Marketing

Guide to Competitor Price Tracking

Post by
Andrew Pierno
Guide to Competitor Price Tracking

When faced with a choice between different products with similar features, which product will the customer buy? Sure, in some cases, brand loyalty might sway them, but in most instances, customers will choose the product with the best price. 

This is where competitor price tracking comes in. It allows you to always know your competitors’ product pricing to choose the right pricing strategy. And in this post, we’ll show you everything you need to make wise decisions with competitor price tracking.

What Is Competitor Price Tracking?

As the name suggests, competitor price tracking is a tactic for monitoring your competitors’ pricing daily to get more insights into their pricing strategies, how often they change their pricing, and when they run promotions. 

These insights, in turn, can then help you shape or improve your own pricing strategy to sell more and smarter.

The Benefits of Competitor Price Tracking

Yes, with all the tasks on your plate, competitor price tracking may sometimes seem insignificant, especially if you’re sure of your product’s quality. However, pricing is a significant factor, so you can discover new opportunities when you know how much your competitors charge for the same (or similar) products or services.

But competitor price tracking goes further, offering plenty of benefits: 

Competitor Price Tracking Provides Insights into Customer Demand

When tracking your competitors’ pricing, you’ll not only do so in the present but also have access to their historical pricing. From this data, you’ll be able to identify trends and patterns that can help you develop an effective pricing strategy. 

For example, you’ll see the effect new products in the market have on older products. Likewise, when studying your competitors’ pricing adjustments, you’ll also learn when certain products are in demand and their popularity wanes. If you’re new to the industry, this will give you the knowledge about seasonality to make more accurate forecasts.

However, there are some best practices to keep in mind to make sure you’re getting the most out of this strategy, including:

Understand Your Goals

When it comes to competitor price tracking, it's important to define clear and specific objectives. Knowing what you want to achieve will help you select the right tools, collect and analyze the right data, and make the right decisions. For instance, do you want to improve your profit margins, increase market share, or stay ahead of the competition? Having well-defined goals will enable you to focus on the right data and make informed decisions.

Understand Who Your Real Competitors Are

Not all companies are your competitors, and not all competitors are created equal. It's crucial to identify and monitor your direct competitors who offer similar products or services to yours. This will enable you to focus on the most relevant data and gain a better understanding of the market. It's also worth keeping an eye on indirect competitors whose pricing strategies could impact your market share.

Don't Only Collect Data, Analyze It

Collecting data is just the beginning; the real value lies in analyzing it. By analyzing the data you collect, you can gain insights into pricing patterns, emerging trends, and shifts in the market. These insights can help you adjust your pricing strategy and stay competitive. It's important to regularly review and analyze the data you collect to stay on top of the market trends.

Act Fast but with Purpose

Price tracking enables businesses to respond quickly to changes in the market and adjust their pricing strategies accordingly. However, it's important to act purposefully rather than impulsively. Before making any pricing decisions, consider your objectives and goals, potential profits or losses, and your customers' expectations.

While it's tempting to engage in pricing wars and race to the bottom, this can ultimately hurt your business in the long run. Instead, focus on creating value for your customers and positioning yourself as a quality provider, rather than just the cheapest option.

Make Sure You're Using the Right Tools

Choosing the right price tracking platform is critical to success. With the right tool, you can automate the price tracking process, receive real-time updates, and access accurate and reliable data. This will allow you to make data-driven decisions quickly and stay ahead of the competition. It's important to invest in a platform that provides you with all the features you need, such as automatic price monitoring, competitor analysis, and real-time alerts.

With these best practices, your price competitor tracking efforts will be more effective and help your business succeed. 

More Dynamic Pricing

When you use competitor price tracking to shape your pricing strategy, you’ll be able to price your products more dynamically. In other words, you’ll adjust your pricing based on the market and your competition’s strategies. 

You can run promotions and sales at strategic times. Likewise, you’ll eliminate running promotions when your competitors price their products lower, and you simply can’t compete. Similarly, you’ll increase your pricing when demand for a product is high and reduce pricing when demand declines. 

It’s important to remember that, while you can do this manually, it borders on the impossible, considering the sheer amount of competitors. For this reason, you’ll likely need a tool to help you automate the process. 

Competitor Price Tracking Can Increase Your Conversions

When you price and adjust your products competitively, your products will always be, simply put, priced right. This is especially relevant when you consider that about 70% of consumers state that pricing was the most important factor they considered when buying a product. 

Ultimately, this means that you’ll always be in a position to increase your conversion rate and make more sales. 

Maximizing Profit

Competitor pricing goes further than making more sales, however. It also allows you to maximize your profits. 

For example, through competitor price tracking, you’ll see for which products there’s less competition in the market or where you’re one of the few vendors. You can then increase your prices for these products.

Moreover, you’ll see where the market is too competitive. And when you have products in this sector, you can reduce their pricing to stay competitive. Where your margins are already too low, you can rather focus on other products, where you’ll be better able to compete and generate higher profits.  

Staying Competitive

By now, you know online stores no longer only sell their products on their websites. They also sell on social media, Amazon, and other marketplaces. In many cases, they price their products differently on these platforms based on customer demand, platform promotions, and other factors.

When you use competitor price tracking, this no longer inhibits you from staying competitive, as you’ll always know your competitors’ pricing on every platform. You’ll maximize sales and revenue no matter where you sell. 

In addition, when you consistently price your products competitively, you’ll become known as a retailer with the right prices over time.

Where to Find Competitor Pricing Information?

Now that you’re itching to get your hands on competitor pricing information, the challenge is: where do you find your competition’s pricing information?

You have your pick of the litter, but the most straightforward sources for competitor price tracking are websites, online marketplaces, and review sites. 

Depending on your industry, you’ll have varying degrees of success when using these sources. For example, when you have an online store, it’s relatively to find your competitors’ pricing. 

When you sell heavy machinery with customized quotes, it won’t be as easy to find specific pricing information. 

How the Right Competitor Price Tracking Tool Helps You

Earlier, we mentioned that while you can do competitor price tracking manually, you’ll likely need a tool to help you automate the process. It’s the only way to do it effectively and efficiently. 

Using a competitor tracking tool, you’ll get deeper insights into your competitors’ product catalogs, product-specific pricing, product launches, and more. 

1) ScreenshotAPI

This is where ScreenshotAPI comes in. The platform allows you to take screenshots of several websites in bulk by only clicking a few buttons

Take screenshots at specific times, extract the text from these screenshots, and unlock new opportunities to automate your pricing in tune with your competitors, governed by a few automation rules. 

In fact, Tjommi, a company that helps its users get cash back if a product’s price drops after purchase, used ScreenshotAPI to track competitor prices

As Tjommi CTO, Helge Sverre, explained– 

ScreenshotAPI.net helped us quickly solve a problem where we needed to document price changes for products by taking a screenshot of the product page. Our biggest reason for picking ScreenshotAPI instead of making our own solution, was their out-of-the-box banner and popup blocker. [Typically, banners and popups] would obscure the price on the product page[s].

When you use ScreenshotAPI, there’s no reason not to stay up-to-date with your competitors’ pricing. 

Learn more about ScreenshotAPI for competitor price tracking.

Get started for free today! 

2) Prisync

Prisync is an excellent price tracking platform that caters to e-commerce shops of all sizes, used by businesses worldwide. This tool is highly efficient as it keeps track of real-time pricing and stock availability, and it provides automatic updates four times a day. Prisync also offers dynamic competitive pricing, pricing benchmarking, and analytics, as well as advanced filtering options. 

One standout feature is the SmartMatch feature, which allows you to discover competitors that you may not have known about before, using product code matching. Overall, Prisync is an effective and reliable tool for keeping up with competitor pricing.

Pricing starts at $99/month and offers a 14-day free trial.

3) Pricefy

The next tool on our list is Pricefy, which offers free competitor price monitoring for up to 100 products with their starter plan. This platform enables users to track prices from any country, currency, or marketplace, including Amazon and eBay. Pricefy sends out real-time alerts whenever a price change is detected. 

One notable feature of Pricefy is that it uses AI to automatch products from customers, which means you can start monitoring competitor pricing with just a single click without worrying about uploading a batch of URLs. This feature saves you time and effort.

Paid plans start at $49/month for up to 2,000 products.

4) Omnia

Omnia Retail is a robust competitor price platform that provides a suite of end-to-end automation tools for pricing intelligence, dynamic pricing, and assortment optimization. With its flexible pricing rules engine, you can easily set up and adjust your pricing strategies to fit your business needs. 

The platform offers real-time data updates and powerful analytics to help you make informed pricing decisions. You can track your competitors' prices and promotions across multiple channels and countries, and get alerts when they change. Plus, you can use Omnia's predictive analytics to forecast demand and optimize your pricing to maximize your revenue.

However, with all these features comes a higher price tag, which may not be feasible for smaller businesses. Contact Omnia for a custom price quote.

5) Skuuudle

Skuuudle is a cloud-based competitor price tool that automatically compares your prices to competitors and provides daily price and product insights. What we love about Skuuudle is its accuracy and end-to-end visualization, which allows businesses to see where they stand in the market. 

Although the amount of data provided can be overwhelming, Skuuudle has an excellent support team to help unravel it all. Additionally, Skuuudle offers customizable alerts, so you can receive notifications for any changes that affect your business.

Skuuudle offers custom, flexible pricing plans so you only pay for what you need and want.