Price comparison sites in Switzerland: how they work for an online store

A price comparison website lists offers for the same product from different retailers side by side, and a store pays to appear in that listing — usually per click. For an online store, a price comparison site in Switzerland is another paid traffic channel on top of Google and Meta, with its own product feed and its own payment terms to maintain. Switzerland also sits on Google's own list of countries where Shopping ads and free product listings must be submitted through a Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) — the same mechanism used in most of the EU. This article looks at how a price comparison listing works for a Swiss retailer, when a pay-per-click listing actually pays for itself, and what Swiss law requires around reviews and discounted prices.

How a price comparison website works for a Swiss retailer

The mechanism is the same everywhere: a retailer supplies data about its offers, the site lists those offers next to competitors' offers for the same product, and the shopper picks which store to buy from. Offers are usually submitted through a data feed similar to the one used for Google Merchant Center — see our guide to the Merchant Center feed for what a feed needs to contain.

In the model most comparison sites use, a shopper who picks a listed offer is redirected to the retailer's own product page and buys there — the comparison site is a traffic source, not the place the sale happens, and the retailer pays only when the click occurs (a pay-per-click, or CPC, model). Some platforms instead let the shopper buy on the comparison site itself, with the retailer paying a commission on the order rather than for the click. Which model a given platform offers, and on what terms, is set out in that platform's own seller panel — check it directly, since terms are not standardised between platforms.

The CPC model: when does a click pay for itself

In a CPC listing, you pay for the click whether or not it turns into an order. Working out whether that's worth it needs three numbers: the CPC rate the platform charges, your own conversion rate from that specific traffic, and the margin you earn on the order. Rates are not standardised across Swiss comparison sites, so the CPC rate in the formula below has to come from the platform you're actually using, not an assumed figure.

The formula is simple:

cost per order = CPC rate ÷ conversion rate

A click pays for itself when that cost is at or below the margin you earn on a single order. The higher your conversion rate from that traffic, the lower the cost per order at the same CPC rate — and if the order margin is lower than the calculated cost, the channel loses money on every order, regardless of how much traffic it sends.

The same formula runs in reverse. If you know your order margin, it gives you the minimum conversion rate at which a given CPC rate pays off: CPC rate ÷ order margin. If the conversion rate from comparison-site traffic is lower than that, the channel loses money in the CPC model — and that is the quickest test to run before you start optimising offers at all.

Where a platform charges a commission on completed orders instead, the risk of a click with no purchase moves to the platform: the cost per order is the commission rate multiplied by the order value, compared against the same margin. Set the two side by side and the commission model comes out cheaper when commission × order value is lower than CPC rate ÷ conversion rate — so a low conversion rate and an expensive click favour the commission model, while a high conversion rate and large baskets favour paying per click.

Reviews on a comparison listing — what Swiss law covers

Switzerland sits outside the EU, so the duty the EU's Omnibus Directive added to its unfair-commercial-practices rules — telling shoppers whether and how you check that reviews come from real buyers — does not apply to a Swiss store. Swiss law has no review-specific rule of that kind. What does apply is the Federal Act against Unfair Competition (UWG): under Art. 3(1)(b), anyone who makes incorrect or misleading statements about themselves, their goods or their prices acts unfairly. Presenting fake reviews, or a selection of reviews passed off as representative, as genuine customer opinion can fall under that general ban. The practical safeguard is the same as in the EU: collect reviews only from verified buyers and say on the page how you do it — not because a Swiss statute prescribes the wording, but because it is the simplest way to keep the reviews from becoming a misleading statement.

Reviews also feed back into the break-even calculation. If they raise the conversion rate from the same click, they lower the cost per order at the same CPC rate. You can check this in your own data by comparing conversion before and after reviews are switched on.

Discounted prices in a comparison listing

A comparison listing shows a price next to the product, so it counts as advertising the product together with a price. In Switzerland, the rules on misleading price indication in the Price Indication Ordinance (PBV, SR 942.211) apply to advertising too (Art. 15). Under Art. 16, in the version in force since 1 January 2025, a store may show a comparison price next to the price actually payable as a self-comparison only if it actually offered the product at that price either immediately before the reduction — in which case the comparison price may be shown for at most half as long as it was charged, and for no more than two months — or for at least 30 consecutive days, in which case there is no time limit. A comparison with an introductory price or with competitors' prices is allowed under separate conditions, and the advert has to say which kind of comparison it is. Figures stating a reduction ("-20%") are judged the same way as a comparison price (Art. 17).

For a feed, that means the "was" price you send to a comparison site has to meet the same test as the one on your own product page — and you should be able to show the price history behind it if asked.

Google Shopping and the CSS requirement — Switzerland is on the list

This is one of the few places where Switzerland and the EU work exactly the same way. Google's own documentation names Switzerland directly, alongside 18 EU member states, Norway and the UK, among the 21 countries where Comparison Shopping Services (CSSs) "must be used" to place Shopping ads and free product listings. CSS providers differ in what they do for a retailer — some manage product data and campaigns on the retailer's behalf, others only supply tools the retailer uses to manage its own setup — and a retailer can submit to more than one CSS at once, including Google Shopping itself, which bids on behalf of the merchants it represents like any other CSS. Each ad shows which CSS uploaded the offer, in the "By CSS" link at the bottom.

The programme traces back to a 2017 European Commission antitrust decision, which fined Google €2.42 billion for giving an illegal advantage to its own comparison shopping service. That decision was an EU enforcement act and does not bind Switzerland — but Google runs the CSS programme in Switzerland as well, which is why Swiss merchants face the same set-up today. We cover the campaign side of Google Shopping — including Performance Max — in our Google Shopping article.

Price comparison sites versus marketplaces in Switzerland

Toppreise.ch, which calls itself "Der Schweizer Preisvergleich", works on the referral model most comparison sites use: a shopper compares prices and clicks through to the retailer's shop, and retailers join through the site's own merchant sign-up. We haven't found published traffic figures, retailer numbers or a CPC rate card for it, so we name it only as an example of the category, not as a benchmark.

That's a different business model from a Swiss marketplace, where the retailer sells directly on the platform rather than paying for referral clicks. Ricardo, for instance, charges a success fee of 8–12% of the sale price depending on product type, capped at CHF 290, with listing itself generally free (vehicles above CHF 3,000 excepted). Digitec Galaxus, which runs its own programme for third-party merchants, was the "big winner" of 2025 according to the Swiss online retail market survey by Handelsverband.swiss with NIQ/GfK and Swiss Post, which put Swiss consumers' online spending on goods at CHF 15.8 billion (CHF 14.9 billion in 2024, +6%). Galaxus does not publish its commission rates for those merchants. If your product fits a marketplace checkout rather than a referral click, compare the marketplace's commission against the same order-margin test used for CPC above, rather than assuming the two models price the same way.

Checklist before you connect a product feed

Before you launch or increase budget on a comparison site, check:

• Do the titles, photos and descriptions in your feed match what the shopper sees after clicking through? A mismatch raises the cost per order by pulling down the conversion rate from that traffic.
• Is the price identical across the feed, the comparison listing and your product page — and if you show a reduction, does the comparison price meet PBV Art. 16 (charged immediately before, shown for at most half that time and two months at most, or charged for at least 30 consecutive days), and can you document it?
• Does the delivery cost shown with the offer match what the shopper sees in the cart?
• If you show customer reviews, do they come only from verified buyers, and does the page say how you check them?
• Is the same product feed you submit to the comparison site also valid against Google Merchant Center's own requirements? See our Merchant Center configuration guide if you're running both channels.
• Does the payment model — CPC, commission, or a marketplace fee — suit the margin and conversion rate in that product category? Check this before you agree to the platform's terms.