Thursday, July 31, 2014

Competitor Price Monitoring for Ecommerce Success

One of the most important factors which can make or break an eCommerce business is price. Set the wrong price and the product or service on offer will perform terribly in the market. Take time to research on the best possible price and you will witness significant success online. That’s why systems like competitor price monitoring are important in online retailing.

A lot of online retailers don’t even know the amount of sales they are missing out on by using the wrong pricing structure. Many research studies have indicated that consumers are making buying decisions online based on price. You’ll need to use web scraping to know if your products are priced higher or lower. You need to understand what a difference in your product pricing can do to win sales. For instance, some
businesses have used competitor price tracking to identify the amount of adjustments that can make significance in sales. A one percent difference in pricing may not yield any difference in terms of sales like a 10 percent increase or decrease.

By monitoring competitor prices, you can trigger precise adjustments in your own prices in order to increase sales. As an eCommerce business, you can’t focus on a single competitor. You need to look at many competitors across the board so that you can understand what the real market looks like. Most of these competitors are also using custom web scraping to look into your prices just as you are. You may have to follow certain major competitors in your industry in order to be on the right track when it comes to product pricing.

Competitor price monitoring is important even if you already have an effective pricing strategy. When you are developing your eCommerce site, you need to ensure your business strategy is based on a proper pricing model. Thus, pricing goes hand in hand with an effective business strategy. One cannot do without the other. If you are going up against giant leaders in your industry, you need to know what everyone else is doing and then come up with a different model that is better than what is already being implemented.

After competitor price tracking you may have to lower your product prices in order to attract new buyers. Giving your products low prices doesn't instantly translate to a low value. Remember that consumers are using factors such as pricing, brand and credibility in order to make a buying decision. However, price is one of the top factors that make consumers decide on whether they’ll consider your product. If you don’t offer the low prices that retail giants are giving online, your products will not sell.

The bottom line is eCommerce businesses which don’t take time to monitor competitor prices and use proper pricing will find it increasingly difficult to sell online. Web scraping makes the difference between selling and getting an opportunity to present your products to new consumers every day. The good thing is that, it’s never late to consider custom web scraping. It’s a process that takes just a few seconds and will ultimately help you to stay ahead of your competitors.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Why Competitor Price monitoring is Vital in Ecommerce

Do you understand your product’s market position? The eCommerce industry is very competitive and without proper understanding of the competition, your online business is likely to experience serious challenges. Competitor price monitoring gathers all the data you need about your competition. The information is collected in a centralized store and then it is prepared in form of a report that enables you to make critical business decisions that affect your bottom line. This data can be used to create an effective pricing system and to adjust your existing management systems.

Using this data, you can take notice of price movements that may affect how your product or service performs online. Research has shown that many consumers will buy products online based on their prices.
For this reason, price is a major determinant on how your brand will perform online. If you sell your products really expensive, people will prefer cheaper online retailers. If your products are too cheap, some buyers will assume the quality is really low. This is why data scraping is important. It helps you strike a balance and provide quality products at reasonable rates while being aware of what your competition is doing.

There are several ways your eCommerce business can benefit from competitor price monitoring. For starters, it allows you to view the number of products and ranges that your competition has to offer clients. If you offer a wider product range, you can use this as a selling point to attract more customers. You can structure your marketing strategy to emphasize on the fact that you have more products and ranges compared to your competitors.

Secondly, custom web scraping can help you know when your competitors change their pricing and even keep track of the competitors who are following certain pricing strategies. The scraping system can retrieve data that will help you understand your competitor’s pricing decisions so that you can come up with a pricing strategy that will contribute to your business success.

Every business that is selling products or services through the Internet can take advantage of web scraping to monitor competitor prices. This system gives business owners a better understanding of the market and how to tailor their own brand to best fulfill the needs of their target customers. Most companies that offer web scraping services are even able to tailor this solution to meet your specific needs. They utilize cloud computing systems which can handle any size of eCommerce business. Even multi sites with multiple languages can benefit from competitor price monitoring. The computer programs are able to collect data from sites with millions of products.

Competitor price tracking is a cheap, reliable and quick method of obtaining competitor data. Before these systems were introduced in the market, many businesses spent time and resources extracting competitor data manually. Furthermore, traditional means of obtaining competitor data could not work when your competition has millions of product pages. CPM can extract this data and provide a detailed report within a couple of days.