Analyzing the Customer Lifecycle of Price Aggregator – Price.ua

Ken Leaver (@Kenny516)November 2013

Price.ua is a price comparison of a wide range of products across top Ukrainian eCommerce sites

See price quotes from top Internet stores in Ukraine for specific products

Let’s Analyze Price.ua using Dave McClure’s AARRR Metrics

Why Bother? Because by analyzing the Customer Lifecycle of a Successful eCommerce Site You Get a Lot of Ideas about What YOU SHOULD DO!!

Contents

• Acquisition• Activation• Retention• Referral• Revenue

Around 300,000 visits per day

Organic Search is probably the key channel

• Price.ua has strong search engine rankings on a very wide set of keywords (likely 5000+)

• Many of these keywords are specific product models (eg. Samsung GT-N9000)

• Why such strong rankings? 1) Because they have unique, high-quality content on each product page. Some is user generated (reviews) and some is self-written.

2) Low bounce rate and high avg. time on site by visitors

3) Strong backlinks (see next page)

Price.ua has strong backlinks from some of Ukraine’s most well-known sites

• Unlike the infamous, Ostrovok.ru, Price.ua does not seem to purchase links but rather focuses on attracting high quality ones organically (via PR)

Pay Per Click Advertising

• Lots of competition for top position… Price.ua likely doesn’t earn enough margin to outbid eCommerce stores like Mobilluck.

Affiliates / Banner Networks

• Although I did not immediately see any Price.ua banners on affiliate sites they are almost certainly using affiliate networks to get traffic

Social Channels

• Price.ua uses all the standard social channels like FB, VK, Google+ and Twitter

• But these are probably not a very strong source of leads

• More likely activity is done mainly for SEO purposes

Alternative Channels

• Price.ua uses channels such as SlideShare to draw traffic from advertisers

Contents

• Acquisition• Activation• Retention• Referral• Revenue

Simple 3-Step Conversion Flow from Homepage

1st Step – Choose Product Category

2nd Step – Choose specific product

3rd Step – Get more details about product and see offers from several stores. Click on the one you like.

3rd Step Also Serves as Landing Pages for Product Searches

• Search for “Samsung GT-N9000 Galaxy” and this page will pop up in top 5 of search results

• Strong UI on this landing page: Picture of device, price, description, features, comments, and more. All on 1 page.

• Activation occurs when customer clicks on “Buy” for one of the e-stores that sell the device. Price.ua earns on that click.

Activation = Build Trust

Trust is built through allowing users to read comments of others that have bought the device.

Trust is also built by providing expert buying advice

Example of advice on how to choose a mobile telephone to purchase

If Price.ua doesn’t get you to click on an e-store than they try to activate you via “smart” recommendations

If you don’t click on “buy” on the phone you were searching for you see other “recommended” phones

Contents

• Acquisition• Activation• Retention• Referral• Revenue

Rassilka gets people back to the site

• Price.ua claims to have an email database of 260,000 users

• They are promoting items on their own site as well as selling advertising on it to others

The top 2 tools Price.ua is using for retention is likely Organic Search and Remarketing

• People that were on Price.ua site see banners on various Google.com and Google-affiliated sites like YouTube, etc.

• These banners will often show a special offer on the product that the user was looking at on Price.ua

• Since Price.ua has terrific SEO optimization the best way they get people coming back to the site is by staying on top of search results when the person searches for a product the next time

Retention is also obtained through unique useful tools

Gets customer to come back to Price.ua and check the chart before making a purchase

Tracking of the price of a Samsung Galaxy Phone

Another retention tool: Get an email as soon as a product hits a certain price point

Get an email as soon as the phone hits 800uah!

Contents

• Acquisition• Activation• Retention• Referral• Revenue

Word of Mouth

Providing a great user experience with a truly useful tool like a price comparison gets people to spread the word without pushing them.

Referral through social channels

The standard social network sharing tools are available on each page but are unlikely to be very effective

Contents

• Acquisition• Activation• Retention• Referral• Revenue

Advertising: lots of different options

Advertising: Pay for ‘extra’ features to stand out

The lowest price is not at the top… meaning Price.ua likely earns $ from this

Adding design features for money

• Charges money for adding style features to Internet stores that they host

Compare this to that

Commissions from P2P Sales

• Have a P2P marketplace where users can sell their items to each other.

• Given the poor UI this doesn’t appear to be a focus for them.

Earn revenue on selling credit

Notice that they are promoting a specific model as “Top”

Even try to do daily deals… but they do it quite poorly.

This is a standard “Groupon” style deal

Contents

• Acquisition• Activation• Retention• Referral• Revenue• That’s it. Thanks for your attention!!

Ken Leaver Dec. 2013