Price Monitoring: A Guide For eCommerce Business

Things in eCommerce are constantly changing, but one fact doesn’t change – fierce competition. Even the seemingly unique businesses will sooner or later face new competitors. In those situations, the price might be the only thing that differentiates one business from another. And when it comes to customers, price is one of the most influential purchasing factors.

Nowadays, an option that fits the customers’ budget is usually only a few clicks away.

So, how to be smarter than the competition and define the right price? The answer lies in price monitoring. 

Many eCommerce businesses are already using price monitoring excessively. But, there are also those to whom this term is still foreign. 

Let’s explain what you’re missing out on if the price monitoring is still not a part of your business strategy. 

How To Get Started With Price Monitoring

Companies that have had the opportunity to try price monitoring have witnessed the huge contribution of this process. In fact, it turned out to be so important that many companies consider it as the secret ingredient of their success!

Trying to keep track of all price changes manually can be a Sisyphean task. This is where an automated solution for price monitoring comes in. Tracking prices automatically will save you resources and ensure that you are able to keep up with competitors’ price changes. That way your market position won’t be endangered. 

Great news! But, you must be wondering where to start?

In order to get started with the price monitoring process, you need to define who are your main competitors. Unfortunately, you can not just track each and every competitor out there. You might think that it’s useful, but in fact, it’s not. Not all competitors are equally important to you, or maybe you are not even targeting the same market. Therefore, your resources would be put to better use if you focus on the main competitors only.

Main competitors are the ones who are most likely to pull the customers away from you. With that in mind, proceed with a detailed competitor investigation, so that you don’t become overwhelmed with unnecessary data. 

Besides investigating the competitors, you can also track products. However, the same rule applies here as well. Define which products are the most important – those might be the price-sensitive ones or your best-selling ones. Also, identifying different product variations or capturing more product details can be your focus points as well.

The right price monitoring tool will then help you by performing the product matching.

Once these steps of market research are covered, you can proceed with price monitoring. 

Preparation is the key to success – no tool, regardless of how good it is, can help you if you don’t know what are you looking for in the first place. 

Prioritizing the Competitors

What if your targeted market is overcrowded with the competition or you are targeting a few different markets? You might think that there are too many competitors and you would be right. So, what should be your approach? In the sea of competitors, how to detect the most important ones?

We already mentioned that competitors who are offering similar products as you are the ones who can pull the customers away from your ecommerce website. If you combine this factor with website traffic and revenue, you’ll have your answer. 

Now that you know who are you tracking, you need to know the product URL’s on each competitor’s website respectively. Product URL’s are not only needed for price monitoring but for stock availability as well. That is another bonus of price monitoring – you’ll know when a competitor runs out of stock so you can make changes to your pricing strategy.

With an automated solution such as Price2Spy, the given results will be more accurate and real-time. 

What To Look For In A Price Monitoring Solution

Once all the previous steps are fulfilled, everything is ready for full automation. With an automated price monitoring solution such as Price2Spy days of daunting work are over. Price2Spy will perform the price monitoring process for you, saving you a huge amount of time and effort. Therefore, your employees can carry on with other tasks which might be neglected.

How will you benefit from using a price monitoring solution?

• Update your prices – you’ll know when is the right time to increase or decrease the prices without endangering your market position
• Reports – Price2Spy will ensure to provide you all the necessary reports. You’ll be able to see all the market fluctuation that concerns you. Which competitors are changing the prices and when? Have they run out of stock? Are they running any promotions? Is someone violating the MAP? With Price2Spy’s help, the answers to all these questions will be in your hands.
• Ensure that you always have enough stock compared to your competitors
• Plan and align your pricing strategy with competitors’ actions

How Accurate The Price Monitoring Is?

This is maybe the most important question that you might ask when searching for the right price monitoring tool. With prices changing so quickly, you’ll admit that there’s not much point in checking the prices on a monthly basis. Therefore, the frequency is one of the most important features in a price monitoring tool. 

For instance, Price2Spy offers you up to 8 price checks per day! Of course, not all our clients have the need to check prices that frequently, but for those who do, this is a game-changer.  

Conclusion

Price monitoring has become a complete necessity for every eCommerce business. During this year, many businesses have struggled to stay afloat, therefore, investing in something new hasn’t been a top priority. However, regardless if you’re just starting your business, or are already an eCommerce professional, investing in a price monitoring tool is always a smart move. It will provide you a great headstart and a solid ground on which you can build on your business. 

We know that you’re not so willing to easily invest your money into something new. Therefore, Price2Spy allows a 30-day free trial period! You’ll have 30 days to check out all our features and see by yourself why we are the first choice of more than 700 clients worldwide!

What are your thoughts about price monitoring? Have you tried some price monitoring tools?

Share it with us in the comment section. We always love to hear from you!