Posted on 12 April by Simon Gomez in Price Monitoring
As a retailer, one of the most complicated things to do is establishing the price of a product or service that your company offers. If you set the price too high, nobody is going to buy from you. If you set the price too low, although you will be selling a lot, you will not make any profits, and you will not reach the desired margins. There is an estimate that 30% of the companies fail to deliver the right price on their products. That concerns many companies, including yours, because that means lost revenue if you do not do it right.
Thankfully, there is a software called price monitoring. It helps you make the correct decision on whether the price you select is right or not, depending on many factors. This program is helpful, and they offer you a competitive advantage over other retailers, for example, in the way you used to collect this data before. Previously, you had to sit in front of your computer looking at all the information. Then, manually adjust the prices based on the data you collected. By the time you did this, your competition had new rates on their products, and all that hard work gave you no benefits.
In today's world, there are plenty of companies that offer price monitoring software. Nonetheless, with that many companies offering this program, how do we know which one is the best for you and your business? We created this guide to know which features make the best pricing monitoring software.
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1- Learn more about your competition prices
Every price monitoring software has to check the prices of your competitors. And they have to be precise with the feedback it gives you. If the software gives you incorrect information from the beginning about prices from your competitors, it creates a problem because that will lead you to price your products incorrectly. Get inaccurate data from your competition, and you will lose money.
2- Frequent price monitoring
Price changes happen a lot quicker than you think. Just take a look at Amazon, for example. The prices on their website are updated every 10 minutes, which allows them to make more profit.
The software you choose has to be fast and can update your prices not only weekly, not daily, but several times a day! This way, your company can keep up with the new prices of the market and not be behind everyone else.
3- Transparency
In science and computing, it is common to talk about black-box testing. You experiment with something, but you do not know how the software got the answer. In other words, it gives you the result, but you do not understand the process of how it reached that solution.
In price monitoring, this should not happen, no matter which pricing company you pick. Anytime the software gives you a pricing decision, you should understand how the software came to that conclusion, or someone in your company must. If you or someone in your company cannot comprehend it, the software should have an incorporated tool that explains how he did all of that, and step by step.
If the software does not have this incorporated, you should be careful. You need to know what the system is doing. Plus, if you ask the company and do not answer, you should not use the software built by this company.
4- Multiple shop analysis
The pricing monitoring software you pick should monitor Amazon and Google Shopping. But why these two? Well, according to the Mary Meeker report, 85% of all product searches begin either on Amazon or Google Shopping. The most substantial part of those searches belongs to Amazon with 49%, and Google took the 36% remaining.
So, it is right to follow the prices on at least these two websites since this is the place where most searches happen. Ergo, you can monitor your competitors here. Because they have their products showcased on these websites as they are the ones that generate more traffic.
5- Automation
Software like this one is supposed to help your business in a commercial sense and save you time. That is why the program should be fully automated, especially these four aspects so that you and your team can focus on other assignments:
- Data collection
- Business rules
- Price advice
- Price updates
Data collection goes in hand with the first point we gave. The program should automatically track the prices of your competitors. In the past, it took many hours because since it was manual work. Second, it was ineffective because prices online change fast. With a program like this, you save time and save your employees time because the software does this fast, and they can focus on other duties.
The system will give you a price recommendation for each product when the software obtains the data from your competition and the information from your company. After that, you can update the prices manually through your website, or the program can do it automatically.
After the program gathers all the information from the market, including the market demands, prices of your competitors, and other factors, it is only reasonable that your software does the repricing automatically. That helps your store to always be on track and updated on any price modifications.
6- Strategy flexibility
As we said before, price changes occur fast. Most of your pricing strategies are based on the information from your competition and the market demands. For that reason, any pricing strategy that you implement must be easy to change at any time and how you want it. Any pricing software should include many types of pricing strategies.
In addition to that, when you make any changes, it should not affect the whole group. There should be filters on your products, and you should have the option of modifying a specific lot or one specific object in particular.
A view from the PriceTweakers pricing strategy dashboard.
7- Easy to use
Price monitoring software were built to make the life of the company easier. To do a job that took ages when it was done by humans before. Thus, the pricing software must be easy to use and has to include a friendly interface. If it does not do this, we will not enjoy using the software and will not take full advantage. A study by Adobe cited by Fabrizio van Marciano concluded that almost 40% of users stop engaging if they find the content or website layout shabby.
An Uxeria study showed that 88% of online consumers are less likely to return to a site after a bad experience. A website that is hard to navigate or that gives you difficulties finding the information needed is no good for you. You will probably grow tired of it because you are not finding what you want. You can choose the best pricing monitoring software, but if it gives you a hard time using it is a no-no for you. You want software that is ready to go from the start, easy to navigate, easy to understand, and on top of this, easy to use.
8- Notifications
The truth is, you are not going to sit all day in front of your computer or instruct someone to do this. You want your team to focus on other tasks while the program is doing its work. When the software finds an update or when a repricing has occurred, a pop-up should alert you right away or the team in charge. This notification system has to be instant and can be through various channels like via e-mail, text message, or directly incorporated in the app.
9- Data analytics
Reading reports is tedious, especially if it is all text and numbers. It is worse if they do not include charts nor graphics to help ease up the reading. Imagine receiving a report with a bunch of numbers in disorder. You will not read it, and if you do, it is almost impossible to obtain any data. You must choose software that presents the information in many forms (charts and graphs), eye-catching, and easy to understand.
Charts and graphs are great ways to present information because they grab the attention of the person reading, expose information more clearly, and it is an easier way to compare and analyze two different variables. These charts and graphs should be interactive and provide detailed information when you click on one specific part of the chart or graph. It must display more exact details on the product.
10- Customer service
When you buy and use a product you have not tried before, that at some point, you are going to have doubts about its functionality, or as it is a program, encounter problems in the long run. Therefore, the pricing company you choose must have good customer service to solve any doubts you may encounter with the software.
The issues that you have should be solved as quickly as possible, and that team must be willing to help you at any time you need it. A HubSpot Research stated that 90% of customers rate an immediate response as important when they have a customer service question. 60% of the customers define immediate as 10 minutes or less.
Finding the right pricing monitoring software for your company can be difficult. But in the long run, it will give you and your company lots of benefits. If you are looking for software that includes all these features, PriceTweakers is the program for you! We offer you the possibility to adjust the pricing on your products using a dynamic pricing strategy and making a profit along the way. With our software, you have full knowledge of the market you are in, and we provide you with different and interactive dashboards with valuable information. Follow us for more information.
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