Further enhancements to the European Amazon shopper page

 

  • Further enhancements to the European Amazon shopper page

    Posted by Huw, 28 Aug 2012 13:56. Filed under Brickset.

    I've made a small change to the European Amazon Shopper (EAS) page that I hope will make it even more useful and enable you to buy with confidence and spot bargains even easier.

    For some time I've been recording the 'cheapest price ever' at each of the Amazon sites which is shown on the 'For Sale' tab of the set details pages. I've modified the database query that the EAS page is based on to enable it to be shown on that page too. However rather than clutter the table up and make it difficult to read I've used it to colour code the discount:

    • If the discount is greater than 25% AND the current price is the cheapest it's been at a particular Amazon, the price is highlighted in orange.

    In addition, hovering over a price will reveal what the 'cheapest price ever' actually was, if the current price is higher.

    Update: If you're logged in, you can now also fiilter the list to show only sets on your wanted list.

    I hope that's of use. If you have any other suggestions for improvements to the page, LMK...


    20 comments, latest one posted 9 months ago. (Commenting has ended on this article)
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Comments

Posted by CapnRex101 in United Kingdom, 28 Aug 2012 14:26

Another useful addition, I find it quite incredible how (relatively) quickly Brickset has expanded in to the definitive Lego information source! It is always good to know what sort of prices we can expect to see sets go on sale for while special offers are going on which I imagine one can quite easily extrapolate from this.

I also notice a very slight change in review formatting, which makes the 'helpful/unhelpful' voting section a bit more 'evident' for want of a better term! I believe this is new, but I could be wrong.

Posted by Graysmith in Sweden, 28 Aug 2012 14:32

I'd love to just be able to see the sets on my wanted list, like you can on the regular Amazon pages. Even if you can spot them by the colour coding, it'd be much easier if you could filter it.

Posted by TheLEGOmaniac in Denmark, 28 Aug 2012 15:15

Agree with @Graysmith, I know you can do that under the Bargain Watch pages, but it would defenitely be nice to have it as an option on the main EAS page.

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 28 Aug 2012 15:18

^^^ There'll be a few more tweaks tomorrow morning to the review presentation when I upload the new code.

^ and ^^ I do plan to add that. The reason I haven't yet is that the query to generate the table is quite 'expeinive' in terms of database performance so I cache the data for 10 minutes so the query isn't run every time the page is loaded. If I were to request only sets on your wanted list it wouldn't be possible to cache it, because the results would be different for everyone. However I am woking on it and hopefully I'll find a solution.

Posted by DwarfSleepy in Netherlands, 28 Aug 2012 15:20

The feature is great, I love it. I would like to see it updated more frequently, if that's not too much of a problem. I guess that's automated?

Posted by MorkMan in United States, 28 Aug 2012 16:22

Is there a page for the American Amazon shopper?

Posted by DwarfSleepy in Netherlands, 28 Aug 2012 16:43

^ Yes, it's called amazon.com, which is almost always the cheapest by far anyway :-)

Posted by erbse2000 in Germany, 28 Aug 2012 17:02

I love the new feature! Many thanks!

Posted by DrDaveWatford in United Kingdom, 28 Aug 2012 17:12

Morkman, U.S. folks should visit :

http://www.brickset.com/buy/us/Amazon/

Posted by joao in Portugal, 28 Aug 2012 17:34

I'm not understanding this... How does the highlight feature work? For the architecture sets in spain, farnsworth is highlighted at 44.18eur (26% below) but the hover says cheapest ever was 38.94eur.

7976, on the other hand is 28% below and cheapest ever in Italy. Is this the orange?

If it's shades of yellow then it's hard to tell them apart. Also, what does bold mean?

Anyway, this is awesome!

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 28 Aug 2012 18:18

If a price is not the 'cheapest ever' it's yellow, if it is and it's more than RRP-25%, it's orange.

Shades of yellow are used to indicate level of discount, although the 'cheapest ever' orange takes priority.

Bold indicates the cheapest current price at the 5 Amazons.

A green link indicates price is under RRP.

As clear as mud??

Posted by Branko in Australia, 28 Aug 2012 19:52

This is just awesome. I've been using an excel file to try to keep track of this kind of thing and you have just completely blown that out of the water.

THANK

YOU

now if only Amazon would get some consistency with their international shipping. For example 2 days ago I could order the new star-wars sets from Spain but not from Germany, today it's the other way around.

Posted by MorkMan in United States, 28 Aug 2012 23:31

Thanks @DrDaveWatford and @Huw. This is going to now be one of my home pages when I open my browser. Thank you!

Posted by icey in Denmark, 29 Aug 2012 03:49

How do I change my Currency from Norwegian to Danish? (moved recently)

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 29 Aug 2012 04:16

^ Click on the flag in the top corner.

'Show sets on your wanted list only' now implemented.

Posted by Mickitat in Germany, 29 Aug 2012 05:36

Great, thanks!

Posted by Fayries in France, 29 Aug 2012 06:16

'Show sets on your wanted list only' is the icing on the cake, thanks!

Now I can clearly see that my French Amazon Prime subscription is utterly useless as far as LEGO sets are concerned. Too bad Amazon Prime is not pan-European, especially since ordering stuff from Spain will probably end up being sent from Germany, France or the UK…

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 29 Aug 2012 07:47

French prices are particularly poor for some reason, aren't they. Presumably they don't need to compete with other outlets as much as in other countries.

Posted by emmtwosix in United States, 29 Aug 2012 12:52

Huw, this is brilliant.

And actually, far beyond just comparing the prices to other countries (since I'm in the US, it's not useful to me in that respect.) this is an awesome visual aid from various perspectives. If you're looking for sets from a certain theme, year, or just browsing what you have and what you want, you get an idea of what's still available, in one capacity or another, and the pricing trends, to a certain extent. And now I'm browsing through other themes just out of curiosity.

For example, I'm looking at the 2011 Star Wars sets and see that I have all but the Naboo Starfighter, Echo Base, Sith Infiltrator, and SSD and have pricing info on all four sets on the same screen. That is extremely useful. And then, on the same page, just by scrolling up I see that it would be way cheaper to finish off my Atlantis collection.

I would use this even if it didn't have the country price comparator. Having all the sets and their respective prices listed for my country, even alone, would be an extremely useful tool. I hope you consider putting an additional column in there for the U.S. even if we can't exchange orders across the pond. Heck, it may even be worthwhile at some point (perhaps the distant future) to let the user select which countries (Amazon sites) they would like to compare with, sets from specific years, and so on and so forth. Sorry for the huge post - keep up the good work!

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 30 Aug 2012 03:59

Thank you all for your comments :-)

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