Frequently Asked Questions

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General | Competitor Pricing | Dynamic Pricing | Shopify

General FAQs

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Competitor Pricing FAQs

  • Price tracking tools, such as BlackCurve, are commonly adopted where an online retailer has hundreds and even thousands of products. Price tracking tools will automatically find competitor matches for your products on the web, as well as automatically collect competitor prices each and every day, in order to provide competitor pricing insights.

  • Online shopping makes it easy for consumers to do their pricing research. If a retailer is significantly more expensive than the market, consumers will be more likely to shop elsewhere. Conversely, if a retailer is too cheap, this can also cause consumers to shop elsewhere, as it encourages fear that something is wrong with the product or the retailer itself. If a product that is too cheap relative to competitors does sell, it is likely a higher price for the product could have been achieved, meaning revenue has been given away unnecessarily. Therefore, competitor price monitoring is important to not miss out on sales as well in order to maximise revenue in every transaction.

  • It involves using data sets in order to make pricing decisions. The most common data set used to make pricing decisions is competitor prices, but increasingly historical sales performance, stock levels, as well as marketing performance data are used. Pricing Intelligence is typically done via a pricing tool, such as BlackCurve, that presents pricing insights in a dashboard and report-based form.

  • Competitor price analysis is defined as the identification of relevant competitors selling the same or an equivalent product, the subsequent collection of the price displayed to the public by the identified competitors, followed by the analysis of your own relative price position against the collected prices in order to determine whether your own price should be changed.

  • An e pricing strategy sets the objective of pricing decisions for an eCommerce company and how price changes will be implemented. It is typically set once the business objectives are known. For example, if the business objective is to grow market share, it is likely the pricing strategy will ensure prices are typically held at a lower market position, and that tools are in place to automatically maintain this price position. Conversely, if the business objective is to increase profits, it is likely the pricing strategy will be more intelligent, ensuring it not only considers competitor price position, but also takes into account product performance.

  • Shopify customers can simply add the BlackCurve app via the Shopify App Store. Non-Shopify customers can create a BlackCurve account via the BlackCurve website. After the setup steps have been completed, and BlackCurve has been given access to a product feed, it will automatically mine Google Shopping, match competitor products, and collect competitor prices each and every day, presenting the insights to users via a dashboard and report-based form.

  • It is important to monitor competitor prices so retailers can identify where they’re too cheap relative to the competition, so prices can be increased, to avoid giving away too much revenue in each product sale. Conversely, to identify where a retailer is too expensive relative to the competition, so prices can be reduced, to avoid missing out on selling the product entirely because it is available cheaper elsewhere.

 

Dynamic Pricing FAQs

  • BlackCurve’s Dynamic Pricing features enable your pricing strategy to be automatically implemented on your website, at a chosen schedule of your choice.

  • If you have thousands and even hundreds of SKUs, staying on top of your pricing is time-consuming. Dynamic pricing gives you back time in your day, by handling pricing automatically.

    Furthermore, if you’re selling branded goods, it is likely your sales are driven by how competitive you’re on price, therefore it is imperative for you to always be on top of your pricing, and dynamic pricing will handle this automatically for you.

  • Fixed pricing means your pricing is set and never changes.

    Dynamic pricing is where your prices are changing based on a change in other data points such as a change in cost price, a change in your competitors price etc.

Shopify FAQs

  • Shopify customers can simply add the BlackCurve app via the Shopify App Store. After the setup steps have been completed, and BlackCurve has been given access to a product feed, it will automatically mine the web, match competitor products, and collect competitor prices each and every day, presenting the insights to users via a dashboard and report-based form.

  • BlackCurve’s Dynamic Pricing App for Shopify, enables your pricing strategy to be automatically implemented on your website, at a chosen schedule of your choice.

  • Simply ‘Add [the] App’ for the Shopify App Store, and BlackCurve will be connected to your online store. This gives us access to see your product feed, so we can collect competitor pricing information, and if you have turned on the pricing rules, it enables us to automatically update prices on your website based on your chosen pricing strategy.

  • If you have thousands and even hundreds of SKUs, staying on top of your pricing is time-consuming. Dynamic pricing gives you back time in your day, by handling pricing automatically.

    Furthermore, if you’re selling branded goods, it is likely your sales are driven by how competitive you’re on price, therefore it is imperative for you to always be on top of your pricing, and dynamic pricing will handle this automatically for you.

  • BlackCurve has a very easy to use drag and drop rules engine for you to configure your pricing rules.

    Once you’re happy with your chosen pricing rules, simply set them to active, and select your chosen cadence (i.e. how often you wish for the rules to be applied e.g. daily), and you’re good to go, with your prices automatically being updated on your Shopify website.