I'm looking for a tool we can use to monitor price changes on competitor e-commerce sites.  Rather than going into pricecomp engines and having to sift through a lot of noise, we want to target key competitors and specific product lines, and be able to react accordingly.  Has anyone seen one/ built one they want to try and sell to me?  Any help much appreciated.

Joe

Thanks for the advice, but it's not really something we're looking to do in-house.  Anyone out there want to offer their services?

hi, Joe, how are you?

I agree - it would probably be a mistake to handle this in-house if that's not your usual setup. Or to buy a standalone application with no updates. The basic idea is simple, but setting up reporting, handling duplicate manufacturer part numbers (etc) would be quite painful. You also may end up having to rework the application every time any competitor altered their site.

There are tools out there to do exactly what you want - one that I've used in the past is igentica. It had the functionality you're looking for (although I don't know what vertical you're in) - and we could (for example) price-compare across 10 different sites on a particular product, set up alerts & regular reports, etc.

I hope that helps,

daniel

We found http://www.pricegrid.com to be excellent for our needs, free level as well

If you are looking for a high-end solution take a look at http://upstreamcommerce.com/.

We collect the data directly from competitors' website and use a powerful matching engine to match products producing very accurate data. We also have advanced analytics that allow you to analyze how you are doing versus your competitors at any given moment.

See a live online demo here: http://upstreamcommerce.com/demo