Price2Spy evolution of services

Back in 2011, when Price2Spy was launched, the concept of online price monitoring was very young.
Therefore, we started with very basic service which meant:

• Competitor price monitoring
• Price Change alerting mechanism

However, our clients were asking for more, therefore we have soon added:

• Reporting mechanism, which can be roughly divided into:
• Pricing trends analytics – for analyzing pricing trends on the market
• Comparison reports – for analyzing where you stand compared to your competitors
• MAP (targeted price) monitoring – for Brands who want to protect their desired pricing levels

Over the time – as our client base was growing, and the websites we monitored for them were getting smarter and smarter at blocking unwanted traffic, we have developed more Price2Spy modules allowing us:

• Capturing prices from websites requiring login (or any other kind of interaction) – includes B2B sites
• Stealth IP traffic for bot-aware websites that invest a lot of resources into blocking traffic coming from price monitoring tools)

As time went by, we have encountered more and more complex cases:

• Product variations (we refer to them as URL Parameters) – where multiple product variations can be found at the same physical URL
• Size / Pack multiplicators – in case your competitor offers the product in different volume than you do
• Capturing much more than just product price/availability – we can capture shipping costs, pricing tiers, delivery times, and a number of reviews / average review rating – practically anything that can be captured from the product page.

On the other hand, our clients were looking for a better way to consume the data they were receiving from Price2Spy, so they asked for an API that would enable tighter integration of Price2Spy with their own systems. Therefore, we have enabled:

• Price2Spy API – for clients with sufficient IT resources – who can adapt their solutions to integrate with Price2Spy
• Link My Store – for clients with no IT resources, who need a quick way to integrate their store with Price2Spy
• Capturing screenshots – for clients who need evidence about price changes/price violations

In order to offer price comparison services, your products need to be matched on your competitor / dealer websites.
This is where we reach the concept of Product Matching. As early as 2012, PriceSpy has started offering product matching services, which can be roughly divided into:

• Manual product matching (for industries where no automated matching criteria can be established) – done by humans. Here we take advantage of being able to offer the service of supreme quality at very affordable costs, thanks to our geographic location.
• Automatch (for industries where standardized part numbers / product identifiers are used).
• Hybrid matching (Automatch identifies potential candidates, which require manual approval) – most flexible method, especially for clients having versatile product range.
• Automatch via Machine Learning – we will soon be introducing new product matching method, which will significantly reduce the amount of work needed to be done manually

Besides exact product matching, where exact matches are being searched for, we can perform ‘like for like’ matching. This method is applicable when no identical matches are applicable, but instead we look for the product which is most similar to our client’s product (in most cases done for white-label, or own-label products).

 

Also, Price2Spy regularly conducts proactive product extractions from major online stores, where products get matched into what we call GPL (Global Product Layer).
Matches found in GPL are offered to our clients as free additional Matching Suggestions.

In recent years, more and more clients ask us to perform Product data extraction services – where we crawl competitor sites (whole sites, or just certain brands / categories) and extract product information which can be later used enrichment of client’s own assortment.
Such extractions often contain product reviews – which are used by our client to measure the market sentiment of individual products, or brand as a whole.

 

 

 

 

Product extractions are frequently used as early warning systems – as our clients want to know when their competitors add new products to their offer.
Such products then need to be regularly price monitored – which ties in with our price monitoring service.

Quite often it cannot be clearly established if such products are new, or can be matched to existing client’s products – this is where Extraction service integrates with Product Matching services.

Going back to price monitoring service, most of our online retail clients use Price2Spy in order to identify products where they are not competitive enough. Therefore, we have prepared Repricing module which identifies:

• Clever drop candidates – Products where your prices can go down, in order to be more competitive on the market, but remain within your desired profit margin
• Clever raise candidates – Products where your price is already cheapest, but there is room for a price increase and thus an increase of your profit margin

Repricing of the above candidates can either be done automatically (direct repricing), or upon human approval (indirect repricing).

 

As for the rules – repricing is carried out according to pricing rules – and you are welcome to either configure our built-in rules (offered by Price2Spy by default) or advise a set of your own, custom rules.

As you can see, we have insisted on term “Puzzle” because Price2Spy can help you solve your pricing problems by picking the right pieces that meet your requirements.

On the other hand, we know that the puzzle we see today will keep changing. Price2Spy wants to keep adapting and keep solving more and more pieces. If you cannot find your piece yet, do note that Price2Spy listens to its clients, their needs and their ideas. This is why all you suggestions will be most welcome, and included in some future puzzles. Please send them to info@price2spy.com