Competitors configuration services
Do you have a fear that you yourself will not be able to cope with the settings for parsing competitor sites? Our experts will set up the configuration for you.
The add-on allows you to monitor competitors prices (parsing and analysis) in real time for selected products, as well as automate pricing based on market prices (dynamic pricing: price adjustment from competitors' prices).
Add-on is not just a web scraping of competitor prices, it has such possibilities:
- Ability to add competitors sites (stores) (with special schemas for parsing prices in the html code of product pages);
- Support for several parsing rules for one competitor (cases when a competitor has several types of product pages layout);
- Setting up product matches of your product with competitors products (the addresses of competitors product pages are associated with a product for which you need to parse prices and availability);
- Parsing of competitors websites (with schedule support or manual launch);
- Support for proxy servers for parsing;
- Support of several types of prices, discounts, promotions activities and product availability from competitors;
- Creating and managing pricing formulas (to calculate own prices from competitors prices)
- Automatic or manual revaluation of goods based on formulas with logical and mathematical expressions and obtained data from competitors;
- Reports on the current market situation (planned in the next versions);
- Notifications to the administrator about price discrepancies (planned in the next versions);
- Implementation of various pricing strategies (pricing presets) (planned for next versions);
- Export - import of product matches of your products and products of competitors (planned in the next versions);
- Logging of competitors prices;
- Logging of repricing;
- Parsing errors logging.
The add-on allows you to monitor prices of an unlimited number of competitors and dynamic pricing of an unlimited number of products on your own - in the amount you are limited only by the resources of your server. What is your profit? For similar opportunities online services ask for several hundred dollars per month).
Why you need competitor price monitoring?
- Сontrol of competitors compliance with recommended retail prices (combating dumping, avoiding price wars);
- Monitoring the activity of competitors (promotions, coupons, hidden discounts, discounts at night, weekend discounts);
- Monitoring the availability of products from competitors;
- Maximizing online store sales by maintaining competitive product prices;
- Minimization of losses from low prices and low margins (a smart price is not a low price, but the one that gives the maximum sales with an acceptable marginality);
- Control over the work of managers (a manager's flaw with a price for one product in an online store may cost the sale of all products, since this position may be the one by which the consumer estimates the prices of the store as a whole: the buyer will simply leave your site if the price is on it for such products even slightly higher)
- Control over the work of suppliers (often the supplier himself lowers the prices of his products)
- Monitoring of the products marginality on the market (constant monitoring will allow finding those niches in which there is no dumping, there are clear pricing rules and preservation of the marginality of products);
- The ability to use different pricing strategies for different product groups;
- The ability to use a strategy of price following the market leader (constant keeping the price of products below the market leader by 1-3% can contribute to sustainable sales in the store);
- Automation of pricing processes (any process that depends on human actions is a bottleneck, automation of the process will allow you to ensure the price competition of your online store in a regular manner and with 100% efficiency).
How to work with parsing of competitors prices look in videos
Video 1 - Review of add-ons functionality
Video 2 - Configuration for parsing of competitors pages
Video 3 - Monitoring of competitors prices and dynamic pricing
CS-Cart type:
- CS-Cart Store Builder Free
- CS-Cart Store Builder Plus
- CS-Cart Store Builder Ultimate
- CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Standard
- CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Plus
- CS-Cart Multi-Vendor Ultimate
СS-Cart version compatibility:
- 4.12.2
- 4.13.1
- 4.13.2
- 4.13.3
- 4.14.1
- 4.14.2
- 4.14.3
- 4.15.1
- 4.15.2
- 4.16.1
- 4.16.2
- 4.17.1
- 4.17.2
- 4.18.1
- 4.18.2
- 4.18.3
25/04/2021, 12:18
16/03/2021, 16:32
10/02/2021, 18:10
25/01/2021, 18:11
25/01/2021, 17:41
25/01/2021, 17:39
23/01/2021, 12:43
23/01/2021, 11:00
22/01/2021, 18:19
22/01/2021, 14:31
AB dev team guarantees limited technical support to customers through its own technical support system. In order to use the technical support, authorize on the site and click the "Support" button.
Support includes:
Support does not include:
Support
A complete list of technical support conditions look here
Release #9
v1.5.0 from 05-Jan-2024
New features and improvements:
[+] Added add-on setting “Keep “Log of competitors parsing” for the last N months”.
[+] Added add-on setting “Keep “Log of price formation” for the last N weeks”.
[+] Added a new setting "Queue up of the pricing every N hours"
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added a new setting “Allow zero price”. If the value of "New price" is equal to 0 as a result of the calculation of the formula, then the zero value will be applied to the Product price.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added ability to clone a formula.
[+] Formula. Added a new procedure “Change balance of amount”.
[+] Log of price formation. Added a new status to apply the formula “Notice”.
[+] Reports. Added a new setting “Show product code”. When the setting is active, the column “Item” will be displayed close to the column of product name.
[+] Reports. Added a new setting “Show product feature”. Value of the selected feature will be displayed in the corresponding column close to the column of product name.
[+] Reports. The link to the competitor's website has been added in xlsx-files in the cells, where the price is. The link can be seen when hovering mouse pointer.
[+] Reports. Added ability to clone a report.
Functionality changes:
[*] Added requirements to PHP. Minimal version should be 7.2.0 and existence of php-zip add-on as well.
[*] Added compatibility with php of the version 8.0.0 and higher.
Bug fixes:
[!] CS-Cart Ultimate. If a product is shared with other storefronts, then a value of a new settlement price by formula has been saved incorrectly. Fixed.
[!] On the editing product page in the tab "AB: Monitoring and dynamic pricing”, the block “Available product Prices” has not been refreshed when the formula was changed. Fixed.
[!] Competitors. When the competitor's settings “Additional parameters” were used, a wrong parsing of attributes could work incorrectly. Fixed.
[!] Log of competitors parsing. Optimization of the page has been done.
[!] Log of price formation. Optimization of the page has been done.
[!] Log of price formation. Test formulas of inspection have been logged. Now they are excluded from the logging.
[!] CRON-task “Automatic recalculation of the product price”. When there was a large number of products, only a few hundreds of products were overestimated. Mechanic was corrected so 100 products (or the other value specified in the parameter
[!] Reports. Email title has been displayed inccorect when sending a report. Fixed.
[!] Reports. Optimized a process of report generating. Earlier, when there was a large number of products in the a report and a wide range of period has been selected, the report could be generated during 2 minutes. Now it takes about 10 seconds!
[!] Reports. It was impossible to add more than 200-300 products in a product list. Fixed.
[+] Added add-on setting “Keep “Log of competitors parsing” for the last N months”.
[+] Added add-on setting “Keep “Log of price formation” for the last N weeks”.
[+] Added a new setting "Queue up of the pricing every N hours"
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added a new setting “Allow zero price”. If the value of "New price" is equal to 0 as a result of the calculation of the formula, then the zero value will be applied to the Product price.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added ability to clone a formula.
[+] Formula. Added a new procedure “Change balance of amount”.
[+] Log of price formation. Added a new status to apply the formula “Notice”.
[+] Reports. Added a new setting “Show product code”. When the setting is active, the column “Item” will be displayed close to the column of product name.
[+] Reports. Added a new setting “Show product feature”. Value of the selected feature will be displayed in the corresponding column close to the column of product name.
[+] Reports. The link to the competitor's website has been added in xlsx-files in the cells, where the price is. The link can be seen when hovering mouse pointer.
[+] Reports. Added ability to clone a report.
Functionality changes:
[*] Added requirements to PHP. Minimal version should be 7.2.0 and existence of php-zip add-on as well.
[*] Added compatibility with php of the version 8.0.0 and higher.
Bug fixes:
[!] CS-Cart Ultimate. If a product is shared with other storefronts, then a value of a new settlement price by formula has been saved incorrectly. Fixed.
[!] On the editing product page in the tab "AB: Monitoring and dynamic pricing”, the block “Available product Prices” has not been refreshed when the formula was changed. Fixed.
[!] Competitors. When the competitor's settings “Additional parameters” were used, a wrong parsing of attributes could work incorrectly. Fixed.
[!] Log of competitors parsing. Optimization of the page has been done.
[!] Log of price formation. Optimization of the page has been done.
[!] Log of price formation. Test formulas of inspection have been logged. Now they are excluded from the logging.
[!] CRON-task “Automatic recalculation of the product price”. When there was a large number of products, only a few hundreds of products were overestimated. Mechanic was corrected so 100 products (or the other value specified in the parameter
--limit=100) are included in every overestimation, then other 100 products will be taken and so on, until all products will be overestimated. In this regard, scheduler should be changed in a way, so it could be started as often as possible, for example every 3 minutes:*/3 * * * * php /...../admin.php --dispatch=ab__rpr_pricing.run --limit=100 --switch_company_id=1
[!] Reports. Email title has been displayed inccorect when sending a report. Fixed.
[!] Reports. Optimized a process of report generating. Earlier, when there was a large number of products in the a report and a wide range of period has been selected, the report could be generated during 2 minutes. Now it takes about 10 seconds!
[!] Reports. It was impossible to add more than 200-300 products in a product list. Fixed.
Release #8
v1.4.0 from 20-Dec-2021
New features and improvements:
[+] On the editing competitor page added check of verification of the placed URL for parsing rule "Execute additional HTTP request".
[+] On the editing competitor page added setting "Maximum length of parsing result". It is designed to optimize the size of the add-on tables in the database. Set this value to the minimum required for parsing to work. By default, 6000 characters.
Functionality changes:
[*] Parsing errors became more informative.
[+] On the editing competitor page added check of verification of the placed URL for parsing rule "Execute additional HTTP request".
[+] On the editing competitor page added setting "Maximum length of parsing result". It is designed to optimize the size of the add-on tables in the database. Set this value to the minimum required for parsing to work. By default, 6000 characters.
Functionality changes:
[*] Parsing errors became more informative.
Release #7
v1.3.0 from 06-Dec-2021
Release video:
New features and improvements:
[+] Added support of third party web-scrapers to get html-code from secured websites (imperva/incapsula, recaptcha etc.).
[+] Added functionality “Reports”. Added ability to generate reports by selected products and competitors over particular period of time. Added sending of reports to specified Email and/or via FTP. You can generate reports manually, as well as in automatic mode in specified time on a periodic predetermined base.
[+] Added new export/import type “Links with competitors' products” that allows to assign competitors to a product.
[+] On the editing competitor page support of requests by “POST” method was added for parsing rule “Execute additional request”.
[+] On the editing competitor page added "Additional parameters" that can be used to simplify product-variations parsing of competitors.
[+] On the editing competitor page, view of source code was added for text links in Text mode, as well as in Html-code mode. It is designed to simplify creation of rules.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added new variable
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added ability to use attribute value “Promotions/Discounts” of selected competitor for “Procedures” and “Operation with conditions”.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added new condition of check “Stock at the competitor” for “Operation with conditions”.
[+] Added new page “Cron task” of the add-on. There is a list of necessary tasks for work with add-on functionality.
[+] On the competitors list page added ability to clone competitors.
[+] On the editing competitor page added field "Encoding".
Functionality changes:
[*] On the editing product page in the tab "AB: Monitoring and dynamic pricing” in the section “Available product prices”, prices of specific competitors won't be displayed anymore.
Bug fixes:
[!] PHP notice could occur when using rules “Search by Xpath” and “Search by CSS-selector”. Fixed.
New features and improvements:
[+] Added support of third party web-scrapers to get html-code from secured websites (imperva/incapsula, recaptcha etc.).
[+] Added functionality “Reports”. Added ability to generate reports by selected products and competitors over particular period of time. Added sending of reports to specified Email and/or via FTP. You can generate reports manually, as well as in automatic mode in specified time on a periodic predetermined base.
[+] Added new export/import type “Links with competitors' products” that allows to assign competitors to a product.
[+] On the editing competitor page support of requests by “POST” method was added for parsing rule “Execute additional request”.
[+] On the editing competitor page added "Additional parameters" that can be used to simplify product-variations parsing of competitors.
[+] On the editing competitor page, view of source code was added for text links in Text mode, as well as in Html-code mode. It is designed to simplify creation of rules.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added new variable
MinDPC (Minimum “Discount price of the competitor”). It is counted exclusively by active competitors and products in stock.[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added ability to use attribute value “Promotions/Discounts” of selected competitor for “Procedures” and “Operation with conditions”.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added new condition of check “Stock at the competitor” for “Operation with conditions”.
[+] Added new page “Cron task” of the add-on. There is a list of necessary tasks for work with add-on functionality.
[+] On the competitors list page added ability to clone competitors.
[+] On the editing competitor page added field "Encoding".
Functionality changes:
[*] On the editing product page in the tab "AB: Monitoring and dynamic pricing” in the section “Available product prices”, prices of specific competitors won't be displayed anymore.
Bug fixes:
[!] PHP notice could occur when using rules “Search by Xpath” and “Search by CSS-selector”. Fixed.
Release #6
v1.2.0 from 07-May-2021
Release video:
New features and improvements:
[+] Added conditions for products search by competitors and formulas on the product list page in the window “Advanced search”.
If you use Ultimate edition then conditions will be available under a selected storefront only.
[+] Added a new column “Download status” on the page “Log of competitors parsing”.
Results of competitors parsing will be excluded from calculations if download status of the competitor's product will be different from “200”.
[+] Added filtration by date on pages “Log of competitors parsing” and “Log of price formation”.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added a new procedure “Change addn. category”. The procedure consists of two behaviors – “Add additional category”
and “Remove additional category”.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added a new procedure “Stop formula execution” is a procedure of immediate stop of formula execution process and can be used after any other procedure. Procedure consists of two parameters: “Formula stop status” and “Description”. Content of the last parameter will be displayed in Dynamic pricing log.
[+] Added new export/import type – “Dynamic pricing formulas” that allows to assign a formula list to product rapidly. When using a special word
[+] On the product page in the tab "AB: Monitoring and price formation” in the table “Linked competitors list” added additional string to display MyFP, MyP and MyDP of a monitored product in corresponding columns FPC, SC and DPC.
[+] Added a message that will appear every time you log into the admin area if there are active proxy servers and they are all expired.
[+] Added a new setting of proxy-server: Type – HTTPS or SOCKS5.
[+] "[RetailFactory] Fast and simple import and stocks & pricing control from XLS, XLSX, XML, CSV files” add-on. Added the field "Product Manufacturer Code” to export “Additional product prices”.
Functionality changes:
[*] Up to version v1.2.0 assignment of variable "New calculated price of the product" won't be an exit point and calculation by formula will be performed to the end. You have to use a new procedure to stop formula execution at any time "Stop formula execution".
[*] Results of competitors parsing will be excluded from calculations if download status of the competitor's product will be different from “200”.
Bug fixes:
[!] Data was not saved in logs when there were errors of parsing by rules “Search by Xpath” and “Search by CSS-selector”. Fixed.
[!] PHP notice could occur when using rules “Search by Xpath” and “Search by CSS-selector”. Fixed.
[!] It was impossible to use the rule “Search by CSS-selector” after using the rule of parsing “Search by Xpath”. Fixed.
[!] Fixed work of parser with a proxy-server.
Up to version v1.1.2 including, assignment of variable New calculated price of the product was an exit point from formula. So, at this moment formula terminated its performance and a product got its new value.
Up to version v1.2.0 assignment of variable New calculated price of the product won’t be an exit point and calculation by formula will be performed to the end. You have to use a new procedure to stop formula execution at any time Stop formula execution.
All active formulas will be disabled. Check correct function and activate them manually.
New features and improvements:
[+] Added conditions for products search by competitors and formulas on the product list page in the window “Advanced search”.
If you use Ultimate edition then conditions will be available under a selected storefront only.
[+] Added a new column “Download status” on the page “Log of competitors parsing”.
Results of competitors parsing will be excluded from calculations if download status of the competitor's product will be different from “200”.
[+] Added filtration by date on pages “Log of competitors parsing” and “Log of price formation”.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added a new procedure “Change addn. category”. The procedure consists of two behaviors – “Add additional category”
and “Remove additional category”.
[+] Dynamic pricing formulas. Added a new procedure “Stop formula execution” is a procedure of immediate stop of formula execution process and can be used after any other procedure. Procedure consists of two parameters: “Formula stop status” and “Description”. Content of the last parameter will be displayed in Dynamic pricing log.
[+] Added new export/import type – “Dynamic pricing formulas” that allows to assign a formula list to product rapidly. When using a special word
delete_all in the column "Formula ID”, all links with formulas for a specified product will be deleted.[+] On the product page in the tab "AB: Monitoring and price formation” in the table “Linked competitors list” added additional string to display MyFP, MyP and MyDP of a monitored product in corresponding columns FPC, SC and DPC.
[+] Added a message that will appear every time you log into the admin area if there are active proxy servers and they are all expired.
[+] Added a new setting of proxy-server: Type – HTTPS or SOCKS5.
[+] "[RetailFactory] Fast and simple import and stocks & pricing control from XLS, XLSX, XML, CSV files” add-on. Added the field "Product Manufacturer Code” to export “Additional product prices”.
Functionality changes:
[*] Up to version v1.2.0 assignment of variable "New calculated price of the product" won't be an exit point and calculation by formula will be performed to the end. You have to use a new procedure to stop formula execution at any time "Stop formula execution".
[*] Results of competitors parsing will be excluded from calculations if download status of the competitor's product will be different from “200”.
Bug fixes:
[!] Data was not saved in logs when there were errors of parsing by rules “Search by Xpath” and “Search by CSS-selector”. Fixed.
[!] PHP notice could occur when using rules “Search by Xpath” and “Search by CSS-selector”. Fixed.
[!] It was impossible to use the rule “Search by CSS-selector” after using the rule of parsing “Search by Xpath”. Fixed.
[!] Fixed work of parser with a proxy-server.
Release #5
v1.1.2 from 17-Mar-2021
Functionality changes:
[*] In the edit product page in the "View parsing results" adds the ability to view the source code of pages in the Text-format and Html-format.
Bug fixes:
[!] The automatic parsing did not take into account the windows-1251 encoding. Fixed.
[*] In the edit product page in the "View parsing results" adds the ability to view the source code of pages in the Text-format and Html-format.
Bug fixes:
[!] The automatic parsing did not take into account the windows-1251 encoding. Fixed.
Release #4
v1.1.1 from 17-Mar-2021
Bug fixes:
[!] There were php errors when deleting a product. Fixed.
[!] Add-ons "Comments and reviews" and "Product variations". On the variation edit page, reviews may have been displayed in all tabs. Fixed.
[!] There were php errors when deleting a product. Fixed.
[!] Add-ons "Comments and reviews" and "Product variations". On the variation edit page, reviews may have been displayed in all tabs. Fixed.
Release #3
v1.1.0 from 17-Mar-2021
New features and improvements:
[+] CS-Cart Ultimate. Added support of Ultimate edition for competitors, formulas, product prices, logs and Cron tasks.
[+] Added user privileges.
[+] Added new product prices “MyPP” (My Purchase Price) and “MyIP” (My Initial Price) to use at dynamic pricing formulas.
[+] On the editing competitor page added new setting “Encoding” with following variants: "utf-8" (by default) and "windows-1251".
[+] Added Export/ Import of additional product prices. Pay attention, there is a setting “Export found products” available only on the product list page. “Export selected products” is unavailable because of CS-Cart restrictions.
[+] Added add-on settings to manage prices view in the list “Available product Prices” on the editing product page.
[+] Added view of descriptions on pages of Competitors and Formulas lists.
Functionality changes:
[*] Calculated price by formula was adjusted to a format of currency by default.
[*] At all logs was added display of seconds in fields that show time.
Bug fixes:
[!] Fixed work of “Operation with conditions” with condition “By stock” at formulas.
[!] “Products variations” add-on. Fixed compatibility with the add-on.
[+] CS-Cart Ultimate. Added support of Ultimate edition for competitors, formulas, product prices, logs and Cron tasks.
[+] Added user privileges.
[+] Added new product prices “MyPP” (My Purchase Price) and “MyIP” (My Initial Price) to use at dynamic pricing formulas.
[+] On the editing competitor page added new setting “Encoding” with following variants: "utf-8" (by default) and "windows-1251".
[+] Added Export/ Import of additional product prices. Pay attention, there is a setting “Export found products” available only on the product list page. “Export selected products” is unavailable because of CS-Cart restrictions.
[+] Added add-on settings to manage prices view in the list “Available product Prices” on the editing product page.
[+] Added view of descriptions on pages of Competitors and Formulas lists.
Functionality changes:
[*] Calculated price by formula was adjusted to a format of currency by default.
[*] At all logs was added display of seconds in fields that show time.
Bug fixes:
[!] Fixed work of “Operation with conditions” with condition “By stock” at formulas.
[!] “Products variations” add-on. Fixed compatibility with the add-on.
Release #2
v1.0.1 from 22-Jan-2021
Add-on reinstallation required!
Functionality changes:
[*] “Products variations” add-on. Added the functionality of the add-on, the "AB: Monitoring and dynamic pricing" tab, for product variations as one product.
[*] Optimized the multithreading of the php-curl library.
Bug fixes:
[!] “Products variations” add-on. In the administrative panel on the editing page variations occurred PHP-error. Fixed.
[!] When using the "Available Prices" form on the product editing page in the "AB: Monitoring and dynamic pricing" tab, the existing "Quantity discounts" were overwritten. Fixed.
Release #1
v1.0.0 from 21-Jan-2021
