The pioneering smart shopping platform is enabling smarter shopping solutions that are becoming increasingly popular amongst price-conscious and time-poor consumers. It is transforming shopping experiences for its 2.5 million users through the deployment of data-driven products.

Shoptagr’s Co-founder, CTO, and COO, Ronen Yuval-Hoch, talks to Retail Focus about his company and the value they and their users have gained from deploying Luminati Networks’ online data collection products.

Ronen Yuval, Co-founder, CTO, and COO at Shoptagr

First things first, what is Shoptagr?

We’re a pioneering smart shopping platform that essentially acts as a digital shopping assistant tool for customers looking to save money on e-commerce fashion products. Users can add products to their lists and receive notifications if there are sudden changes in prices through the platform itself or via a browser extension. In addition, they can track if their chosen product is close to running out of stock or if it will be available again to purchase in the future. We’re in the business of saving our customers time and money, and we’ve been doing it very well for the past couple of years.

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How did the idea for Shoptagr first come about?

The idea came to me about seven or eight years ago when my business partner’s wife told us about her dismay at missing out on the best sales and price drops for the luxury brands she loved. I realised that there is a real gap in the market for an easy-to-use solution that can bookmark products and notify users of any price changes. After quickly realising that we were becoming a 360-type platform, we then added automated coupons at the checkout and started to increase the range of services on offer such as cashback offerings and so on.

 How are you able to present your customers with the best prices online?

Our mission was and is to be the most powerful shopping assistant in the world. In order to achieve this vision, we understood very early on that data, and online data specifically, is key to enabling smarter shopping experiences. We have built our own infrastructure to collect data, but we required a solution that would give us access to the sites we needed without getting blocked. Our partnership with Luminati Networks has really helped us to bridge that gap. Its online data collection products allow us to responsibly collect publicly available data such as stock quantities and price changes. One way in which it enables us to beat our competitors in this field is through real-time data updates. Luminati helps us do the hard work and opens the doors to us being able to improve our customers’ shopping experiences.

 What is Luminati Networks?

It’s an online data collection platform that helps organisations of all sizes gather openly available online data in an ethical manner. The internet is not equally accessible to all. For example, in order for businesses to gather the web information they need, which may be openly accessible to us as individuals but not to them as businesses, they need a pathway to web transparency. Luminati Networks offers a transparent view of the internet from wherever you are based in the world. For example, if a fashion brand would like to compete with another fashion brand, they need to be able to openly see the prices and the offers of that brand. For that, they need to rely on fast, trustworthy web-sourced data and frequent doses of it. This is where Luminati plays a key role. It allows us, brands and businesses, to get a transparent view of the web that ultimately benefits the consumers. The more competitive the market is, the better it is for the entire consumer community.

What are the other benefits that Luminati provides Shoptagr?

There are several benefits. I will describe the three main ones: First, the quality of products. Luminati’s platform is high-performing, trustworthy, efficient and cost-effective. The network we’re using to collect data is very reliable, and I have barely encountered any downtime, which is critical in our field. If we’re unable to access the publicly available data needed, our customers end up missing out on the best deals available. Luminati is fully aware of this mission and cares about our results.  In addition, the platform is very simple to use. Second, customer service and support is one of the most important things when looking for a data collection provider, and the Luminati team is amazing, from top to bottom. The technical support is excellent. Third, there’s a real sense of passion and care about what the company does, and it really shows in how they treat their customers. For me, it feels like Luminati and Shoptagr are on this journey together, growing our businesses at the same time, which is not often the feeling you get with many providers out there.  

How do you see Luminati supporting you in your growth?

We have ambitious plans and many innovative offerings coming up. We obviously plan to expand our customer base and our company and we want Luminati alongside our every step. It allows us to effectively and openly access public online data that we require to provide our customers with the best shopping experiences and the best offers, which enhances their trust in us. We see this as being a long-term partnership and are excited to advance on our joint, bright future-forward path.