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Importance of Genuine Reviews on E-commerce Portal

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How it affects your brand’s ROI and safeguards Brand Reputation and Safety A recent study by Reprise which was conducted across Asia-Pacific highlights the shift in the pattern of a consumer when it comes to online shopping, especially during the pandemic. It suggests that the shift from offline shopping to online shopping is set to become a permanent change in retail consumption.   Covid19 has indeed accelerated online behavior in brands and consumers alike. The study reveals that the majority of the consumers look at online ads to discover new brands and products, while social media plays a key role in increasing the brand’s visibility. Not just this, product reviews top the list to influence a buyer’s decision. In India alone, 64% percent of online shoppers look at genuine customer reviews about a product before making a final decision. Product rating and consumer reviews add an extra layer of trust to secure the customer journey, thus enabling a customer to complete the checkout process. Why do reviews matter? UGC (User-generated Content) is a pool of valuable consumer insights. Brands can leverage these insights to improve, ideate, and innovate products and services for their consumers whereas reviews act as a bridge of loyalty between a consumer and a brand. Another study indicates that 92% of shoppers trust organic user-generated content over and above traditional advertising. This gives a brand an opportunity to increase brand credibility and also save time and money which otherwise are spent on other marketing channels. Consumers who are influencers enjoy reviewing products online for it allows them to gain social recognition, especially in today’s digitized era where eCommerce intelligence plays an important role and every individual wants to become the next go-to influencer. More often than not, brands also incentivize their genuine customers to share their reviews in exchange for a coupon or discount code. In short, people consume a plethora of content when they shop online and a brand has to establish its credibility among its buyers to scale its business, via genuine means. Fake reviews vs brand reputation vs Trust Research estimates that online reviews will influence $3.8 trillion of global-e-commerce spend in 2021 and the direct influence of fake online reviews on global online spending is $152 billion! Phew! Trust is the only factor that binds a brand and consumers together. While looking for a product, if consumers do not find a review or any bad review about a product, skepticism comes to play. That’s pure-play human psychology. Brands believe that by faking good reviews on the eCommerce pages they will attract consumers, they don’t realize the fact that today’s consumers are smart enough to differentiate between a verified review vis-à-vis the ones injected by bots. Using similar wordplay such as ‘excellent product’, ‘great product’, ‘worth buying’ and more such (fake) reviews injected by bots, it’s a clear indication to the customers that these are not-so-genuine reviews, thus customers end up alienating the brand and losing their trust in the brand FOREVER. This in turn hurts the brand reputation, credibility and ultimately affecting the ROI. Fake reviews are the final nail in the coffin for a brand. Once a shopper suspects the brand of having fake reviews, trust comes to question. In today’s era of eCommerce intelligence, it is of utmost importance that brands uphold consumer trust, provide them with adequate information and genuine reviews of their products which will ultimately translate into profit. And it’s not just a brand that may indulge in fake reviews, degrading content by competitors adds to the fake review menace to put the brand down. Automated submissions, bot programming, trolling activity, all such issues have infiltrated the e-commerce industry The Solution E-commerce is the viable channel for retailers in this new normal. Rising eCommerce transactions invite far potential fraudulent activities which affect the revenue and consumer trust. mScanIt e-com analytics tool by mfilterIt is packed with AI-driven technology which helps eliminate fake reviews and combat the scourge of fraud and deception. The tool leverages machine learning to identify fraudulent activities and protect the users and brand from fake reviews on eCommerce marketplaces. It is imperative to take necessary steps by investing in the right technology to minimize risks and ensure brand reputation to garner authentic users. Tools like mScanIt not only help to review the product page but also assist in the customer acquisition funnel and beyond! It’s to act now. Get in touch with us to understand the eCommerce intelligence solution and how can we ensure your brand’s safety and credibility and establish trust among your customers.

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Click Fraud Plaguing the BFSI Sector

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sources are generated by bots, automated click, or some type of click fraud? Ad Fraud is estimated to cost advertisers and brands an estimated of $44 billion to fraudulent activities by 2022. Studies also indicate that each year $1.5 billion is lost to affiliate marketing fraud. Imagine the plight when the ad spends which was allocated to acquire new users and expand reach is now being cannibalized by nefarious affiliates! mFilterIt analyzed affiliate installs in the banking sector towards the beginning of the 2nd quarter of this fiscal year. The result brought to light a very pertinent challenge that is plaguing the digital landscape. Click Spam, Fake Attribution are all instances of Click Fraud, and they contribute to 74% of fraud. IMPACT OF AFFILIATE FRAUD Drained ad budgets Skewed cost per conversions Brand reputation damage Abandonment by successful affiliates Signs of Click Fraud Unusual peak in number of clicks Clicks beyond targeted location Anomalies in performance data Spike in search cost How Can You Stop Click Fraud? Invest in the RIGHT Ad Fraud Detection Software Deep dive into the analytics Target only high-value sites Book a trial with us to safeguard your ad spends that maximize ROI and ensure safety for your ads and brands!

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Affiliate Fraud: A Menace in Banking Sector

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Time to protect your affiliate campaigns and catch hold fraudulent IP addresses The digital market has given birth to a plethora of affiliates who’re found across markets and industries of today. Proliferation of internet and rise of digital mediums have injected a new life in the affiliate marketing space by making it far effective than any other marketing strategy. These affiliates have a well-established visitor base which provides partnership opportunities for brands to enter new markets and explore customer base, thus giving your brand a stronger online presence. The most important aspect of engaging in affiliate campaign is that the outcome is completely performance based. The affiliates are paid a commission only when a desired action takes place thus these affiliates are motivated enough to drive the outcome (through any means) your brand is looking for. However, an increase in ad spend by companies have made affiliate marketing an attractive playground for fraudsters who’re eating away your budgets through affiliate fraud. mFilterIt detected that 38% of the affiliate campaigns in the banking sector are affected by affiliate ad campaign fraud. The How Where there’s money, there’s fraud. And with fraud, honest merchants and marketers are losing revenue and are left with drained ad budgets whereas dishonest affiliates are sending nothing but fake traffic your way, that’s affiliate fraud. After analyzing a million of data sets in the banking sector in affiliate campaign, it was observed that there has been an increase in website traffic and leads however the sales remained as is. Why? Dishonest affiliates had been sending traffic from bots, automated scripts and malware which means that the spike in website traffic was not because of a real user but bots messing up the numbers while your affiliates earns for every lead/click/install. Not just that, it was also seen that fraudulent traffic was generated by a common IP address. At mFilterIt, we have internalized certain criteria to evaluate the legitimacy of an IP address and determine if it’s safe or compromised. We undertake live IP blocklisting to weed out fraudsters to prevent affiliate fraud in your campaigns and red flag the anomalies to safeguard your spends.

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This Is All You Need to Know about Mobile App Fraud

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Mobile app fraud to remain a key security concern in 2021 We’ve come a long way from the onset of the Internet in the nation. From desktops to laptops, from telephones to smartphones, from LANs to mobile internet, from browsers to applications, we’re on the cusp of the digital revolution. Long gone are days of internet activities done on computers, thanks to the smartphone revolution, the majority of people now use a mobile device to browse the internet. To make consumer’s life easy, brands are now revolutionizing the digital game by converting and acquiring a new user base by providing them with a seamless experience on their hands via mobile applications. This switch in trend has also triggered a major challenge- smartphones have now become a breeding ground for scammers to defraud marketers, brands, and customers alike. With the onset of the pandemic, people have moved online and fraudulent transactions on smartphone apps have gone four-fold in recent years What is mobile app fraud? A fraudulent or a fake app are those applications that are created by fraudsters that mimic legitimate apps available on the Play store. The aim of these fraudsters is to mislead people about the actual app and trigger them to download these fake applications. Although most fraudulent applications are downloaded from third-party sources most of them also land on authentic Play Stores. These fake apps are responsible for injecting malware into your phones which can damage not only the operating system but can also compromise your privacy; passwords, photos, credit card information, identity, etc., in short stealing your data. As much it is important for users to protect themselves from these malicious threats, imagine the risk a brand has with respect to its reputation? A brand’s reputation is important to a brand’s success. Therefore, it is imperative for businesses of all kinds to monitor these fake apps and third-party sources for malicious apps and should be reported using the right tool. Such instances hamper your brand’s safety and reputation even if you have no relation to these applications. Mobile app fraud affecting your marketing funnel The Rise in digital advertising budgets owing to digitization requires marketers to remain vigilant of mobile app fraud issues which can hamper their efforts. Since fraudsters aim at claiming the advertising revenue, by generating fake installs these bad actors are defrauding all the stakeholders along the advertising chain. These fake installs misrepresent the data, therefore, affecting your marketing efforts. In most cases, skewed campaign results leave marketers wondering where they went wrong with their install campaign. Professional tools help you protect from such vulnerabilities and help better your marketing efforts thus ensuring better, bigger, and safer campaigns. Get in touch with us to ensure your campaign’s integrity.

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Why Do You Need a Perfect Page Analysis for your Ecommerce Product Page?

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Avoid cart abandonment issues with mScanIt e-commerce competitive intelligence solutions. Covid19 has caused a major shift in shopping patterns – over 65% of people now prefer online shopping over a traditional brick-and-mortar store. With this shift in trends and preferences, it has become more important than ever to cater to your customers in a way that will lead to sales in an online environment. Sadly, brands and retailers are clouded by a plethora of assumptions about how their consumers shop for the products. There’s only a little (negligible) attention paid to the shopping experience, placement, product details, and many other elements which account for sales. This becomes a major concern for brands and retailers who face cart abandonment issues. An average cart abandonment rate for online retailers goes as high as 80%. One can only imagine the potential revenue loss faced by the platforms, sellers, and loss of trust for the brand from the consumers’ perspective. Cart abandonment not only means lower revenue but accounts for increased acquisition costs. Imagine walking into a physical store. You simply find your way to the product that you require, read the description, hold the package in your hand to understand the look and feel, and finally end up buying the product. Now, with a shift in shopping patterns, it is imperative to replicate the offline experience in an online environment. That’s where the concept of a perfect page analysis comes into the picture. Your product page on the e-commerce site has about 10 seconds to capture the attention of its potential buyer. And that can only happen (also to avoid cart abandonment issues) when you have a perfect page that appeals to the user. What is a Perfect Page Analysis? A perfect page analysis helps better the product experience in an online environment that directly helps boost sales, enhance product viewability, and increase product ranking, thus building a strong brand. Parameters of a Perfect Product Page The Mscanit eCommerce competitive intelligence tool helps you benchmark your product page on any eCommerce website across various parameters: 1. Perfect product description (number of words) Long gone are days of lengthy crafty descriptions. Studies indicate that page visitors read about 15-20% of the text on any page. Users simply scan for key information. The tool ranks the product description basis the words, context, and word count. 2.Desired number of product images and videos It becomes difficult to assess the product quality, size, content written on the product, and many other such information which can otherwise be easily understood in an offline store. mScanIt helps in assessing the desired number of images and videos you need to compensate for the physical feel of the product thus giving the customer better clarity and information about the product. 3. Placement of the content (‘The fold’) With the proliferation of different shapes and sizes of devices such as laptops, mobiles, desktops, etc, it is important to understand the placement of the texts on your product page. This is because the required product information shouldn’t flow down to the bottom of the page as the user scrolls down. The tool ranks your page in terms of content placement which contributes to the user shopping experience. 4. SEO friendly keywords Having SEO-friendly keywords is the nervous system of your product page. We can’t emphasize enough the SEO aspect to get that perfect page for your business. The tool ranks your page basis the keywords used in context to the product displayed thus giving a fair idea to where the page stands. The tool not only ranks the above-mentioned parameters for the product you cater to as a brand but also helps you assess your competitor’s ranking. All this information when compiled together, helps brands make data-driven decisions to succeed on e-commerce platforms and also aid in cart abandonment problems. Having the perfect page is the DNA of your e-commerce business. Book a trial with us today to get your perfect page analysis done.

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How Do Publishers Stand to Lose on Account of Ad Fraud?

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A study recently talked about how brands and marketers are losing money to ad fraud with estimates reaching as high as $100 billion by 2023. And it’s not just the advertisers who’re losing revenue due to such fraudulent activities. Publishers stand to lose a lot more when web fraud divert ad spends from high-quality websites to fraudulent ones. The loss of revenue coupled with losing trust in the publisher affects the entire ad campaign tactics for all the stakeholders in the ad ecosystem. Today, even quality sites face a threat to ad fraud given the rise in sophisticated forms of tools and technologies deployed by fraudsters to deplete ad budgets and divert traffic. A publisher offers readers and an audience for advertisers which in turn helps brands to get the user’s attention. More the attention and readers a publisher can garner, the more the advertisers are willing to pay for the inventory. It is commonly understood that ad fraud, in principle, only hurts an advertiser. What is not noted is that publishers’ business depends on the trust of these advertisers. These fraudsters take advantage of the digital ecosystem’s complexities to channel ad spends onto fake sites which should otherwise be going to legitimate publishers. A rise in programmatic buying has further exacerbated the problem of ad fraud. Real-time bidding on ads where an ad is shown as soon as the website is loaded gives fraudsters a quick gateway to enter the funnel to commit fraud. There are a plethora of sites to choose from for media buyers when they’re bidding on ads programmatically. Media buyers are spoilt with choices to choose from as long as they know that the site offers premium inventory in terms of human audiences. What they’re not aware of is that the fraudsters have infiltrated the ecosystem with an army of fake bots and fake websites and offering it up as a premium inventory. During the bid, these fake websites rank at the top with a large (fake) audience base and at a much cheaper price vis-à-vis a legitimate publisher who’s offering real audiences. These situations are forcing honest publishers to lower their inventory price in order to compete with fraudsters which in turn deflate the entire market. In short, advertisers are losing revenue on account of ad fraud (with the deflated value of ad inventory) and the pervasive issue of ad fraud is causing publishers to lose the only thing which makes them profit in the first place, margin compression. Desperate times, desperate measures! Due to loss in revenue and compressed margins, the publisher now opens its inventory to various exchanges. What happens here is that by listing on these exchanges they’re now prone to ‘domain spoofing’. Fake websites can now come up and pretend to be legitimate domains of these good publishers. Now when fraud detection tools detect high fraudulent activities on the domain which belongs to the fake publishers, the reputation of a legitimate publisher goes for a toss because the report states that the same domain had appeared in the placement report. This now gives the buyers a perspective that the reputed publisher deals in invalid traffic and fraudulent activities to pocket ad spends. But, is that the truth? In another instance, opening up for programmatic ads for ad slots on the page, publishers do not really know in advance the kind of ads which will be served in the slots. Taking advantage of the window here, criminals place ads with malicious code onto the reputed publishers’ site in order to compromise the user’s device. Although it’s not a publisher’s fault or a crime that the honest publisher committed, the user is tricked into believing that a legitimate publisher has caused them harm. While advertisers are fighting against fraud by using bot detection tools and other ad fraud prevention tools, publishers need to fight against fraud by proving to the advertisers that they have real and genuine human engagement. Ad Fraud detection & prevention is not restricted to removing bad traffic alone, it improves performance for the advertiser and in turn, the publisher gets to maintain their share of earnings. Publishers today need to work with fraud detection companies to showcase that their traffic comes from real human users. The entire ad ecosystem needs to be saved from the issue of such fraudulent activity where every stakeholder in the entire funnel is hanging by a thread of ad fraud!

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Is Fraud Affecting Your Retargeting Campaign?

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Fraudsters and digital criminals jump at any opportunity to pervade a marketing campaign. Their only aim is to drain the advertising budget and line up their own pockets. ( shh, it could either be your competitor who wants to eat away the budgets) Ways For Approaching The Audience Brands usually have two ways to approach their audience: a direct approach where the aim is to acquire a new customer interested in the product offering. The second approach is to rekindle the existing (or previous) relationship between the user and the product. The second approach is referred to as a retargeting strategy to get the user who has already visited your website, or previously engaged with the products and to offer them more product offerings, thus leading to a conversion. It is important to note that if a user has already shown an interest in the product offered by the brand, they are more likely to re-engage with the brand (requires less convincing), with the condition that the user had a positive experience previously. This is also one of the reasons that retargeting campaigns attract a higher cost than regular display campaigns. FMCG has the highest expenditure on digital advertising. The majority of the brands undertake retargeting as a marketing technique to interact with old customers and target new products towards them. It is estimated that 22% of digital spending is lost to ad fraud. One can only imagine the potential losses the brands may be facing. Let us deep dive further to understand the nuances of retargeting frauds. How fraudsters infiltrate your retargeting campaign? Remarketing traffic are the users who’ve proven to be legit and active users who’re no longer under the purview of ‘fraud traffic’. When advertisers retarget these users they lower their shield because these users have previously been approached and converted. This is the biggest loophole that is exploited by the fraudsters to deploy attribution hijacking techniques and take away the credit of legitimate partners. With CPA campaigns being higher than CPI campaigns, the existing users re-engage with the product offerings, view, ads and contribute to revenue generation for the advertiser. It then becomes a lucrative way for the fraudsters to enjoy the higher CPA rate (using attribution hijacking techniques). One can well imagine the potential impact when a fraudster enters the remarketing database and the negative amplification of the equation. Click flooding, install hijacking essentially eliminates the legitimate partner from getting the credit for acquired users. In other such instances, fraudsters deploy bot traffic which makes the shopping real; browsing through the website, adding items to the carts. The ad program doesn’t differentiate between the human and a fake bot thus identifying them as high-quality leads. This becomes a vicious cycle of bots pretending to be humans, ultimately depleting your ad budget. To conclude, marketing efforts and retargeting campaigns are not immune to fraudsters. Many loopholes can be exploited, new techniques are invented, but as a brand and as a marketer, one needs to be vigilant and deploy tools and solutions to keep these scammers at bay and reduce the probability of Ad fraud in their campaigns.

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Types of Mobile Advertising Fraud Across Industries

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India has witnessed an exponential rise in smartphone usage, internet penetration, which has furthered the growth of the Indian Digital Advertising ecosystem. Studies estimate that there were 624 million Internet users in India by January 2021 and the number of mobile connections was equivalent to 79% of the total population (1.39 billion is the current population). The growth in internet adoption, smartphone usage, and the ongoing Covid19 pandemic has impelled businesses to leverage digital marketing to reach their customers directly on their mobile devices. This growth, however, comes with its own set of challenges as the internet has become a playground for fraudsters MMA India Report states that 62% of all digital ad fraud occurs on mobile advertising, the most dominant type of digital advertising in India. Increased mobile adoption opens Pandora’s box of opportunities for digital criminals. Thus, one of the many reasons to develop an understanding of the different types of mobile ad fraud and how to detect them across industries. The ever-evolving ecosystem of mobile devices allows advertisers to deploy ads in varied formats. This provides the fraudsters with a number of ways in which they can trick their victims: from fake installs to attribution manipulation. Let us have a look at the different types of ad fraud in mobile advertising which are fairly common across industries. 1. Ad Stacking One of the most common types of mobile ad fraud, ad stacking is a scheme where multiple ads are served and displayed at once, one on top of the other, akin to a stack of folders in offices. This gives a window to immoral publishers to say that the said ad has been served (even though it was technically never visible). This form of ad fraud is also referred to as ad hiding thus can be a major cause of concern especially when a brand awareness campaign is being run. 2. Click Flooding In click flooding, fraudsters aim for tapping the last click/engagement prior to an actual install of the product being advertised. This is done by sending fraudulent clicks in large numbers with the intention of any click being credited for the download. Each click has a unique ID that is aimed to match any real user who downloaded the advertised application. 3.Bundle ID Spoofing Another very sophisticated type of ad fraud is Bundle ID spoofing. This is the methodology where fraudsters trick advertisers by making them believe that the ads are being run in the intended app, whereas in actuality it’s being run on another app. This is done by changing the parameters of the second application and giving the app a fake identifier, hence called bundle ID spoofing. The ads could appear on a black screen or in the background, making them invisible to the user. 4. Bots and Emulators Bots and emulators can be used on any platform to perform any type of ad fraud. For a mobile advertisement ad fraud, an emulator (software that can be run on any device to host devices to simulate tasks) can fake any device to look like a smartphone and then perform fake app installs, impressions without using the real device. Using this methodology, fraudsters fabricate the users and also fake attribution to claim the advertising credits. Similarly, bots can also be automated to perform and execute tasks at a high frequency (much faster than human users) and can generate fake clicks, installs, views, etc. 5. SDK Spoofing Another sophisticated method of mobile ad fraud, SDK spoofing creates legitimate-looking installs by using data of real devices without any real installs thus consuming all the advertising budget. The fraudsters also use this method by listening to the communication between the mobile measurement platform, app stores, ad networks, and attribution tools. These communications are then replicated (and edited) to simulate activities as per the set ad parameters such as installs, views, clicks, etc. Frauds and scams have been haunting the digital ecosystem since time immemorial. With advancements in technology, more sophisticated ways of mobile ad fraud can be witnessed. Understanding the types of mobile ad fraud can help prevent and fight against the rise in such instances.

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Your Go-To Guide for E-commerce Competitive Intelligence – Part 2

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Top 4 ways to succeed in your e-commerce business Businesses don’t build and succeed in a day. It takes sheer determination, persistency, and the right mix of tools to become relevant. Such tasks are often very challenging and time-consuming in nature but in order to grow, it is important to grab all the possible opportunities and stay ahead of the curve. mScanIt helps businesses uncover powerful insights for brands, sellers, retailers, and the marketplace. Take in charge of your business by automating vendor management, price listing stock availability, and much more. In order to succeed, every business should be able to track the following parameters: Discoverability Availability Visibility Search Analytics Execution Compliance & Brand Safety Performance To mark your presence in the e-com marketplace, monitoring and banking upon competitors’ weaknesses and strengths give added advantage of becoming the go-to brand. mScanIt gives an in-depth Ecommerce competitive intelligence and helps your business track all the above parameters, not just for your business but gives insights into your competition’s business. The dashboard translates data into actionable insights and reports to help you strategize your next move.   Let us have a look at the ways in which mScanIt can become an effective tool to help your e-commerce business succeed. 1. Monitor Competitor Pricing in Real-time It all makes sense why successful entrepreneurs talk about having an eagle’s eye of the business ecosystem. The tool helps your business in keeping an ‘eye’ on how your competitors are pricing their products which will help you make informed decisions about your line of products. This intelligent tool helps in tracking, comparing, and analyzing the prices in real-time across numerous competitors. Business strategy can be formulated basis competitor’s pricing strategy so as to when should you lower or increase the prices. For instance, a certain product that is in high demand and no other competitors cater to the audience, your business can increase the product price to capitalize on the opportunity. 2. Product Availability Have you been observing that the retailer is re-stocking your competitor’s product more often than he stocks your product? Or is your direct competitor frequently re-stocking a product on specific days of the week? The tool will help you analyze the products which have gone out of stock on the retailer’s website, the days it’s been unavailable, and what’s the ongoing conversation between the retailer and your shoppers about the unavailable products. It will also help you analyze the reasons behind why your direct competitor is more preferred by the shoppers. 3. Customer Reviews Customer is king and they’re the ones driving fuel to your business. Product reviews offer tons of actionable insights. The tool help you monitor not just your product but what reviews are being given to your competitor’s products. Based on the feedback you can improve your product line and even target customers who’re unhappy with your competitor’s products. One can also gauge insight into the new entrants who’re faring well in terms of customer reviews which can then be worked upon in your business to improve the satisfaction score. 4. Offers, Promotions, and Ads Witnessing a dip in your loyal customer base? This could be because your competition is taking over your loyal customer base by offering them better rates or wooing them with different schemes and offers. The tool will keep track of any offers and promotions undertaken by your competitor to help you make informed decisions and also help you track your promotional campaign results in terms of output generated. To stay relevant and lead the race of success, it is important to know all about your competitors. Whether it’s about growth strategy or analyzing the products, automated tools similar to Ecommerce Competitive Intelligence help in bringing valuable insights which benefit in better positioning of your brand and add credibility among your customers. Book a trial with us today!

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Your Go-To Guide for E-commerce Competitive Intelligence – Part 1

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2 part series to succeed in e-commerce business “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” – Otto Von Bismarck Competition keeps a business on its toes. From bringing in new product line categories to scouting for consumers (and engaging old customers), the idea is to become the go-to choice for your customers. Online shoppers are merciless beings (no offense) as they’re spoiled with a plethora of choices and offers. While shopping for their requirement, if the competition’s business appears before your business does, you tend to become a history for them. In today’s world of free-market and internet accessibility, e-commerce has become a lucrative choice for shoppers and businesses alike. No matter what product you offer, there will always be 20 other websites to offer similar products that are trying to woo customers with varied schemes and offers. The competition is pervasive and if you do not keep a close eye on your competition, there’s a good chance that your business will no longer be in the competition in times to come. The E-commerce business is in cut throat competition. Every business must have its eyes and ears everywhere, all at once. Understanding Ecommerce Competitive Intelligence Understanding the competitor is not quite an easy task as it may sound. Although every query is a click away, however, the idea is to first understand the kind of competition you face. Direct competitors are those businesses in the competition who sell the same products and services as your business does. Indirect competitors are businesses that do not sell similar products as your business but satisfy the same customer need. The sweet spot is to determine how your business offerings fare in comparison to theirs and what are the differences stand out. Ecommerce competitive intelligence, therefore, is a strategic understanding of your business in the marketing related to our competition. What’s your business like, who’s your competition, what are they selling and at what price, product availability, discount, and offers; there’s a wide range of intelligence that is gathered and the same information is put to use to outshine your competitors. Gathering effective competition intelligence in today’s barrage of marketing and avalanche of digital marketing techniques requires a dedicated team that will monitor and report data in real-time. The difficulty arises when such processes are done manually which is cumbersome and time taking. By the time all such data is gathered and analyzed, your competition might have already wooed your loyal customers making your business redundant. Automation is the key Processing massive chunks of data manually is nearly impossible. As you start scaling your business, processes become more dreadful with repetitive tasks. Taking care of product availability, vendor inventory, order dispatches, packaging, every task has to be on point all the while staying on top of customer service and reviews. Apart from managing your own business, it is also important to keep a close check on the competition to better position your services. None of this is practically possible by employing manual processes. That is where automated tools such as mScanIt offer optimized analytical support for your e-commerce business to succeed. It is imperative to analyze your e-commerce business through the right mix of relevant insights, including, competitor price and discount comparisons, RoI on ad-spends in marketplaces, automated reports. Not just this, such tools also help businesses in finding USP (which might be different than what the business thought), analyze your competition’s weaknesses, and explore possibilities to tap into untouched market segments.

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