A View on View :: Bell Working on Shopping Engine

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the blog - examines the world of telecom and technology from a distinctly Canadian perspective.

the person - lives in Toronto, CA with his wife and three children, and works as director of community with PlanetEye Inc.

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Bell Working on Shopping Engine

by Mark Evans on Tue 18 Jul 2006 06:56 AM EDT | Permanent Link

Bell Canada plans to enter the comparison-shopping engine business next year with a service called Bell Agora. Bell has been looking at different technolgy platforms and talking with local online retailers (an easy assignment given there aren't that many of them, to be honest). Maybe Bell has come up with a way to make a shopping engine work that Google/Froogle has failed to figure out. One of Canada's only shopping engines is Calgary-based Shoptoit.com, which recently celebrated its first anniversary.

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Comments

Re: Bell Working on Shopping Engine

by Jules on Tue 18 Jul 2006 07:48 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

I like shoptoit.ca... the trick is, there simply aren't enough Canadian Retailers on line. Bell can add all the bells and whistles they like to a comparison application, but until there are actual Canadian Retailers to *compare* with, it can't possibly fly. Perhaps they may also want to strengthen another arm, and convince some of the outstanding Canadian Retailers to get cracking on their digital storefronts.

Even shoptoit.ca must be looking around, wondering what else there is in the Canadian on-line marketspace to compare. Folks only need to compare CD racks so many times. ;-)

-jules

Re: Bell Working on Shopping Engine

by Sean on Tue 18 Jul 2006 09:01 AM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

I think we're back to the old Canadian chicken-and-egg theory in online development. Retailers won't climb on board unless functionality and usability are evident, and developers won't create robust features unless demand is there.

I have looked at shoptoit.ca and can't say that I'm particularly impressed. They have a couple of nice bells and whistles, but beyond being a price comparison service, there's not much there. There is so much room to do interesting things in online retail and we are so far behind.

Re: Bell Working on Shopping Engine

by Anonymous on Tue 18 Jul 2006 03:36 PM EDT | Permanent Link

There's actually a couple more shopping search engines, including one that Bell is already promoting through their MSN Sympatico portal:

http://shopping.sympatico.msn.ca/

Then there's PriceGrabber.ca, and the one I work for, PriceCanada.com. It's good to see Bell taking this segment more seriously though and maybe they'll be able to help push more retailers to work with comparison shopping engines.

Re: Re: Bell Working on Shopping Engine

by Anonymous on Wed 26 Jul 2006 03:03 PM EDT | Permanent Link

Pricegrabber's name shouldn't just go breezing by like that. I know they are huge in the USA, via their .com site. Their .ca has been steadily climbing as well! It's actually pretty impressive given the lack of abundance in online retailers in Canada versus the USA. They've been around since 1999 and recently expanding in Canada. I wonder how and why so many shopping comparison engines are jumping into the game when there are such big names vying for that #1 spot already!

Re: Bell Working on Shopping Engine

by Anonymous on Wed 19 Jul 2006 09:53 AM EDT | Permanent Link

Following up on the MSN-Sympatico alliance, why is Bell is not considering using Windows Live Shopping instead of Agora?

Re: Bell Working on Shopping Engine

by Anonymous on Thu 20 Jul 2006 01:05 PM EDT | Permanent Link

Sympatico.msn.ca is using a compilation of data from Shoptoit.ca, pricegrabber.ca and independant merchants like Avon.
I've read lots of articles online about Canadian retailers and their reluctance to sell online. For many they see the costs of getting started not to be worth it (these people are mad). I also see the ones that are up with ecommerce listing in US dollars only and targetting Americans because they see the value of reaching the US population to be worth more than reaching Canadians.

Re: Re: Bell Working on Shopping Engine

by Anonymous on Thu 28 Feb 2008 04:06 AM EST | Permanent Link

Deal-eh.ca is also a great place to compare prices in canada. Canada Online Shopping - The leading comparison shopping site in Canada. Deal-eh is designed exclusively for Canadians, containing Canadian retailers and prices where consumers can shop online smartly.

Re: Bell Working on Shopping Engine

by Anonymous on Thu 20 Jul 2006 03:23 PM EDT | Permanent Link

The number of merchants on Shoptoit.ca has been steadily increasing over the past year. I have noticed new big players such as amazon.ca and buy.com (now in Canada) who have appeared.

Also, don't forget about pricecanada.com - they are more of a niche search engine catering to only computers/electronics shoppers, but could easily expand in the future.

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\n"; #File retrieval failed - exiting function pass back old values. return $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); } #TODO - Replace with file retrieval $ad_params = $this->GetParameters($AdFilePath); $new_ad_params = $this->_newRowPosition($ad_params); #TODO - Add SlidingExpiration for REFRESH Dates that dont change # Example: REFRESH DATE permanently affixed to 2 days prior, every 30sec refresh will attempt a new page download # Temp Solution is to UPDATE FILE_DATE with AD_ROTATE_DATE $new_ad_params["AD_FILEDATE"] = $new_ad_params["AD_ROTATEDATE"]; #echo "Writing new ad
\n"; $this->_updateAdFileParameters($AdFilePath, $new_ad_params); #echo "Returning updated parameters
\n"; return $new_ad_params; } } /** BEGIN Backwards Compatibility Routines */ if (! function_exists('array_combine')) { function array_combine($keys, $values) { foreach($keys as $key) $out[$key] = array_shift($values); return $out; } } if (!function_exists('fputcsv')) { function fputcsv($filePointer, $dataArray, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { // Write a line to a file // $filePointer = the file resource to write to // $dataArray = the data to write out // $delimeter = the field separator // Build the string $string = ""; // No leading delimiter $writeDelimiter = FALSE; foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) { // Replaces a double quote with two double quotes $dataElement=str_replace("\"", "\"\"", $dataElement); // Adds a delimiter before each field (except the first) if($writeDelimiter) $string .= $delimiter; // Encloses each field with $enclosure and adds it to the string $string .= $enclosure . $dataElement . $enclosure; // Delimiters are used every time except the first. $writeDelimiter = TRUE; } // end foreach($dataArray as $dataElement) // Append new line $string .= "\n"; // Write the string to the file return fwrite($filePointer,$string); } } if (!function_exists('fgetcsv')) { #TODO - Remove or ??? #Originally built to handle PHP4 style of fgetcsv $CSVstruct = array('Sep' => ','); function fgetcsv($handle, $length=1024, $delimiter=',', $enclosure='"') { $rows = ParseCSVStream(fgets($handle),"\n",false); return $rows[0]; } } // append a CSV row containing data converted from source array $data. Actual conversion is done by ExCSVRowWalker() function AppendCSVRow($data) { global $CSVstruct; array_walk($data,'ExCSVRowWalker'.($CSVstruct['OutEOL']=="\n"?'N':'')); $CSVstruct['File'] .= implode($CSVstruct['Sep'],$data).$CSVstruct['OutEOL']; } // returns an array of rows (each row being an array of columns) with parsed data. Returns false when conversion fails. Auto-detects Win/Mac/*nix newline characters, which are converted all to the sequence specified (defaults to $CSVstruct['OutEOL']) for your convenience. function ParseCSVStream($data, $newline="\n", $associative=true) { global $CSVstruct; $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\r","\n",str_replace("\r\n","\n",$data)); if ($newline!="\n") $CSVstruct['File'] = str_replace("\n",$newline,$CSVstruct['File']); $CSVstruct['OutEOL'] = $newline; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = 0; $CSVstruct['Error'] = false; $CSVstruct['EOF'] = false; $res = array(); if ($associative) { $titles = ParseCSVRow(); while (($row = ParseCSVRow())!==false) { $newa = array(); //possible optimization: might use array_combine() - requires PHP 5 for ($col = 0; $col0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',str_replace($CSVstruct['OutEOL'],"\n",$item)).'"'; } function ExCSVRowWalkerN(&$item) { if (!is_numeric($item)&&(strlen($item)>0)) $item = '"'.str_replace('"','""',$item).'"'; } // read next line from buffer. function RowInput() { global $CSVstruct; if ($CSVstruct['EOF']) { return ""; } else { $pos = strpos($CSVstruct['File'], $CSVstruct['OutEOL'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); if ($pos===false) { $CSVstruct['EOF'] = true; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$CSVstruct['Seek']); } else { $pos1 = $CSVstruct['Seek']; $CSVstruct['Seek'] = $pos+1; return substr($CSVstruct['File'],$pos1,$pos-$pos1); }; }; } /** Initialize ad_network variable */ $ad_logic = new ad_logic($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); $ad_network = $ad_logic->ad_network($PATH_TO_AD_FILE); ?>