Digital Shelf Analytics

What Consumers Expect from eCom Brands During the April Fools Month?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Expert Opinion

Customer engagement is at the top of the list for all brands. April is the perfect month to share some laughter with your customers and get to know them even better. Brands also use social media, outdoor advertisements, and other means to capture the eyes of new consumers as marketplaces become highly competitive. eCom brands have often witnessed massive sales during April. According to a source, the sale of non-food items in eCom stores grew by 21.1% in April 2016, whereas the Jan-March incurred an overall growth of 8.2%. In addition, another source stated that the eCom store’s traffic surpassed Black Friday sale traffic every day in April 2019. As per Adobe’s digital economy index, eCom sales were boosted by 49% in the U.S., compared with Jan-Mar 2020, before the restrictions of shelter-in-place. This report also stated that grocery sales on Instacart reached nearly $700 million in sales by the end of the first two weeks of April. Holy Moly! The surge in traffic and boost in sales was certainly a game-changer for brands. However, their attribution could go to the change in consumer behavior during the month. For example, consumers often search for gift or prank options on eCom stores during April fools month. Therefore, brands often try to provide the most suitable choices to their consumers during festivities or occasions. So, consumers often expect the following from eCom brands during April: 3 Things Consumers Would Expect from Brands in April More Mischievous Recommendations Consumers would undoubtedly expect product recommendations from brands just like any other day. However, they would want pranking, jokes, or humoring products, especially during April. Brands that offer the best mischievous recommendations would undoubtedly attract a goofy customer base, and the majority of them would engage with brands wholeheartedly. Even if consumers buy FMCG products, a laughable message card or coupons like “Haha” offering a discount would undoubtedly increase their loyalty to the brand. Bulk Availability of Foolish Products Gifts can be for an individual or a group of friends. On April fools day, people are more likely to spread laughter or pranks with more than one person. Therefore, consumers in eCom stores are likely to seek products with higher availability in their pin codes. Unavailable will cause a severe blowback to the brands, as consumers would find alternate options or eCom stores for making online purchases. Sponsored listings that meet the criteria of such consumers will also become favorable towards higher SKUs. Honest Response to Sarcastic Reviews and Ratings Brands should not become weary in the presence of higher sarcastic reviews or ratings that don’t match the review, as consumers are likely to plat it as a prank. At the same time, consumers would expect a swift response from retailers or brands on the reviews if it is not a prank and an honest review with a mistaken rating. Consumers checking product reviews and ratings are likely to read such reviews and make the final buying call. Therefore, brands are expected to provide a much more engaging response than “we are sorry to hear, or your concerns are duly noted,” Scaling the Business with mScanIt As mentioned before, April is a month for scaling business every day. Therefore, it requires a solution that can present a real story of the consumer sentiments, deep-dive into real-time insights, and provide accurate results across different eCom stores. mScanIt covers all such areas and more by offering analytics daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Moreover, it is the best eCommerce Competitive Analytics solution because it provides deep-dive into pricing insights, share-of-shelf, SKU availability, etc., which would come in handy even after the April fools month. Businesses across continents use the solution for mapping their and competitor products across eCom stores, pin codes, and cities. Conclusion April fools month is not just a business opportunity but also a chance for brands to increase engagement with their consumers. Moreover, customers expect eCom brands and retailers to bring exciting products, recommendations, sponsored listings, etc., on marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, Big Basket, etc. On the other hand, meeting the increasing consumer demand is one of the objectives of an eCom organization. Therefore, scaling the business would require a solution that can deliver meaningful insights and trends with peaking accuracy. mScanIt is the aptest eCom Competitive Analytics solution that can meet these requirements. So make your brand appointment with us to learn more about mScanIt.

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Share-of-Shelf: What Should Matter?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Expert Opinion

Easing consumers’ shopping experience begins by making efforts to get discovered even when there is no awareness about the product/brand. Discoverability is building a successful search and exploration journey for the consumer to achieve this result. Brands use keywords to enhance findability and visibility on eCom platforms like Amazon, Big Basket, Flipkart, etc. The brand’s success in achieving these goals is measured by comparing the search results with competitors, and it is commonly called Share of Shelf (SOS). A study suggests that search engines build 62% of eCom journeys. Consumers come across new or potential products on eCom stores because brands customize discoverability based on their search behavior deciphered through analytics and keyword analysis. For example, brands have insight that consumers could be unaware of the latest bestsellers of the year and use keywords like “best books to read best sellers, best books to read, best books 2022,’ etc., based on eCom results on Google, and eCom marketplace search results. SOS measures the percentage of product visibility compared to competitors based on specific keywords. Measuring SOS offers numerous advantages to brands, such as generating awareness if competitors target the same keywords, identifying keywords with low competition, brand/product rankings, etc. Share-of-digital-shelf on eCom stores is measured for the competitor, sponsored, and organic keywords to get a complete picture of the brand presence. Moreover, platforms with higher positioning enhance visibility and tend to garner higher add-to-cart actions and greater chances of transaction. Therefore, brands acquire more revenue and an extensive customer base with a higher SOS percentage. Understanding the competition’s SOS helps the brand plan the future course of business. In addition, SOS helps brands determine their market positioning. Evaluating a brand’s overall, ranking-based, and category-specific SOS can deliver a full picture of the product presence across eCom stores. 3 Things to Consider While Evaluating eCom Share of Shelf Total SOS Measuring the overall presence of a brand’s product across eCom stores gives a simplified view of the market positioning based on select keywords. Brands with high SOS percentages have successfully eased the consumer’s discoverability journey. Such listings would acquire higher reachability, and enhanced visibility, witness more add-to-cart actions, and ultimately acquire more revenue. Comparing the percentages every month would provide insights into the change in SOS performance of your and competitor brands while displaying the change in performance. Such insights play a crucial role in creating brand strategies and marketing spending decisions across eCom platforms and require continuous monitoring. Reviewing product SOS across stores would also help understand the highest performing eCom platforms, distinguish between the share of sponsored, competitor, and organic keywords, etc. mFilterIt’s eCom Competitive Analytics conducts a deep scan of e-commerce platforms to analyze drivers of sales. Moreover, mScanIt helps brands compare their platform coverage with the competitors and find the top performers for product/brand searches, SKU ranges, and variants. The overall share of the digital shelf is calculated and displayed on a single dashboard portraying a score based on these categories. SOS by Category Brands use categories for product listings on eCom stores which significantly impacts discoverability. For example, Amazon enlists “press” under “dry iron, steam iron, iron, and other categories. Brands add keywords on their product and company page of the eCom platform that match the categorical search results. Evaluating category-wise share of digital shelf can offer promising deliverables. For example, brands can learn the category with the highest SOS and decide to change the categories of their products. The eCom competitive analysis of categorical SOS displays the share acquired by the brand and its competitors. Therefore, brands can decide to enlist products under categories with higher chances of discoverability, visibility, and consumer reachability to boost add-to-cart actions and conversions. Moreover, the brand understands its categorical presence across eCom platforms. Another advantage of using keywords based on categorical segregation is ranking on the bestseller page. Brands often evaluate their and competitor’s SOS percentages on bestseller pages under different departments/categories. However, the full scale of SOS results by category can be derived by evaluating visibility based on brand, sub-brand, pin codes, variants, and SKU range. mFilterIt’s eCommerce Analytics uses these categories to provide an in-depth view of the SOS. Moreover, mScanIt informs brands of any KPI deviations. Therefore, you stay updated about product health and data. As a result, you always keep an eye out for KPIs and don’t lose hold of market trends unless you change your marketing or advertising strategies. Top Results of Products by Searching Specific Keywords Measuring the share of a product under a category on an eCom platform is valuable, but so is knowing the page rank of the products using various keywords. As per our research, consumers are more likely to see products, add them to a cart, and even successfully place an order if the product is listed in the top ten results or on the first page. For example, if a consumer searches for the keyword “Shampoo”, the brand with the highest ranking and visibility on the first three pages will most likely achieve consumer interactions. mScanIt beholds the capability of finding the keyword-level share of brands based on rankings. Another research stated that many consumers might even decide the product’s traits, such as features, options, etc., based on the listings visible to them ahead of the line. Therefore, brands that will enlist their products on the eCom store or already have listings present on the e-commerce platforms would use this to their advantage by adding keywords of such listings on their product/company pages of the eCom platform. The consumer sentiment of product ranking based on the most researched keywords changes the playing field of eCom store brands. Acquiring a higher ranking on search pages has become a competitive game and requires careful analysis using a solution that recognizes consumer behavior based on search results. Most brands also spend on promoted/ sponsored listings which keep their product listings at a desirable position on the search page. However, winning the search rank organically is what brands strive for since that gives them relatively permanent

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Top Keywords: It all begins with Identifying them, Correctly!

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Noopur Mathur

Generally, consumers find new products on eCommerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Shopee, etc., by navigating or searching on the platform itself. Whenever users type an alphabet or word in the search query, it displays head/short-tail, long-tail, and LSI keywords, which most users have used to find their desired product and the brands bid to rank their products. Brands also optimize their product pages by using the top searched keywords in their product page so that the listings display on the top. According to a source, 38% of global customers use Amazon to find their desired products. Top keywords are the ‘most popular searches’ under a category of an eCommerce platform. The popularity is based on the keywords with the highest search volume. Ranking high on such words or phrases ensures a higher share-of-shelf on the top pages as well as higher visibility, brand awareness, click-through rate, add-to-cart, and conversions/sales. Today, brands need to measure the search performance of their product’s top generic, brand, and competition keywords under a category to achieve a higher market share. Searches on eCommerce marketplaces have navigational, commercial, transactional, or informational intent. For example, navigational intent keywords consist of brand names with the product type, enabling consumers to find their desired product faster, e.g., ‘MIVI earbuds.’ Similarly, transactional intent could mean ‘t-shirt under 799’ or ‘shoes under 15000,’ wherein the online shopper is searching for products under a defined price tag and could desire a specific brand too, e.g., ‘Levis t-shirt under 1200’. Likewise, commercial keywords refer to comparative searches, like ‘Batman t-shirt’ – here, the brand is non-specific, but the intent to buy a specific product type is clear. Informational keywords refer to ‘best shoes for football’ or ‘best gaming smartphones.’ Identifying Top Keywords Using AI and ML Keywords can entice, hook, or allure consumers to check out a product on the eCommerce platform. Finding the top keywords of your brand can offer insight into the consumer’s mindset while searching for your product and that of your competitors under a category. Many marketers might suggest that traditional methods of using URLs, suggested keywords, consumer intent keywords, etc., could help to find keywords, but these methods have limitations. Now, brands can easily identify and analyze their performance on top generic, competition, and sponsored keywords and the competition using our eCommerce Competitive Analytics tool, mScanIt. This tool enables the brands to see their share at a deeper level compared to their competition by using the multiple filters given in the tool such as brand, sub-brand, variants, SKU, etc. Moreover, the brand could also use a keyword planning tool to find the keywords with the highest share and optimize the Product Detail Pages (PDPs) accordingly. On the other hand, the highest-grossing competition keywords would help the brand find areas of improvement across platforms or ask whether the product needs to have this keyword. A few common questions that brands can answer using mScanIt capabilities: What is the overall SOS of your brand compared to the competition on the top keywords of the eCommerce platform? Are the ongoing page optimization delivering successful SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) on e-commerce platforms? Can/Should the brand add new keywords to its product page copies? Which keywords are the competition brands more focused upon, and what is its impact on the brand’s SOS on the eCommerce platform? Are any keywords with high competition share more relevant than your existing ones? Is there any other keyword that is more consumer intent-centric than your existing ones? Which keywords are most of your competitors using – long-tail, short-tail, or LSI? Are the competitors spending more on paid or relying on organic searches? Discoverability becomes vital to brands as eCommerce platforms are built for purchasing products. Understanding the relevance of the top keywords by measuring your brand’s Share-of-Shelf becomes crucial for enhancing the product discoverability. Some marketers suggest that monitoring reviews offers insights into the pros and cons of a product, which is certainly true and simultaneously enables one to find long-tail keywords. Unfortunately, identifying keywords relevant only through a single source doesn’t offer perspective. Therefore, brands need to identify the top keywords from every possible source. Using multiple filters, the solution also sights the most promising/critical aspects of a brand and its competitors. (Read here) A single category page on Amazon could consist of up to 50 product listings, which means your brand’s single variant competes with 49 other listings, some of these could be of your brand as well. Analyzing the top keywords on the eCommerce marketplace’s digital shelf helps the brand increase its page positioning/ranking and enhance visibility. Bottom Line Targeting top keywords has become necessary for increasing the brand’s discoverability and thus, sales on e-commerce platforms. Our solution, mScanIt, makes it possible for brands to weigh the relevancy of their relevant keywords on eCommerce marketplaces, especially when paid searches get involved in the business. Today, brands need to focus on the top keywords for measuring their SEO and SERP, making the PDPs more consumer-centric, assessing the keywords the competitors are focused upon, and more. Get in touch to learn more about the advantages of eCommerce Competitive Analytics for your business.

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Why is Price Monitoring Important for eCom Brands?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Expert Opinion

Price is one of the most crucial factors contributing to the final buying decision on e-commerce platforms. According to research, 60% of customers would shop for a product online based on the best price or value. Seeing that price is a leading reason for most customers and has the potential of driving customers towards or away from your brand, monitoring price is no longer a brand’s choice. Price monitoring is the practice of continuously keeping an eye on the price of your products as well as similar listings of your competitors. However, the analytics of e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, BigBasket, BlinkIt (formerly Grofers), etc., don’t offer this choice to the brands. What could happen if you don’t monitor competitors’ prices? You would miss out on chances of increasing sales, develop imperfect pricing strategies, never know the difference between your and competitors’ prices of similar listings in real-time, etc. On the other hand, a price monitoring solution can give you an overview of the market scenario, deep-dive into buyer personas, explore new target audiences, etc. The scope of price monitoring extends beyond these reasons. During a conversation, our mScanIt Vertical Head, Ankush Arora, stated “Tracking online prices helps to know who started the price war. and, What was the price? – which are definite factors in creating pricing trends, sighting MAP violations, changing discounting strategies and analysis, and more.“ 5 Major Advantages of Price Monitoring Enhances the Pricing Strategy Margin is an important part of deciding the product prices. It is essentially the amount achieved after deducting the purchase cost from the retail cost. However, most brands have the lowest price they can offer, even though they might lose a significant proportion of the profits. eCom brands often lower the price to acquire a higher customer base, build loyalty, sell out multiple products, avoid expiration, etc. Therefore, the brand might not make the highest profits on its single product but has the potential to acquire higher basket purchases. Such a scenario becomes impossible without knowing the ongoing prices of the competitors in real-time. Analyzing the rival’s product prices also gives a perspective of your product’s market positioning and makes you aware that a competitor has begun a price war for a similar listing. When such an opportunity presents itself, offering a price that keeps the market reputation intact but increases the conversions/sales could significantly impact your rivals across search engines and e-commerce platforms. Reviewing prices of competitor listings also offers a chance to know the lowest/highest costs daily, weekly, and monthly across e-commerce platforms and enables your brand to create individual platform-wise price strategies. Recognizes the Pricing Trends Price is often correlated with discounts and sponsored ads on e-commerce platforms. Monitoring competitor prices and comparing them with discounts gives an overview of a trend of distinct periods. For example, Brand A is offering a 10% discount on a smartwatch and is offering the product at Rs 3,500. On the other hand, your brand has a similar listing priced at Rs 3,200. So, money-savers would often opt for Brand A versus yours. Herein lies the opportunity to offer a 10% discount and still offer the product for Rs 3,350, if possible. Similarly, mScanIt or eCom Competitive Analysis can help to compare pricing intelligence with stock availability. By knowing the prices at which the competitors faced stockouts and the duration, you have the opportunity to identify trends and create new strategies. Likewise, pricing analysis compared with share-of-shelf would decipher buyer preferences based on higher search rank and visibility as well as lower prices. Such a trend would help identify the share of sponsored ads of your competitors within the top three page results, which is also effective for channeling sales/conversions. Herein, you can identify the pricing trends based on the top keywords used by the competitors. Helps to Avoid MAP Violations The Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) is the lowest price at which a product can be sold. However, e-commerce sellers often indulge in MAP violations for clearing stocks, building a market presence, attracting new customers, etc. Doing so damages the brand’s reputation in the eyes of the consumers and creates a bad price perception. Moreover, legitimate sellers and resellers associated with the brand lose their faith and seek products of their competitors that can keep their reputation and price perception intact while maintaining their share of the sale. Moreover, price perception is one of the leading reasons consumers can lose faith in a brand. Imagine an iPhone 13 available for Rs 30,000, which is less than half its existing market price across e-commerce platforms. If consumers no longer have faith in the brand, the product demand shifts towards the competition, and resellers/sellers would want to get associated with them. Implementing pricing intelligence through automated technology like eCom Competitive Analytics helps to sight instances of MAP violations in real-time and fight back against them by flagging, reporting, or revoking them on e-commerce platforms. Identifies Counterfeit Sellers A pricing insight solution such as mScanIt shows in-depth reports on prices and types of sellers across e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, BlinkIt, BigBasket, etc. Tracking prices helps your brands to know if a new seller has recently launched your product listing at discounts, causing a MAP violation. Your authorized partners would lose their profits due to unauthorized or counterfeit product sellers. The bigger impact would fall on the brand reputation and create negative publicity on the e-commerce platform towards your brands, losing out even a loyal customer base. eCom Competitive Analysis also offers the chance to set alerts or notifications to identify similar instances and take measures against counterfeit sellers. Revoking fake products is necessary and an everyday task that requires a solution that can deliver real-time reporting, a feature offered by mScanIt. Boosts the Customer Base Recognizing the pricing mistakes and building pricing strategies using real-time competitor & brand data can certainly help to boost the customer base. For example, tracking competitors’ prices can reveal the best prices across e-commerce stores for promotions such as deals, offers, discounts, etc.,

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What is Sentiment Analysis?

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Sentiment analysis answers one vital question – “What is the consumer saying? A study suggests that 57% of consumers buy a product after reading reviews across e-commerce sentiment portals. According to our research positive reviews and ratings uplift sales by at least 18-20%. Alternatively, bad reviews can cause a substantial loss. Consumers share their sentiments about the product/ service through these reviews and ratings. The Sentiment is essentially a consumer’s trust/confidence in a brand that influences their buying behavior. It is easy when a brand has a countable number of reviews as it is easy to read and assimilate the findings. Unfortunately, popular brands have reviews and ratings running into thousands, which is difficult to process. That is exactly where Sentiment Analysis comes into play. Cataloging emotions through customer reviews, a.k.a., sentiment analysis, plays a vital role in this field. Essentially, it is helping brands to gather scattered consumer opinions into positive, negative, and neutral categories. It uses an AI to monitor the textual content of reviews and categorize consumer opinions. Sentiment analysis is a technique through which brands can work on their product offering, understand customer expectations, fine-tune customer service, increase sales, and fine-tune their marketing strategy. In today’s competitive world, delivering an exceptional customer experience accredited with sentiments has become important. A Gartner report states that “customer experience is a primary objective of 89% of companies. Sentiment analysis helps in narrowing down on issues faced by the brand, which helps brand owners make decisions targeted and faster. So, it is the best tool to monitor reputation, performance, and customer experience. 3 Benefits of Sentiment Analysis ● Word Cloud – Sentiment Score & Analysis Reviewing sentiments through the word cloud helps brands understand the areas of improvement and the most appreciated features. It helps the brand identify the exact consumer emotions based on themes like quality, health, delivery, etc. The outcome of an analysis like this helps brands make specific decisions to improve their ratings and reviews under a defined theme. Generic reviews or analyses are inconclusive. Keeping track of Sentiments month-on-month helps the brand owners measure and map their performance vis-à-vis competition. The Sentiment score helps in understanding how favorable or unfavorable a brand is in comparison to the median average in its category. Hence, the score can be used across e-commerce platforms to understand a Brand’s overall customer acceptability. Categorizing reviews by positive, neutral, and negative, helps a brand owner get a real-time understanding of customer responsiveness towards the brand. The monthly aggregated results are a brand’s guide to navigating the e-commerce landscape. ● Valuable Intelligence to Drive Market Strategies Sentiment analysis data helps a brand evaluate its standing against its competition. It helps understand consumer expectations and improve customer engagement. Additionally, it also helps in identifying problems and taking corrective actions in a shorter turnaround time. The valuable intelligence drawn over some time by analyzing the sentiments helps the brand custodian formulate targeted marketing strategies to entice its customer base. This is the foundation for creating a hyper-personalized experience for their customers. ● Future Planning & Overall Competitive Edge Sentiment analysis helps understand the consumer pulse. It is one of the fastest ways of understanding consumer needs and expectations. As a result, it paves the way for new product development and gives them an overall idea about customer reactions. The sentiments can also be used to improve the customer journey in real-time. Faster response time builds a loyal customer base. Gauging and comparing the brands and their competitor’s performance via sentiment analysis gives one an edge over the competition. This can be used as a real-time feedback mechanism to change consumer perception towards being more positive. Takeaway mScanIt powered by mFilterIt has cutting-edge technology that consolidates reviews and ratings across the platform on a single dashboard for easy access and action. It summarizes all positive, negative, and neutral sentiments of the brand along with its competition and equips the brand custodian to decide in real-time. eCom Competitive Analytics helps in deep diving into sentiments/opinions and drawing actionable insights to improve overall performance in the eCommerce landscape. Therefore, it simplifies the complexity of the customer journey by aiding decision-makers with measurable data at various stages of the purchase funnel. 70% of shoppers admit that the price of the product influences their buying decisions across categories. Another study says a prospective buyer will visit 3 or more sites to be assured of the pricing competencies before making the buying decision. Trigger-happy customers are also price-sensitive customers. If 60% of the decision-making process is purely a price-play, brands should take this into cognizance and start treading this landscape meticulously. Determining the right product price is vital for e-commerce brands, as consumers’ buying behavior alters significantly through it. Most consumers compare similar products on the same or different e-commerce stores before making the final buying decision. Their decisions are influenced by promotions, offers, referrals, preferred retailers, etc. Some consumers might even try to reach out to a brick-and-mortar store and compare the price with online stores for buying products at the lowest price. Pricing intelligence is a technique retailers use to stay ahead of the competition. It helps brands monitor and analyze factors like consumer behavior, price trends, and response to price changes. These factors enable brands to develop pricing strategies, boost sales, grow market share and consumer base, and increase revenue. Because of the dynamic nature of e-commerce as a business, pricing intelligence becomes one of the vital tools to combat competition and increase revenues. Research reveals that Amazon changes product prices almost every 3rd minute on average to better sales. 4 Important KPIs for Developing Pricing Intelligence ● Gauging Average Price Vs. Competition The overall average price determines the estimated SKU price of a brand compared to its competition. In other words, it helps to understand the “price market share” of a brand versus its competitors. Additionally, brands get an idea of the top “price performers” based on the total sold units. The Average Selling Price (ASP) is a

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Pricing Intelligence in eCommerce

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70% of shoppers admit that the price of the product influences their buying decisions across categories. Another study says a prospective buyer will visit 3 or more sites to be assured of the pricing competencies before making the buying decision. Trigger-happy customers are also price-sensitive customers. If 60% of the decision-making process is purely a price-play, brands should take this into cognizance and start treading this landscape meticulously. Determining the right product price is vital for e-commerce brands, as consumers’ buying behavior alters significantly through it. Most consumers compare similar products on the same or different e-commerce stores before making the final buying decision. Their decisions are influenced by promotions, offers, referrals, preferred retailers, etc. Some consumers might even try to reach out to a brick-and-mortar store and compare the price with online stores for buying products at the lowest price. Pricing intelligence is a technique retailers use to stay ahead of the competition. It helps brands monitor and analyze factors like consumer behavior, price trends, and response to price changes. These factors enable brands to develop pricing strategies, boost sales, grow market share and consumer base, and increase revenue. Because of the dynamic nature of e-commerce as a business, pricing intelligence becomes one of the vital tools to combat competition and increase revenues. Research reveals that Amazon changes product prices almost every 3rd minute on average to better sales. 4 Important KPIs for Developing Pricing Intelligence ● Gauging Average Price Vs. Competition The overall average price determines the estimated SKU price of a brand compared to its competition. In other words, it helps to understand the “price market share” of a brand versus its competitors. Additionally, brands get an idea of the top “price performers” based on the total sold units. The Average Selling Price (ASP) is a good place for brands to start their price benchmarking and take a clear stand on their pricing strategies. Pricing higher than the category ASP can classify a brand as premium and pricing lower can make it a mass category. These decisions impact the marketing and advertising strategies and decide the brand’s future. mFilterIt’s e-commerce intelligence solution determines ASPs across pin codes, locations, platforms, sub-categories, SKU-wise, sub-brand-wise, and variants. Using this information, brands can increase/decrease the production of a variant, alter investments in the marketing budget, or increase/decrease distribution in a specific region. ● Average Price Per SKU Unit The average price per SKU is the price per unit (gm/ ml etc.) for a product vs. its competitors in the same category. A brand needs to look closely at this data and correlate it to its performance. The average price per SKU unit helps to understand the market dynamics. It gives a brand a fair idea about how their different SKUs perform on the pricing aspect and helps them understand the customer’s point of view and how price-sensitive the market is. Accordingly, they can decide the type of pricing that works in the market and understand pricing trends. ● Average Price – Platform Wise The estimated price of a brand’s product on different eCommerce stores is called platform-wise average price. Reviewing the ASP across eCommerce stores helps brands find the best platform for boosting their marketing investments and acquiring higher revenue. Moreover, brands can keep a check on competitor prices accordingly and monitor unauthorized reseller prices. mFilterIt’s eCommerce Competitive Analytics helps analyze the ASPs across platforms and allows a brand to maintain its competitive stand in the overall market. ● Average Price by Variant Price by variant allows the brand to monitor the price of a particular product variant across different platforms and understand performance. They can compare their variant’s pricing vs. the competition’s variant and monitor their performance. mFilterIt eCommerce Competitive Analytics also divides it into brands, sub-brands, sub-categories, and variants. The prices can offer an in-depth review of the highest and lowest-performing products across platforms. Moreover, brands can compare the average price of similar variants and draw insights into their pricing strategies. Similarly, brands can acquire a price-based performance overview for their sub-brand categories. Conclusion eCommerce pricing intelligence is no longer an option for online retailers. Pricing delves deep into a consumer’s mind and helps a business understand and survive the crowded landscape. A business’s survival has a lot to depend on the value its customers derive from their brand, the incredible market forces, and the competition that follows it. Pricing as a component is a complex piece of a puzzle. There are no straight answers anywhere. Experience and continuous experimentation are required to deliver the correct consumer value. mScanIt helps brands to dive deeper into the journey by providing results based on real-time data. Brands using the mScanIt pricing tool are no longer required to conduct secondary research for determining pricing trends. Moreover, brands get a single-page price-based overview that helps optimize product pricing across platforms, categories, sub-categories, and variants.

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How Capturing Dynamics of Discounting on eCom Platforms help Win the Market?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Expert Opinion

Discount, sale, promotion, lightning deal, offer, etc., are some of the few words the ecommerce consumers often encounter, and it certainly catches their attention. Discounts and coupons drive 41% of purchase decisions of online users. Although the primary reasons for giving discounts across ecommerce platforms are boosting sales and acquiring a larger customer base, it is not limited to it. Brands might offer discounts if they plan to launch a new or improved product version, clear stocks, nearby expiry date, selling season, occasion, increased subscription, etc. For example, at times, brands might offer products as add-ons, freebies, or gifts as part of their promotion or discounting strategy. Doing so also makes new and existing users on ecommerce platforms about the brand’s products and their existence. Why Should Brands Analyze Discounts Across eCommerce Marketplaces? “It is imperative for brands to understand their competitor’s discounting strategy.” – Ankush Arora, Vertical Head, mScanIt. Regularly analyzing discounts through competitive intelligence solutions like mScanIt aligns your brand with the ongoing market trends. Knowing the discounting trends of the competition has often proven advantageous for brands as it signifies the maximum and minimum discount percentage competitions might offer for their product listings. Comparing your brand’s discount percentage with the competition during festive seasons or occasions could help redefine the marketing and advertising strategies for acquiring a bigger customer base and revenue. For example, after analyzing discount percentages and deep-diving into the analytics, your brand could discover options for product bundling while keeping the brand reputation intact. Similarly, your brand could promote SKU-based discounts if the analytics reveal similar offerings by the competition, as it states that the consumers are engaging with such promotions. Moreover, captivating discounts regularly reveal if a competitor has launched a variant-based discount and states the exact moment of the price war on the ecommerce platform. Using e-commerce competitive analysis helps brands to detect specific variants with high discounts. Here is an example: In this example, Fire-Boltt was already advertising its 1.69″ model, and Noise began selling a similar screen size model at a higher discount, causing a price war on Amazon. 3 Reasons for Analyzing Discounts Through mScanIt Identifying Discount Trends The advertising analytics of an ecommerce platform could give you a glance at the discount campaigns’ performance if you used an advertisement. However, evaluating performance only by lowering the product listing price can become challenging to monitor regularly and doesn’t define the ongoing promotional trends used by the competition. mScanIt, a.k.a., eCom Competitive Analytics, resolves these issues through discounting analysis, which explores competition practices across ecommerce stores. It even compares the percentage of discounts offered for product listings using filters like category, platform, variant, SKU, etc., which gives a clearer understanding of the campaigns. Monitoring the Competition Optimizing sales through discounts requires carefully understanding the industry and platform-based strategies. Traditional or common discounting methods might not provide the desired output to your brand. During seasonal or occasional sales, knowing the sold units, discount percentages, most sold variants, discount range share, etc., of the competition can help your brand boost sales/revenue. Similarly, knowing the discount percentage of the competition on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis while comparing it with your product listings can offer more insights and help in finding new strategies for growth. Mapping the competition helps to discover the highest/lowest discount across platforms of the competition, find discount margins, and create new revenue/sale/pricing opportunities. Additionally, regularly monitoring the competition discount percentage would help your brand know the most favored or preferred discount type, such as sequential, one-time, subscription, etc. So, even without the sales figure of the competition, you can still acquire a larger share of the market revenue and reach a wider audience net through close monitoring using mScanIt. Location-Wise Mapping Discounts might vary based on zone, city, or pin code, as the demand and supply of products vary across locations. Your brand and competition understand this fact and discount mapping of the competition based on this criteria offers multiple advantages. Primarily, it enables brands to manage their discounting strategies based on regions, channel advertising budgets, manage product prices based on data, etc. For instance, in pin code 122017, Brand A offers a discount of 10%, and Brand B, C, and D give 12, 15, and 17 percent off for similar product listings. Under this instance, Brand A would likely create discounting strategies that match the competition a bit closer. Additionally, knowing the change in percentage of the discount every month would help brands decide the percentage figure while keeping other factors in mind. Alternatively, Brand A could bundle the product to offer a higher discount percentage and clear out of stock. Conclusion Discount analysis helps brands make marketing/advertising decisions, get an edge over the competition, acquire a higher customer base, and make more sales/revenue. Moreover, monitoring the competition is essential to learn about the ongoing trends, which can get incorporated into the business. eCom Competitive Analytics helps brands achieve discount analysis at a brand, SKU, variant, sub-brand, and sub-category level across eCom platforms and using multiple filters. Moreover, the solution offers complete discount analysis on a single dashboard with deep-diving results. For more information on the advantages of mScanIt, connect with us through email or leave us a comment.

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Why Should Brands Analyze the Share-of-Voice of Sponsored Listings on Search Engines?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Expert Opinion

Paid searches on Google, Bing, Microsoft, etc., often reveal news articles, brand websites, eCommerce platforms, product listings, competitor websites, blogs, videos, etc. Higher visibility on search engines means higher brand awareness and could certainly become a contributing factor in the click-through rate of the product. In fact, 40% of global users discover eCommerce product pages through search engines. Sponsored listings on search engines are basically of two forms, namely, text and listings. Share-of-Voice of sponsored listings measures your brand’s visibility versus the competition, and content mediums show the highest results under search analytics. Measuring the Share-of-Voice is important for other reasons too. For example, paid searches or sponsored listings can show lower visibility of your brand on keywords specifically related to your brand name. Search engines like Google won’t flag your competitors for such results, as bidding on competitor keywords is not prohibited. Unfortunately, it will likely impact your paid search campaigns. Monitoring the Share-of-Voice on search engines also gives insights into many probabilities, which we will discuss ahead. How Can Brands Effectively Measure the SOV of Sponsored Listings on Search Engines? Brand Versus Competitor Share Determining the share of your listings on paid searches versus the competition helps to know the leaders on different keywords. Moreover, the overall SOS of the brand versus the competition predicts the brands with the highest visibility through sponsored listings. Reviewing the share of sponsored listings also enables brands to find the keywords with the highest visibility of their product or brand listings. By analyzing the paid searches and measuring their share with the competition, you can also find the most promising content sources, such as blogs, news articles, your brand/competitor website, eCommerce platforms with the highest visibility of your products, etc. Measuring your brand’s share versus the competition on sponsored listings can also reveal another interesting fact. The objective of bidding on keywords is enhancing brand awareness or visibility, increasing traffic on your brand’s website, and boosting sales/revenue through your URLs. The efforts get drained when a competitor achieves higher SOV on your brand specific keywords. It also increases the bidding cost and finishes the advertising budget faster than your expectation. Monitoring the SOV of sponsored listings on search engines using mScanIt, powered by mFilterIt deciphers content result frequencies, which search engine analytics don’t provide. eCommerce Marketplace Results Analyzing the listings that redirect to eCommerce marketplaces recurringly on your brand’s paid keywords helps to find the best online shopping store for optimizing your listings. Moreover, it also reveals the listings with the highest share of paid searches. Increasing the share of eCommerce platforms or websites constantly on paid searches improves the probability of click-through rate, add-to-cart actions, and conversions/sales. Using eCommerce Competitive Analytics, a.k.a, mScanIt, your e-marketers can even find the share of eCommerce listings on paid searches across devices. Diving even deeper into the forms of ads, namely, text and image, on search engines would help your online marketers to create new advertising strategies and find new avenues for enhancing the visibility of eCommerce platforms. Imagine analyzing the share-of-voice of paid searches at a website, brand, search engine, platform, duration, and other levels. mScanIt detects these insights, so you get a clear picture of your brand’s awareness and the forms of content increasing their visibility. Pro Tip: “Google Advertisers should be aware of the power of keywords for their brand across different content platforms and also discover the competition view of this. We can help brands in tapping content medium beyond their own website.” Conclusion Analyzing the search engines to find the share of voice of your brand versus the competition is vital for knowing the brand’s awareness, visibility, and forms of content, driving click-through rates towards the content sources. Knowing your brand’s presence against the competition helps to find the impact of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and advertising efforts across eCommerce platforms and websites. Schedule a demo with us to learn the other impacts of measuring the share of voice for your brand and the tactics involved in effectively measuring the SOV.

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Why Should Brands Pay Attention to Perfect Page Analysis or Content Benchmarking?

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Praveen Dhama

A Perfect Page Analysis is a complete overview of the brand’s product listing across ecommerce platforms like Amazon, BigBasket, Flipkart, etc. Generally, it evaluates the content aspects such as usage of top-performing category keywords, title, bullet points, product description, content placement, presence of product images/videos, SEO friendliness of title, rating, and review count. The character and word limitations might alter across platforms; however, the approach might remain almost similar. Consumers often look at the product page content before making their final buying decision. In fact, 22% of online shoppers make a transaction because of accurate and informative product descriptions. On the other hand, product positioning measures the average ranking of a product listing based on keywords on eCom platforms. The position of the listing matters because most people tend to choose from the top visible listings or the products listed on the top three pages. According to Statista, 40, 38, and 35 percent of consumers find products through search engines, Amazon, and other marketplaces, respectively. Certainly, higher visibility would boost the consumer’s interest in the product listing. However, most brands hardly pay attention to page analysis and positioning, which diminishes their opportunity of grabbing the potential customer base and thus the revenue/sale. Importance of a Perfect Product Page and Positioning A perfect page analysis curates a higher score if it has a specific number of reviews, SEO content, accurate product description, etc. The question is ‘Why?’ Why are these aspects important for a perfect page on an ecommerce marketplace? Having a high perfect page summary score means the consumers are likely to trust your product listing and brand, which might increase the transaction/conversion rate. Besides, it becomes a great factor in ensuring long-term relationships with your brands. For example, SEO-friendly keywords make the product more appealing to the customers and would likely enhance discoverability, even on search engines like Google, Bing, etc. Improving product page content aspects could, in turn, enhance ranking if it is a part of the eCom platform’s algorithm. Another positioning aspect is this – Imagine you searched for a ‘smart watch’ on Amazon and repeatedly came across Brand A compared to others. You would probably trust this brand on this factor and visit any of its variants. Price, rating, and delivery would also become important before visiting the page, but you might visit it because it repeatedly occurs and see what it has to offer? – It’s a likely scenario. Right? According to Praveen Dhama, Manager, mScanIt, powered by mFilterIt “Lower the search rank (brand to be among the top listings of the search page on an ecommerce marketplace), higher the chance of a product being noticed and bought by the consumer.“ We can assume that search ranks on ecommerce marketplaces can alter based on the best, most helpful, and most popular results for the consumers. It is just like search engines like Google and Bing. But how can we be sure about it? Maintaining perfect product pages would likely enhance consumer experience by including images, videos, and texts relevant to the product. Moreover, the pages include optimum reviews and ratings, and 35% of online shoppers make purchasing decisions based on other customers’ reviews. Given this fact and the importance of accurate information (stated earlier), it is certain that eCom marketplaces would likely offer results matching our criteria, as mentioned above. How is Perfect Page Analysis or Content Benchmarking Done? Perfect page analysis is done by reviewing the contents of a product listing, such as the title, bullet points, product description, A+ content, etc. Content benchmarking reviews the brand’s score versus the competition in all such aspects. Analyzing these aspects helps brands review their market positioning’s possibility of consumer interactions, especially through organic keywords, best/worst performing sections, etc., and take measures to enhance the underscoring aspects. We analyzed the average search rank for SKUs of one of our ecommerce clients and discovered it was between 5-20. However, after post-reviewing these aspects and comparing them with the competitors through mScanIt, the brand discovered that using specific keywords in the desired number of times within the ecommerce product listings could alter their ranking. Our eCom Competitive Analytics team found the best keywords using share-of-shelf metrics, Google keyword planner, and Amazon PI keywords. After using the keywords, the brand SKUs ranked among the top three products under various keyword searches, which increased their product page visits and conversions/sales. Conclusion Brands that want to optimize their search results on eCommerce platforms and search engines must pay attention to page analysis and positioning of their SKUs. Measuring their results versus the competition would give an accurate picture of their score and ranking and help detect improvement areas. eCom Competitive Analytics offers such results to brands and insights that they can use to resolve their page analysis issues. Moreover, the automated solution detects such results in real-time and offers an option for exporting reports. For more information about the advantages of mScanIt for your brand, connect with us through email, or leave us a message in the comment or contact section. To know more, get in touch with our experts today!

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Building a Trustworthy D2C Community Platform this Festive Season

Leave a Comment / Blog, Digital Shelf Analytics / Expert Opinion

Old habits die hard. But the onslaught of a pandemic caused a significant change in habits and with new habits becoming the ‘new normal. This also caused a dramatic change in how brands reach their customers. The post lockdown scenario witnessed a significant surge in D2C brands setting up their online stores. D2C platforms have helped brands build a reliable and robust connection with their consumers. This power shift has caused a devastating effect on traditional retailers, with the retail graveyard getting more and more crowded. The consumers are online; that’s where a D2C platform becomes imperative for a brand to connect with their consumers directly. Studies have estimated that by 2024, retail-focused e-commerce will amount to $7 trillion in annual sales globally! Why? D2C methodology has become non-negotiable for brands and retailers as people will avoid walking into crowded stores. The joy and comfort of getting items delivered at their doorstep is increasingly becoming paramount, which means that the brand and customer relationship is now more critical than ever. D2C portals are no longer the prerogative of millennial buyers but have now transcended age, gender, location, and many such barriers. Therefore, building a brand’s credibility is naturally the next step for brands to increase their top and bottom line. Brands ahead of the curve are now building communities online to further their reach and establish trust with their customers. But, as the festive season nears, there are bad actors or maybe even competitors waiting to take home their ‘share’ of revenue and hurting your brand’s reputation. How? BOT Signups: Scammers use BOTs to sign up for such communities for various reasons. These range from potential cyber security issues to scams. In some rare instances, it could also be a regressive competition tactic to downgrade its reputation. Fake Offers and Coupons: Throughout the year, especially during the upcoming online festival sales season, fake offers and vouchers are spread like wildfire exploiting the power of chatting applications and other social media channels. These are hacks and click baits to generate traffic on poor and inappropriate websites and potential channels of installing malware on smartphones and laptops. Account Takeover or ATO Protection: Fake sites and forms are floated by scammers infringing the brand identity to disguise as an authentic brand outreach to its community members. They fill up details on signup, and scammers take over the account with genuine credentials. They can then consume the loyalty points and run a calling scam on behalf of the brand, sharing account facts like the history of purchase, etc., to establish a genuine and authorized brand representative for further cheating, which is usually monetary. Fake Engagements: BOTs are also being used for spamming with comments, likes/dislikes, etc., for changing the sentiment of an engagement. This spreads wrong information and risks losing potential buyers who research products and features by reading these comments. Database Collection: Fake look-alike websites are launched by scammers with subtle changes in URLs and very aggressive SEM (Search Engine Marketing). The potential community members search for the community portals and land up infringed websites where the scammers collect data for further frauds and scams. This database is also sold to tele-calling agencies, increasing the threat of unsolicited calls. The onus lies on the brand custodians and community owners to proactively safeguard from any potential harm to the identity and privacy of their community members. As responsible brands, it should be one of the critical focus areas of the digital transformation process of organizations to implement such systems giving communities confidence of engaging more openly and safeguarding the entire digital ecosystem.

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