The Better Buy is Rob's project. Five million products, tracked daily, across dozens of retailers, built to answer one question: is this actually the better buy?
Services
Client
Year
Website
Challenge
Price comparison is a crowded space, mostly done badly.
Most comparison sites are shallow. They pull a handful of retailers, show a few prices, take an affiliate cut, and leave it at that. Shipping costs are usually ignored, retailer information is thin, and the data is often stale by the time anyone sees it. For a shopper trying to work out whether a deal is genuinely the better buy, or just the better-looking listing, most comparison sites don’t actually answer the question.
Rob wanted to build something that did. Something that tracked real prices from real retailers every day, that knew enough about each retailer to factor in shipping properly, and that treated the user like an adult trying to make an informed decision rather than a click to be monetised.
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Goal
Build a proper price-comparison engine. Deep data, honest answers, one shopper at a time.
This is Rob’s project, built off his own back and developed under the Dialekt umbrella. The scope is the kind of thing most agencies would break down into six phases and quote as a project. Rob’s just been building it.
A database of over five million products. Ingested, cleaned, categorised, and refreshed daily.
Retailer network integrations. Multiple affiliate and product networks pulled together into a single system, with per-retailer detail sitting behind every product link.
Per-retailer intelligence. Every retailer on the site has its own store information, populated once and applied automatically wherever that retailer’s links appear.
Shipping calculated properly. Free-shipping thresholds are set per retailer and worked out live, using unit price, so the total cost a shopper actually pays is the one being compared, not the sticker price.
Daily price tracking. Prices are checked and updated every day, so the comparison a user sees is current, not a snapshot from last week.
Smart recommendations and price drops. Daily suggestions and biggest-drop listings surfaced on the homepage, so returning users have a reason to come back.
A clean front end. The UX kept simple on purpose. Price tracking, price comparison, and smart recommendations, framed in plain language.
Result
A price-comparison platform built to a standard the category mostly doesn't reach.
The Better Buy is live and running. Five million products in the database, daily tracking across dozens of retailers, and a shipping-aware comparison layer that most competitors don’t bother with. The product side, the data ingestion, and the retailer intelligence are all in place. Rob has quietly built the engineering foundation for a genuinely useful consumer product, and it’s the kind of build most teams would need a small company to deliver.
The commercial and audience side is the next chapter. The infrastructure is there. What The Better Buy does with it is Rob’s next call.
Receipts
From nothing to
5m products tracked
Built solo from scratch. Five million products in the database, 310,000 live comparisons on the site, six affiliate networks, twenty-plus retailers, and 50,000 monthly sessions and rising.
tracked
comparisons
sessions
5 million+ products tracked
The full back-end ingestion engine, refreshed every day.
310,000+ live comparisons
Only products with two or more retailers make the site.
6 affiliate networks integrated
Amazon, eBay and dozens more, pulled into one back end.
20+ retailers on the system
Amazon, eBay, Currys, Halfords, B&Q, SharkNinja and more.
50,000 monthly sessions
And climbing month on month.
Live shipping-aware pricing
Thresholds per retailer, applied against unit price.
One person, low budget, no loan
No capital raise. Built to a standard the category rarely hits.
5m products tracked, 310k compared, 50k sessions a month
Six affiliate networks, twenty-plus retailers, updated daily. Built solo.
THE BETTER BUY · FIGURES TO AUGUST 2026