In order to sell your products successfully as an online retailer, you need one thing above all else: visibility. Placing your products on various price comparison portals is an effective way to generate more traffic for your offers. With over 30 million customers per month, idealo is one of the largest platforms of its kind and should be the first port of call if you want to list your products on a price comparison portal. In this article, we explain how to link idealo and Shopify and why this symbiosis makes sense.
Table of contents
As the first Shopify Plus agency in Germany, Latori has already migrated many shops to Shopify or set up completely new stores. We would also be happy to support your project. Simply get in touch with us!
What is idealo?
Idealo is one of the leading price comparison platforms in Germany and many other European countries. Although the Berlin portal can also be used to compare flights, hotels and car hire prices, the comparison of shopping items in e-commerce is still idealo's core competence. Customers can compare millions of products from the categories of electronics, sport & outdoor, home & garden, fashion & accessories and many more and receive a retailer overview, information on price trends, etc. for each item. The fact that the portal is a popular point of contact for product searches gives you as a retailer the opportunity to position your products prominently.
How does idealo work?
If you want to use idealo, you need a free idealo Business Account. Your offers can be made available for price comparison with the help of a data feed. When a visitor calls up a specific product, they receive an overview of retailers who sell the item, as well as information on the sales price, delivery times, etc. The portal takes this data from your idealo feed specifications.
Idealo costs
Setting up an idealo Business account is free of charge and there is no monthly basic fee. Instead, payment is based on a CPC model (CPC = cost per click). This means that costs are incurred for every click on an offer - regardless of whether a sale is ultimately realised or not. The CPC is currently EUR 0.56 for most products. However, there are exceptions.
Tyres: 0.64 EUR
Rims: 0.64 EUR
Pet supplies: 0.59 EUR
Projector: 0,59 EUR
Reading tip: Not only price search engines are worthwhile for online retailers. Online marketplaces also boost sales. You can find the most important information in the linked article!
What are the advantages of selling products on idealo?
High willingness to buy
We already mentioned at the beginning that idealo achieves a high reach, which benefits you as a retailer. However, this fact becomes even more important when you consider which customers visit price comparison portals: searchers are usually already very far along in their decision-making process and probably already know which item they would like to purchase - you therefore no longer have to make an effort to convince potential customers of the benefits of your offer.
Less reliance on SEO
No site has more traffic to give away than Google. However, due to intense competition and constant changes to the search algorithm, it can be very difficult to achieve a good ranking in search engines in the long term. In addition, the effects of SEO measures are often only visible several months after the optimisation and the result is uncertain. With the help of idealo, you can generate more traffic in a short space of time and free yourself from dependence on SEO.
More brand awareness
Even if customers do not interact with your offer, they are made aware of your brand and learn of its existence. This can be a first touch point for subsequent sales, which - provided there is no click on your offer - is also free of charge for you.
Little maintenance effort
The integration of idealo and Shopify primarily means an initial effort: you should set up your idealo Shopify feed so that it automatically synchronises changes to your products. Once this has been achieved, product listings in the price search engine can be managed very easily.
Positive spillover
Idealo is highly committed to transparency and ensures a pleasant shopping experience through numerous filter and sorting functions. This gives the portal a good reputation among consumers and a high level of customer satisfaction. This reputation can be transferred to your offers if you link idealo and Shopify. This is also referred to as a spillover effect.
How to sell with Shopify on idealo
To be able to sell with Shopify via idealo, you need an idealo business account and an idealo feed that contains the specifications of your products. This includes, for example, prices, product descriptions and images.
Uploading the feed once as a CSV file to idealo is possible, but probably not useful. This is because changes to product information and prices are not automatically transferred to the comparison portal. For the technical connection, idealo therefore provides its own API interface PWS 2.0 (PWS = Partner Web Service).
If you do not want to connect idealo to Shopify independently, we recommend using a technology partner. There are several apps for synchronisation on the web, including the Shopify Feed Export or the Synesty app.
Reading tip: Latori customer B.O.C. uses Synesty for its listing on idealo. You can also read how we supported the bicycle and e-bike retailer in our reference section.
Create an Idealo feed for Shopify: What you need to consider
Target countries
If you want to create a product feed for idealo from the products in your Shopify shop, you must first determine the target country to which you want to sell. The listing is currently available in Germany, Austria, France, UK and Italy.
Feed attributes
Within a data feed, all properties of your products are recorded using so-called feed attributes. These include:
sku: Unique product ID
brand: Product brand
title: Product name
description: Product description
categoryPath: Product category
url: URL to the product in the shop
imageUrl: URL to the product image
price: Price
gtin: Global trade item number (if available)
deliveryCosts: Shipping costs
deliveryTime: Delivery time
Not every attribute is mandatory for a listing. Special requirements also apply to some attributes. For example, the product description may not be longer than 1,000 characters. You should take such requirements into account in order to avoid errors. The price comparison portal provides more information in a GitHub for CSV feed export.
Product types
Idealo is not equally suitable for every type of product. The comparison portal is always worthwhile if a price comparison actually takes place, i.e. if you sell items that are also sold by other retailers and have an ETIN, GTIN, ISBN or similar.
However, if you sell unique items that are only available from you and nowhere else, idealo is not the tool of choice.
B2C sales
Idealo is aimed at retailers who sell to end customers and are therefore active in the B2C sector. In contrast, the portal lacks B2B functions such as the creation of volume discounts and/or graduated prices and is less interesting for wholesalers.
Reading tip: Shopify Plus is ideal for setting up a B2B online shop. If you would like to find out more about this topic, we recommend this blog.
Conclusion
For online retailers, connecting their Shopify shop to idealo can definitely pay off, provided they sell the right products and are active in the portal's target regions. For the technical integration, you should either use the idealo API or a technology partner for Shopify and idealo.
If you need help with the integration of your shop, please contact us!
