Price Monitor
The Price Monitor collects and compares the prices of the own products with those of the competitors. For this purpose the Price Monitor gathers the product and price data for pre-defined products and competitors directly from the websites of the own e-shop and those of the competitors. The collected prices are compared and viewed to the users in the form of a price table as well as a graph (see next Figure).
Contents
Preparation
For using the Price Monitor function the users only need to register their e-shop to the E-COMPASS cockpit as described in Section "Registration and System Configuration". The information of a Google Analytics account or a PIWIK installation is not required to use the function.
Configuration
After having registered to the E-COMPASS Cockpit you need to go to the Price Monitor function by a click on the button “Price Monitor” within the main menu of the on-line service (see following Figure).
For being able to view collected and compared price data the Price Monitor first needs to collect data for certain products and specific competitors. For this purpose you initially need to define so called “price collection jobs” which specify the products and competitors for which the prices shall be collected and compared. The jobs configuration section can be reach by a click on the “Configurator” link within the Price Monitor (see next Figure).
Within the Configurator you need to define products, competitors and jobs as collection tasks for the Price Monitor. The information is determined by the following steps of "Product definition", "Competitor definition" and "Job definition".
Product definition
The definition of products means to specify the product for which prices shall be collected. You can add a new product by a click on the button “Add product”. An overlay form appears as shown in the following Figure.
The “Add Product” form requires the information of a product term which corresponds to the name of the product within the own e-shop. After entering the product term press “Submit” to save the novel product to the product list of the Price Monitor.
Competitor definition
The second information required for the definition of price collection jobs is the names and URLs of the competitors’ e-shops for which the product prices shall be compared. For adding a novel competitor you need to press the button “Add Competitor”. Another overlay form appears as shown in next Figure.
You can enter an arbitrary name for the competitor and the URL of the e-shop website of the competitor. The URL can be any link of the e-shop website of the competitor, it is not necessary to take the URL of the start page. After entering the required information press “Submit” to save the new competitor to the competitor list of the Price Monitor.
Job definition
A price collection job specifies how often the prices for which product shall be collected for which competitors. For this purpose you need to define this information by a click on the button “Add Job” and by filling in the appearing overlay form as shown in the next Figure.
There have to be defined at least one job for each product. A job needs to specify a product for which the prices shall be collected and all competitors for which those prices shall be collected and compared. Additionally, the system needs to know how often it shall collect the prices what is defined within the field “Frequency”. You can choose one product and multiple competitors for a job from given dropdown lists automatically created from the defined products and competitors of the Price Monitor. The following frequencies can be selected as regular cycle for the data collection: once a day, once a week, once a month or once a year. A new created job is stored within the system after pressing the button “Submit”.
Additional information and editing or deleting items
The data collection and the corresponding displaying of the actual prices take about 24 hours from job definition. You can add novel products, competitors and jobs on anytime as described. For editing or deleting a product, a competitor or a job press the corresponding button behind the item in the list (see next Figure).
Displaying Data
The data is displayed directly in the Price Monitor (if you are in the Configurator click on the Link “Price Monitor”). For displaying data the service requires a time space and a product for which the prices shall be displayed. You need to select a start date by choosing a date in the “From” field as well as an end date by selecting a date of the “To” field. You also need to select a product from the product list beyond the “From” field. By clicking “Submit” the form is send to the system and the data appears in the form of a price table and a price graph as shown in the following Figures.
In future versions of the service the users will also be able to filter the competitor products to be displayed within the table and graph based on a similarity value which defines the similarity of the own product to those of the competitors, but this functionality is not implemented, yet.
