German consumers are exceptionally price conscious. Not surprisingly, many of them turn to price comparison sites to find the best deals, regardless of the value of the product. Recent research by Statista in 2023 shows that as many as 78% of German consumers actively use price comparison sites. Amazingly, this percentage rises to 82% for high-end luxury products.
But how do German consumers integrate these tools into their buying journey? And why is it essential for brands to be visible on these platforms, even if they offer higher-value products? In this blog article, we dive deeper into the use of price comparison sites in Germany and reveal why brands cannot afford to ignore these powerful platforms.
The benefits
Leveraging price comparison sites offers several advantages for your brand. First, the cost per click (CPCs) on comparison platforms can sometimes be lower than on other advertising platforms. In addition, visitors who enter through price comparison sites often have a high buying intent, which increases the likelihood of conversions. These platforms not only generate additional traffic to your site, but also increase awareness and reliability of your brand. By being visible on reputable comparison sites, you radiate trust to potential customers. Moreover, you indirectly benefit from the strong SEO position that many comparison sites have in Google. Finally, comparators offer an additional advantage: you can easily track your competitors on them, which can provide valuable insights for your own strategy.
Multichannel SEO via the product feed
Multichannel SEO via product feed is a growth opportunity for companies that want to increase their visibility on different platforms in Germany. A carefully optimized feed not only increases your ranking in search engines, but also improves your product display on price comparison sites and other digital channels. By integrating relevant search terms, regularly updating your feed and adding quality images, you can effectively boost the click behavior of potential customers. Moreover, attractive and relevant ads can improve your CTR and conversion rates.
Phased growth with price comparators
If you are a startup company with a small budget and want to experiment, you can start with a few price comparison sites where the competition is not too big and the click rates are relatively low. Do check beforehand if they have any reach for the products you offer. For example, are these comparators findable in Google on your brands and products? If you are already further along in conquering the German market, it is usually important to be findable as a well-rated provider on the top comparators.
Google Shopping
In Germany, Google Shopping has taken a dominant position among price comparison sites. If you sell products, an optimized Google Shopping campaign is indispensable within your German Google AdWords strategy. Not only does it improve your visibility in paid search, but it also ensures better organic findability.An optimized feed not only improves your organic findability in Google by providing structured and relevant information, but it also strengthens your German SEO strategy. As an example, if your feed describes a product such as "handmade brown leather ankle boots" (in German: "handgefertigte braune Lederstiefeletten") in detail, including quality images, this increases your chances of ranking higher organically for relevant searches. If this is not part of your German SEO, that's a missed opportunity.
The main price comparators in Germany
There are several price comparison sites in Germany. Below is a list of the most important ones in alphabetical order:
● Billiger.de is said to be the most well-known and used price comparator in Germany with 50 million prices and 2 million products. In addition, this price comparator has the TÜV certificate.
● Ciao.de is a well-known price comparator that, among other things, is part of the European shopping group Leguide, which has existed since 2000. It also includes Shopwahl.de, Choozen.de and Pikengo.de. There are possibilities to show products on all affiliated price comparison sites at the same time.
● Geizhals.de is one of the leading price comparison sites in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). With more than 3 million clicks per month, the platform counts among the largest price comparison sites in the German-speaking region. This platform has a focus on electronics and technology offerings includes products from the categories hardware, software, games, video, TV, photo, phone, audio/hifi, movies, household, drugstore and sports.
● Guenstiger.de and Preissuchmaschine.de are two price comparison sites that belong together, have been around for ten years and have three thousand affiliated dealers. There is no minimum contract term.
● Kelkoo.de has a reach of 2.6 million unique visitors, which also makes it one of the largest price comparison sites. Different partner contracts can be concluded, depending on the number of products. The monthly cost is 25 euros excluding VAT, including 1000 clicks with up to 5000 products.
● Ladenzeile.de has been offering products from various online shops for clothing, shoes, bags and furniture, among other things, since 2009.
● At Preis.de 1717 online shops are affiliated with 82,328,743 products. The requirements to show products on preis.de include at least 20 items in the product feed and at least 2 different payment methods.
● Preisvergleich.de is a price comparison site with more than 5 million products and is known, among other things, from TV commercials with the famous handball player Stefan Kretzschmar on the largest German channels.
● At Schottenland.de is paid per unique visitor instead of per single click. This price comparison site has been around since 1999, and with around 1 million products and hundreds of affiliated online shops, it is a smaller price comparison site, so the competition is also smaller.
● Shopping.com is one of the largest international price comparison sites and also has another partner program with major brands such as BILD.de, eBay, Preisvergleich.de and Testberichte.de.
● Besides Amazon and OTTO, other top stores, such as notebookbilliger.de and redcoo.de, display their products on Shopwelt.de
● Shopzilla.de is also known as connexity and is one of the largest price comparison sites in Germany. There is no registration fee.
● Supersales.de is originally a Dutch price comparison site, but since 3 years they also have a German comparison site. Here they compare the offer of clothing, bags, beauty & sports. The advantage of this comparison site for Dutch companies that want to conquer the German market is the contact that, due to the Dutch origin, is in Dutch.
● Zalando, Amazon, eBay and OTTO, more than 15,000 merchants display their products on Twenga.de with a total of 400 million products and 30 million visitors per month. This price comparator promises an online registration within 10 minutes.
Shall we work together to position your brand on German price comparison sites?
