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It is easy to compare the prices of similar products at different sites. To meet the potential customer expectations along with having a look at the competitors, a business needs to find a way to monitor the prices. This enables any business to become competitive in its offerings. Competition can make the market prone to constant price wars. With efficient price monitoring, you can understand the logic behind the pricing and make a strategy that works for your business instead of getting into price wars. Now, for that also you must have knowledge about the competitor pricing and the market trends. And competitor price tracking tool can help you get desired results.
To begin with, competitor price monitoring can be done both manually and via automation. But the pertinent question is how to decide which method to use for price tracking.
When it comes to price monitoring you will find a number of options. While some of them are expensive, and others are more effective. Today, we will have a detailed look at each type of competitive price tracking method.
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In this blog, we will clarify the difference between manual tracking and automated competitor price tracking. You can get an in-depth idea about the two concepts.
How To Choose The Right Competitor Price Monitoring Method
Irrespective of the e-commerce sector you belong to, at some point or other point you will have to change the prices. It can be to keep up with the prices offered by the competitors to give discounts on special occasions. It is challenging to decide which method is right for you.
1. Manual Price Tracking
Now, every company has its own niche, competition and way of doing business. Not to forget, based on your business, you might have a lot of products in the product line. Now, this means you will have to track loads of prices on competitors’ websites and doing that manually can be time-consuming. And tracking price is pertinent because you need to stay ahead of the competition. But if the results are late then it will be no help in decisions.
So, you need to ask yourself how much time you spend on tracking competitor websites. And is it really worth it? Is it a daily, weekly, or monthly task for you? Also, is it relevant after putting in so much time? For companies with lesser products and fewer competitors, it can get easy to track the prices manually. On the other hand, if you have more than 15- 20 products, it is better to opt for automation of competitor price tracking. We will get into that later in this blog.
For starters, performing competitive price tracking daily for a lot of products is a waste of time and money. Moreover, the benefit of automation is that you can gather the data you need quite easily as compared to doing it manually. For businesses with lesser products that opt for manual tracking, a spreadsheet would be a suitable tool. And as there are very limited products in the niche, your resources are not wasted. Furthermore, this helps in keeping all the data in one location. But this can be very time-consuming and there are always chances of human errors.
Therefore, manual tracking is not recommended for e-commerce stores with more products and more competition.
2. Automated Competitor Price Monitoring
Now let us understand what is automated price tracking. Automated price tracking solutions are perfect for businesses who wish to constantly see the changes in the competitor’s price across various channels. It is a scalable way of running the system. Automation also offers your team time to focus on what’s more important.
When we say that pricing can help you define the business, we put emphasis on the fact that your pricing is dealt by professionals like PriceIntelGuru.
When a business makes informed decisions, there is always data to support it. Automated competitor price monitoring offers access to data to enable you to become proactive instead of reactive. You get an insight into real-time pricing.
In fact, you don’t even need to worry about accuracy. Manual tracking is prone to errors but automation eliminates that risk. Errors can lead to significant issues in the business.
Reasons To Avoid Manual Price Tracking
1. Risk of Errors: One of the major reasons to avoid manual tracking to eliminate the risk of errors. There are thousands of pricing data flowing around you. There are high chances of errors such as missing some data while transferring from a competitor’s website to yours. When you perform the tracking manually, there is always a risk of mistakes. Moreover, there is also a biased and perceptive search which will neglect some relevant websites. Use a proper price tracking tool for eliminating such mistakes. PriceIntelGuru leaves no room for errors and helps you in getting more productive and efficient.
2. Price Wars: Price wars can be really fierce even in the online arena. Prices can be a competitive advantage for many businesses and they are quite dynamic. You also need to think about discounts, promotions, etc. applied on special days. In such a scenario, it is not possible to monitor the prices manually. Because in a pricing war, time is of great significance to outsmart the competition as the shopper might change the buying decision due to the price.
3. Long Process: For any business, time is money and no one can afford to waste time on cumbersome tasks. This is what automation is for! It saves you time and money. It can be overwhelming and impossible to track competitor websites for the prices of hundreds of products. And not to mention millions of websites. Automation is the only key here. It can help you deal with the volume and the data all at once. You and your staff can focus on their productive activities with available time and resources. This will only increase your business revenue and open more doors of opportunities.
4. Hiring: If you hire someone to perform price tracking of several products, you will have to pay them for their services. It is better to invest in software that is efficient and quick. Now, this is also needing investment but there is a difference. A person might need training while the software is already set and you only need to input details and work according to the algorithm. That is easier and faster.
5. Decisions: Business is run with the help of a faster and more effective decision-making process. And manual tracking, is already very tedious which delays many other processes. So, with the help of automation of price tracking you will be able to focus on price analysis, and market trends, and make a decision on launching discounts and promotions. And assistance from companies like PriceIntelGuru can help you gain expertise in the field like never before. You can generate more leads, create a better customer base and diversify with the help of better insights. A lot can happen with a small investment.
Why Choose Automated Competitor Price Monitoring?
Now, you know what are the two concepts of tracking price. Let us understand the pros of investing in automated price tracking.
1. Need of The hour: Automated competitor price monitoring software is the need of the hour for any business. A business can get away without investing in the software only if they are dealing in completely distinguished products that differentiate from the competitors. And price tracking is inevitable if you are into online business. As everything changes in a blink of an eye in the eCommerce sector. So, you might want to keep up with the pace.
2. Relevant Competition: Companies don’t need to compete with others to reach the bottom line as they are unique product/ service means something to the customers. They can get customers without fighting the price war. And automated tracking can lead you to that path without much ado.
3. Knowing the Unknown: The thing about e-commerce is that it is a huge space and is becoming saturated each day. It is not sufficient to track just one competitor. There are competitors in huge number sat various places such as Amazon, social media, their own websites, etc. Competitors are everywhere and you need a strong command over the market trends for analysis of data.
4. Operations done Automatically: Instead of spending time in collecting the data yourself, it is better to use software that will perform the task on your behalf that too efficiently and without errors. This will enable you to focus on your core business. The automation will offer an understanding on how the market changes and you will be able to monitor the competitor pricing activities.
Make a Difference with Automated Price Tracking
You can do some research and find out the best competitor pricing tracking software based on your specific needs. It can be one of the best decisions you make for your business. But, let us help you there and save some time and energy. Go for PriceIntelGuru’s best software for price tracking and you won’t have to look further. So, get in touch with us today!