak
- Obsfucated code on Live Site / Server
- From 2 to 20 million products
- 50 GB Compressed Database
- 200,000+ monthly page visits at peak
Fact: PriceInspector originally started out with around 2 million compared products and scaled to over 20 million for the USA Version.
2014 © Matthew Waring. All Rights Reserved.