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Competitor prices

4 min read · #masters · #pricing · #products · #catalogue

Adding a competitor

Go to Masters › Competitors and click Add competitor. You need:

  • the master shop whose products it competes with;
  • a name and the website;
  • who it sells to: shoppers (their prices are compared with your RRP) or retailers (compared with your price);
  • the currency of their prices.

That is enough for a Shopify or WooCommerce shop that shows its prices: aiku finds its public catalogue by itself and reads it the next morning at 04:00 UTC, every product and every pack size with its price. The competitor page then says Shopify catalogue or WooCommerce catalogue under Prices read from.

For any other website, fill in one of the fields under Where to read prices:

  • Product feed link: the CSV or text file with all their products and prices that they give their trade customers. Best option; read every morning.
  • Search link: search their website for any word, copy the link of the results page and put {query} where the word was. aiku then searches their site every week for the master products that have an open price tip.
  • Login page, login email and password: only when they show prices to logged-in trade customers. The password is stored encrypted and never shown again; leave it empty when editing to keep it.

What the dashboard shows

Masters › Competitors opens on the dashboard:

  • Competitors: how many were read fine, how many are failing and why (the website could not be opened, it blocked us, or the login failed), with the last error in plain words, and when the last read was.
  • Matches to review: how many matches the AI was not sure of. Click it to review them.
  • Reviewed by staff this week and Confirmed this week, each against last week.
  • One card per master shop: how many confirmed products you are cheaper, about the same (within 5%) or dearer on, the median difference, and the share of active master products that have at least one confirmed competitor price.
  • Confirmed matches per week over the last 12 weeks.
  • Where they are cheapest and Where we are cheapest: the ten confirmed matches with the biggest gap each way, linking to the master product.
  • The competitors ranked by confirmed matches, with their median difference, products read, last read and status.

Until the first competitor is added, the dashboard explains what to do instead.

Reviewing matches

After every read the AI compares each of their products with yours. A match it is sure of is confirmed by itself (marked auto); the others wait under Prices to review. Each row shows your product, your price per unit, their product with a link, their price per unit in the group currency, and the difference: red when they are cheaper, green when they are dearer.

Click the tick when it is the right match and the cross when it is not. Rejected matches are not shown again. The buckets at the top switch between To review, Confirmed, Rejected and All; the Confirmed bucket doubles as the price comparison, sortable by difference.

A match marked Similar, not the same item is kept as a hint but never counted in the price comparison.

The competitor page

Click a competitor's name on the list or the dashboard to see its master shop, website, who it sells to, the currency, how its prices are read, whether aiku logs in, its status and last error, and two tabs:

  • Matches: its matches with the same tick and cross review;
  • Products read: everything read from it, with price, units and link.

Edit opens the same form as when adding, without the master shop.

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