It seems that competitors are becoming more of a friend rather than our enemy. It appears that this popular saying keeps competitors more vigilant and wise. Having a peek at their website is not sufficient, you have to go deeper than that.
Competitor monitoring online is very important for your e-commerce business, and price comparison software is one the main ways it is done today. It is the one and only best solution to keep on top of the competition. Opportunities strike only if we know the advantage we can have against the competition.
Here are the things we can do. These are not spy tools by the way, most of these are services available in any businesses. I’m sure a lot of you have heard of price comparison software tools, or just generally heard of price monitoring. Well you should never overlook the below factors also.
1. Ego search.
Ego search is a free monitoring tool to help keep track of blogs, news, and anything that mentions your company or the product you are selling. Conducting ego searches allow you to simplify the gathering of information against your competitor.
2. Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a tool that can help you gain alerts using a simple search function. It is an automated search engine and web intelligence for monitoring competitors online. It gives the entire information of a certain website and sends update via email.
3. Backlink Spying
Here are some ways you can see who is linking, who using search engines:
Follow this syntax when doing a search in search engine sites:
In the search engine’s search bar type link:domain.com
Yahoo! has a different syntax for it, type linkdomain:domain.com instead
Where domain.com is the domain name(web address) of your competitor. Once initiated properly, the search engine will produce results your competitor has a link to.
4. Meta Tags
In e-commerce online, meta tags help any site go from zero to popular if done properly. It can tell what keywords are used to market their website and product.
Looking for meta tags in a website is easy. All you need to do is just view their webpage source. Any browser has a view page source feature, just right click in any spot in the website then click view page source.
Take a look at the title, description, especially the keyword used, it could have keywords you have missed.
5. Price Monitoring Software
You need to monitor your competitors price on a similar product you have aside from focusing on the popularity and the strategy your competitor has. What if their products are cheaper than yours? What if based on your competitor, you could have earned more? A competitor price monitoring software or service will help you with that, this is what you probably have come across under the guise of ‘price comparison software‘.
6. Site Monitoring
Website monitoring is an automated tool mimicking what people usually do online. They create snapshots of the website’s HTML code and notifies you of any changes made. It is included in most competitor monitor software but also can be used as a free tool online.
7. Facebook and Twitter.
The social media bandwagon not only helps people keep in touch, but also helps e-commerce generate leads too The rise of social media today helped people find old friends, communicate, and gain news about their friend but also helps businesses know what these people are thinking about them. Business flock where people go so it is a good idea to follow or become a fan in their Twitter and Facebook page.
There you’ll see what people are thinking about your competitor, how your competitor reacts to praises and criticisms.
Use what they have or plan an action against it. Use price monitoring, price comparison software, change detect and other services in combination with the above and you will be on the right track.