How Price Monitoring Can Benefit Your Online Store

Competitor price monitoring can help you react quickly to shifts in pricing and prevent losses. It can help you drive more sales to your online store since you are able to avoid overpricing products. But a few online store owners are taking advantage of price monitoring. What they don’t know is that they may be selling their products too cheaply and getting a narrower margin that their market allows. So if you just set up an online store, the first thing you need to consider is to track competitor prices. Here’s why.

Take advantage of opportunities

Some of the most successful online stores are using competitor price monitoring to spot opportunities

and take advantage of them to boost sales. When you collect the data and analyze it, you’ll be able to identify certain trends and get points across your market which you didn’t know existed. Tracking competitor prices also allows you to know exactly where your business is positioned and make measures to move a step ahead.

Take the right action to maximize margin

The process of price monitoring gives you data you can rely on to make very important decisions that influence the success of your online store. You can act knowing that you have credible data to support your decisions. In fact, it reduces the risks your business is taking because you are relying on information that is credible to try and maximize margins and expand your offers.

Monitor markets

How else would you know what’s going on in your industry if you don’t monitor your competitors? You need to be alerted on the trends as they happen. Sometimes this information is no longer useful if it is not known immediately. You’ll need a service that can monitor competitor pricing, products and perceptions online round the clock so you don’t miss out on anything.

Spend less time watching your competitors

When you have a system that tracks competitor prices all through, you don’t need to spend time watching their websites manually. It’s impossible to go through hundreds of product pages looking for promotions and discounts offered by your competitors. You can get it done within a few minutes and spend the rest of your time devising a pricing strategy that will work for your business.

Maximize profit margins

Most online stores that fail to reach the desired level of success failed to come up with a suitable pricing strategy. You need tangible information to develop a pricing model that works for your industry and brand. If you go so high, you risk becoming uncommunicative and losing out on customers who simply can’t afford your product or service. On the other hand, if you go too low to the extent that you become unprofitable, your online store can face serious losses that lead to closure. To avoid all these, monitor competitor prices round the clock and always know what’s happening in your industry. Get reports on latest price changes and trends so you know exactly what your competitor is doing and react accordingly.

David Hart, has scraped over thousands of websites providing our clients from North America and Europe with data in formats as per their requirement, providing web scraping, business intelligence information, competitive price intelligence, retail business outlet locations, product catalogs, etc.

What will Your Business Gain from Web Scraping?

Today, due to aggressiveness in the business world there is no information which should be overlooked. This applies to all businesses which have eCommerce domains. Clients will simply buy from sites that offer the most competitive rates on a regular basis. However, online businesses must ensure that their brands are not only valuable, but also competitively priced so as to attract more customers and retain them. The best way to keep your prices competitive and ensure your data is updated is through competitor price monitoring. May be you’re wondering how you can do this. You need to know how to extract data online.

There are two options of doing data scraping. You could either do it yourself (DIY) or hire a web scraping company to do the work. However, DIY option will be costly since you have to hire experienced personnel to handle the work. You will also need to install data extraction software and the right hardware to handle the task. All these requirements will cost your business a lot of money hence it’s not economical. On the other hand, outsourcing data extraction services will save you some cash. However, ensure you get the right competitor price monitoring service providers as to enjoy the benefits.

What are the benefits of web scraping? 

• Making informed decisions – Doing business is a matter of figures and facts. In a competitive world, getting the right data in real time will make a difference in your business. Web scraping service will help you get enough data from the web that you’ll use to run your business on a daily basis. You can also store that information and use it when you need it. This will enable you to move forward when making strategic decisions concerning your business. 

• Acquire accurate information – Online data is frequently updated so as to remain relevant to the search engines. However, you need to have access to the right information in your industry. Data scraping tool will help you acquire all the information about your competition. Get a list of companies which offer the same products and services as you and where they’re located. Check whether they have 

• Price monitoring – You should know what your competitors are charging and how you can price your products and services so as to remain ahead of your competitors. Through price monitoring service you’ll be able to set the right prices for your products or services. The prices should not be too low to make your target clients suspicious or too high to scare away your potential clients. 

• Competitor monitoring – A crucial aspect in any business is to monitor the activities of your competitors. Your competitors’ website has valuable information which they've made available to the world. You need to access this data so as to make a wise decision when branding your products. Doing a competitor price watch on a regular basis will ensure your brands are not only valued but also competitively priced. 

Use web scraping services to make accurate decisions and remain ahead of your competition in the industry.

Using Web Scraping Services to Stay Ahead of the Game

Companies that manage to stay popular and make more money online are the ones taking advantage of any new technologies being introduced. One such innovation that has been developed to help businesses get better opportunities and expand their brand is web scraping.

A while back, analyzing and collecting data and information about your industry was a time consuming and tedious process. Traditional data collection methods were also erroneous so you couldn’t rely on the results to make sound decisions about your business.

But this is no longer the case. Web scraping services allow businesses to obtain information from multiple websites and easily study the market trends around the world. These web scraping tools can extract different types of information. From pricing data to product ranges, data mining tools can give you a lot of information you can use to develop a stronger marketing strategy.

A common misconception is that data mining is illegal. This is far from the truth because the tools used to scrape web data obtain information that is already available for the public to see on the web. For instance, most online businesses provide their pricing information and it’s being viewed by millions of users across the world. Using a software to get this information that is readily available from multiple sites doesn't make it illegal. It is just a faster and more efficient way of obtaining such data.

There are many ways in which your business can benefit from the collected information. For a start, you can perform an analysis and try to predict how the market will fair in the coming months. You can also know the kind of goods or services that are in demand and add them to your stock or provide a cheaper alternative. By analyzing the market share, you can develop a suitable pricing strategy in order to ensure your products sell.

The way you use the information collected from web scraping will determine how much your business benefits. For instance, if the data shows that most of your competitors are using low prices to attract customers, the solution may not be to lower your prices even more in order to attract customers. Doing this could affect your profit margins. You have to think beyond the price and come up with a strategy that will keep customers coming even when there are price fluctuations. Develop a unique selling point by comparing what other businesses offer and go a step further to provide an even better service.

Web scraping is usually done by experts who not only collect the data in a fast and effective manner, but also record and present it in a way that allows you to analyze the information quicker. If you are in the verge of losing profits then hiring data mining experts can be your best bet. There could be certain trends in the market that you are probably not aware of. Through web scraping, you are made aware of any market changes that could affect your profits.

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.

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.