We saw this comment on an investor bulletin board and thought we’d take a moment to respond: “How does HealthPricer compare with generic price comparison engine like pricerunner.com? Why would someone go to HealthPricer when all they have to do is to remember one site that has it all?”

To deal with the first question, here’s how HealthPricer compares with Pricerunner. We’re using Pricerunner as an example, but have found similar results with other general comparison engines, such as shopping.com, become.com, pricegrabber.com and shopzilla.com.

- HealthPricer has a bigger inventory of health products than the generic search engines. Particularly as goes for health products, many of the generic search engines do not focus on building these categories in full, in favour of electronics and computing categories.

To drive this home, let’s compare the contact lens search experience on the two comparison shopping sites. Let’s take Acuvue contact lenses.

Pricerunner displays 51 products from 9 retailers. Important to note here is that this search engine does not make a distinction among the different Acuvue products, basically providing prices for one day lenses, Acuvue Advance, Acuvue Advance 2, Acuvue Opaque – all on the same page, confusing the visitor. Here’s a sample of that page:

Pricerunner Search Results Confuse Visitors

For that same search for Acuvue contact lenses on HealthPricer provides 12 separate categories of Acuvue products, comparing between 8 – 68 different prices per category – basically a larger inventory of prices.

- HealthPricer provides a better search experience to its visitors. Our engine makes the distinction between the different products asking visitors to choose the exact product they are searching for. Here’s a sample from that page:

Saerch for Acuvue Contact Lenses through HealthPricer

Once the visitor has chosen the exact product they are interested in, HealthPricer provides a deeper search, comparing that specific product among its merchants based on box counts – comparing 2, 4, 6 and 8 boxes. Overall, HealthPricer focuses on how visitors shop for health products – strength of tablets, number of pills or tablets, number of boxes of contact lenses, to name a few specific search parameters.

The point here is that visitors can do price comparisons based on their needs and budget – you could call it volume discount price comparison. Here’s a sample for the page for Acuvue Oasys – linking here shows the full search experience:

Sample of Search for Acuvue Oasys through HealthPricer

As goes for the Pricerunner search for contact lenses, it provides single box search, but we all know that when you buy in bulk you get higher discounts and the same goes for buying contact lenses online. Check out the “best value” price offered by Lens.com on HealthPricer at 8 boxes of Acuvue Oasys.

Best value discount volume price through HealthPricer

That equates to $20.66 per box, compared to the best price for Acuvue Oasys on Pricerunner of $21.74 per box. (Note this price as there’s more to this displayed price tag…)

- HealthPricer presents the true price upfront. Again, this is best demonstrated in our contact lens example. First, let’s take a look at the box count for VisionDirect on Pricerunner.com.

VisionDirect displayed Price for Acuvue Oasys through Pricerunner

This presentation gives you the impression that one box of contact lenses costs $21.74. This is not the case:

VisionDirect Price for Acuvue Oasys

The actual box price is $25.99. You’d have to order 8 boxes to take advantage of the lower price. And if this has not already annoyed you, there is also a hidden handling fee that you would see once you’ve gone through the checkout process and are about to push the buy button.

HealthPricer presents these costs upfront – the actual box price and details of handling and shipping fees, as well as mail-in rebates:

VisionDirect Price for Acuvue Oasys as Displayed by HealthPricer

And at 8 boxes:

VisionDirect Price for 8 boxes of Acuvue Oasys as Displayed through HealthPricer

The price of $21.74 includes a $30 mail-in rebate.

This example is just one illustrating how we go the extra mile in order to provide a relevant consumer experience. Each health category requires a different approach and we’ve ensured we provide the exact search parameters customers need for each category. Another example is how we provide brand and generic drugs on the same search page in our prescription drug category.

- HealthPricer only represents trusted merchants. Our reputation lies with the online stores we represent, so we meet with each merchant that we add to our network. We’re not entirely aware of pricerunner’s code of conduct, as they do not disclose it clearly on their site. However, we are aware of other generic search engines that allow bogus merchants to sell their products through these comparison sites – this can be a dangerous practice.

Onto the second question. To remind you: “Why would someone go to HealthPricer when all they have to do is to remember one site that has it all?”

Simply put, HealthPricer is aimed at the millions of people that want a safe site for finding health products. We’ve specialized in the area of health products as we see such a great demand from people to find prescription and OTC drugs, contact lenses, supplements and beauty products online. With that comes the specific search criteria people have, such as a specific strength and number of prescription pills or a specific brand of contact lens. We’ve applied our health product expertise to create an easy to use search experience to visitors to shop from our network of trusted stores. That experience tops all generic sites’ health product searches.