BookOkay.com – A good site for books price comparison

#Random

With so many books available online and so many websites offering lucrative deals, it becomes crucial to check out which website is offering what deal. However, most of us directly go to ‘amazon.in’ and make the purchase and many times it doesn’t even strike us that there might be any other place that could be offering a better deal. BookOkay.com is one of those websites which collects data from various sites and gives us a comprehensive picture.

I looked up the site and used it on multiple occasions and realized that where it is very useful, just like any other site, it has its pros and cons. 

To start with Pros:

1. The site is very simple and easy to navigate
2. It compares many sites like:
• Amazon.com
• Rediff.com
• Flipkart.com
• Snapdeal.com 
• Infibeam.com
3. It is very quick, the moment you enter a detail, it gives results in seconds. It also pulls up ‘goodreads’ rating which is very useful
4. It has sorting option where default sort is at price (Selling price + Delivery charges) which enables user to quickly understand the best available price. Other sort options are Seller, Availability etc.
5. All books are sorted under various heads which makes search of books relatively easy. Following are the current heads:
• Self Help
• Competitive Exams
• Philosophy
• Computers & Internet
• Family & Relationship
• Academic & Professional
• Literature & Fiction

Coming to Cons:

1. Not all books are listed, I feel it has more of western authors in comparison to Indian. I looked up many books that I have recently read but found none. I am sure owner of the site is working on updating the list
2. The ‘search’ section doesn’t work best.  Example: a simple search of ‘Harry Potter’ doesn’t yield essential 7 parts of the series, instead it pulls up various other books and you have to browse through pages to find required book. Also if the book is not listed it throws many unnecessary suggestions  and same is the case with ISBN number-which is kind of weird as every book’s ISBN is unique
3. Under various heads of the books, Literature & Fiction is very wide and it doesn’t give a clear list of preferred genre. Owners should break various heads like Literature & Fiction into various genres like Romance, Crime etc. for easy access
4. The genre definition of book is missing in ‘about the book’ section. Many people prefer to buy certain genres and owners of websites should add that as well 
5. There is a complete catalogue of books listing available but it is labeled as [1-500] instead of genre or alphabetical order which makes it useless. Additionally it is very slow to load

Overall it is a pretty good initiative and once the list is thoroughly updated it would be extremely useful for all book lovers as we can decide which site is offering the best deal and save our precious money :)

Going forward, for each book that I buy, I am going to first look it up at BookOkay.com and then buy at the best price available. I would recommend everyone to do so as well – what do you say, would you do it?

Sample of Search

PS: The review was requested by the owner of the website.

Love & Cheers