Price.ua is the leading price comparison site in Ukraine showing price comparisons on a wide range of products across most of the top eCommerce stores. In this presentation i've analyzed their model using Dave McClure's Customer Lifecycle "AARRR" Method.

1. Analyzing the Customer
Lifecycle of Price Aggregator –
Price.ua
Ken Leaver (@Kenny516)
November 2013

2. 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

3. 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!!

4. Contents
•
•
•
•
•
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue

5. Around 300,000 visits per day

6. 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 GTN9000)
•
Why such strong rankings?
1) Because they have unique, highquality 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)

7. Price.ua has strong backlinks from some of Ukraine’s most wellknown 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)

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

9. 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

10. 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

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

12. Contents
•
•
•
•
•
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue

13. 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.

14. 3rd Step Also Serves as Landing Pages for Product Searches
• Search for “Samsung GTN9000 Galaxy” and this
page will pop up in top 5
of search results
• Strong UI on this landing
page: Picture of
device, price, description, f
eatures, 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.

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

16. Trust is also built by providing expert buying advice
Example of advice on how to choose a mobile telephone to purchase

17. 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

18. Contents
•
•
•
•
•
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue

19. 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

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

21. Retention is also obtained through unique useful tools
Tracking of the price of a Samsung Galaxy Phone
Gets customer to come back to Price.ua and check the
chart before making a purchase

22. 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!

23. Contents
•
•
•
•
•
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue

24. 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.

25. Referral through social channels
The standard social network sharing tools are available on each page
but are unlikely to be very effective

26. Contents
•
•
•
•
•
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue

27. Advertising: lots of different options

28. Advertising: Pay for ‘extra’ features to stand out
The lowest price is not at the top… meaning Price.ua likely earns $ from this

29. Adding design features for money
• Charges money for adding
style features to Internet
stores that they host

30. 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.

31. Earn revenue on selling credit
Notice that they are promoting a specific model as “Top”

32. Even try to do daily deals… but they do it quite poorly.
This is a standard
“Groupon” style deal

33. Contents
•
•
•
•
•
•
Ken Leaver
Acquisition
Activation
Retention
Referral
Revenue
That’s it. Thanks for your attention!!
Dec. 2013