1. Know your market, and know your competition

Customers are going to be looking for a combination of value and convenience and to provide that, by monitoring competitors and tracking what your competition is doing and what they are charging at all times.

Pricing intelligence solutions such are the ideal tool to keep you informed and up to date on these rapidly changing conditions. In addition to providing analytics, they also allow you to automatically price and reprice to meet or beat your competition.

2. The price is right

Yes, it is more than just a game show. Consumers are becoming used to finding bargain prices on certain items. By offering these bargain prices (almost as a loss leader), your online store will rank better in search engines results, boosting your site traffic.

On the other hand, sometimes your competitors will be out of stock for a few days on particular items. You’ll then want to increase prices on those items and as a results get a better margin without sacrificing your margin. Knowing to identify retail pricing patterns will in the foregoing task.

Once you have the “price conscious” shopper in your store, you have the opportunity to offer value added services, “bundled products” as well as a customer service experience that all work together to boost your bottom line as you convert the price conscious shopper to a long term customer.

3. It’s all about the stock

Your online store needs to offer what people want to buy. Pricing intelligence solutions offer the capability to monitor your competitors’ inventory and trends over time, allowing you to track which products your competition is having success with and get in on the market.

Additionally, you can receive notifications when they are out of stock, providing you with a unique repricing and marketing opportunity.

4. Data, data, and more data.

When we talk about data, we mean Big Data. There is little room for argument about the value and importance of Big Data, in May of 2011, McKinsey Global Institute  wrote the article: “Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity.”

In June, 2011, The Economist Intelligence Unit wrote, “Big Data: Harnessing a game-changing asset.”  In March 2012, The Economist Intelligence Unit sought more insight on this issue in a survey, “Big Data, Lessons From the Leaders,” sponsored by SAS. While we can all agree that Big Data is important and valuable, according to data compiled by Monetate, many businesses are not really ready to actively use such data in a meaningful fashion.

Nearly one third of retailers are completely in the dark about the data they even collect and over seventy five percent do not know what percentage of the data they do collect is structured (name, address, date of birth, transactions, etc) or unstructured (images, “likes”, product reviews, etc) or know how to utilize the data.

Ultimately, 2013 seems likely to shape up as yet another breakout year for online sales, and here at Wisepricer we are looking forward to helping you and you online store be part of this fantastic growth opportunity.