How to use the buy box repricer
On a marketplace, several shops often sell the same product. The marketplace shows one of them first, in the buy box, and most customers buy from that offer. The buy box repricer watches who has the buy box for each of your offers and can adjust your price to win it, always within the minimum and maximum you set.
You find the repricer under Prices > Price suggestions, on the Buy box tab. The page has three tabs:
- Margin: the price suggestions based on your purchase prices.
- Buy box: the settings, price rules and offers of the repricer.
- Buy box history: what happened to the buy box and your prices, see Buy box history.
The results are in a report under Insights > Buy box, see Buy box results.
Supported marketplaces
The repricer works with:
- Mirakl marketplaces, for example Shop Apotheke. See Mirakl marketplaces.
- bol. You choose per connection whether the repricer looks at bol in the Netherlands (NL) or in Belgium (BE). bol does not show shipping costs per offer, so prices are compared as they are. Offers with volume prices (a lower price when a customer buys more) are skipped.
Other marketplaces are not supported, because they do not show the competing offers on a product.
What the repricer changes
- The repricer only changes prices. Stock, content and the listing itself stay exactly as they are.
- Offers with an active discount are skipped, they show Skipped: discount active.
- Offers with channel prices are skipped, they show Skipped: channel prices. On bol this is the case for offers with volume prices.
Choosing a mode
The repricer is off for every marketplace connection until you choose a mode. When you have more than one supported marketplace, choose the connection at the top right of the page. Then pick the Mode in the Settings block and click Save.
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Off | The repricer does not run for this marketplace. |
| Monitor only | Reads your offers and the buy box of every product. No prices are calculated or sent. |
| Advice | Calculates the price the repricer would set. Nothing is sent until you accept the advice, one by one or many at once. |
| Automatic | Sends new prices to the marketplace by itself, within your minimum and maximum. When you switch this mode on, StoreLinkr asks you to confirm. |
Start with Monitor only to see where you stand. Switch to Advice once your price rules are set and check the advised prices for a while. Move to Automatic when you trust the outcome.
After you choose a mode, your offers are read from the marketplace. This can take a few minutes. Click Check now to start a check straight away.
Other settings
- Check the buy box: how often the repricer checks the buy box, from every 15 minutes to every 240 minutes.
- Wait between changes (minutes): the minimum time between two price changes of the same offer.
- Max. changes per offer per day: the repricer never changes the price of one offer more often than this per day.
- Country: only for marketplaces with more than one country, such as bol (NL or BE).
- Prices on marketplaces: where the new prices are saved, see Prices and price lists.
Under the settings you see the shop the repricer recognised as yours, the time of the Last check and when the offers were last read (Offers read).
Price rules
The repricer only calculates a price for an offer that has a minimum and a maximum price. You set these in the Price rules block:
- The Default rule applies to every offer without its own category rule.
- With Add category rule you create a rule for one category. It applies to the offers in that category instead of the default rule.
- A minimum or maximum set on an offer itself always wins over the rules, see Settings per offer.
Click a rule to change it. Make sure Reprice offers with this rule is switched on, otherwise the offers with this rule are left alone.
Price limits
The limits are calculated from the reference price of each offer: its price when the repricer first read it.
- Minimum: % below reference price and Maximum: % above reference price, for example 10% below and 25% above.
- Minimum price (fixed, optional) and Maximum price (fixed, optional), an amount in euros.
You can fill in both a percentage and a fixed amount. The strictest one counts: the highest of the two minimums and the lowest of the two maximums.
Behaviour
- Price step: how far below the cheapest other offer the repricer goes, in euros. For example
0.01. - Rounding: new prices are rounded down to an ending such as ,99, ,95, ,90, ,49 or ,99 or ,00, so they stay below the competitor. A rounded price always stays within your limits. Choose No rounding to use the exact price.
- Without competition: what happens when nobody else sells the product: Keep the current price or Move to the maximum price.
- When you have the buy box, raise the price to just below the next offer: earns you more margin while you keep the buy box. While you have the buy box, the repricer does not lower your price.
- Compare total prices including shipping costs: compares price plus shipping, the way the marketplace ranks the offers. On bol prices are always compared without shipping.
Working with your offers
The figures above the offers show how many offers have each status. Click a figure to show only those offers.
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Buy box won | Your offer has the buy box. |
| Buy box lost | Another shop has the buy box. |
| At minimum | Winning the buy box would take a price below your minimum. |
| No competition | Nobody else sells this product. |
| Not visible | Your offer is not visible on the product page of the marketplace. |
| Not checked | The offer has not been checked yet. |
| Outside subscription | The offer is outside the limit of your subscription, see Subscription limit. |
For each offer the list shows Your price (plus shipping, if any), the Buy box price with the shop that has it and your position, the New price the repricer calculated, the Min - max that applies and where it comes from (Default rule, Category rule or Set on the offer), and the status.
Filters and sorting
Large catalogues are easier with the filters above the list:
- Search on product, SKU or EAN.
- Filter on status or category.
- Sort on Name, Most to win first (the offers whose price is furthest above the buy box come first), Price high to low, Price low to high or Recently repriced.
- Use All offers or With advice to show only the offers that have an advised price.
Accepting or denying advice
In the Advice mode the repricer calculates a New price but sends nothing. Select one or more offers and click:
- Accept price change to send the advised prices to the marketplace.
- Deny to turn the advice down. A denied price is not suggested again. When the market changes and the repricer calculates a different price, you get a new advice.
You can only accept advice in the Advice or Automatic mode.
Bulk actions
Tick the box at the top of the list to select all offers on the page. To select every offer that matches your filter, click Select all ... offers that match the filter. Then use the buttons in the bar or the Product rules menu:
- Set minimum and maximum: for each limit choose Percentage of the reference price, Fixed amount, Keep as it is or Remove, follow the rule. A percentage is calculated from the reference price of each offer, so every offer gets limits that fit its own price.
- Set price step and rounding: set your own price step and rounding for the selected offers. Leave the price step empty to follow the rule. For the rounding, choose Follow the rule of the category, No rounding or an ending.
- Always reprice this offer or Never reprice this offer, regardless of the rule.
- Follow the rule of the category: the offers follow the rule again for repricing on or off.
- Reset to the rules: removes everything set on the selected offers, so they follow the rules again.
Settings per offer
Click an offer to open it. You see your price, the buy box, the limits and the status, a chart of Your price and the buy box over the last 7, 30 or 90 days, the Offers on this product and the history of the offer.
Under Settings for this offer you can set:
- Repricing: Follow the rule of the category, Always reprice this offer or Never reprice this offer.
- Minimum price and Maximum price for this offer only. Leave a field empty to use the limit of the rule.
- Reference price: the price the percentages of the rule are calculated from.
- Price step and Rounding for this offer only.
Recent price changes
At the bottom of the page you find the Recent price changes, with the old and new price, the Reason (for example Win the buy box, More margin, Below minimum or Price list changed) and the status: Advice, Sending, Applied, Failed or Turned down. Click View history for the full history.
Prices and price lists
The repricer never changes your default price list: that stays your base price. New prices are saved in a separate price list and sent from there to the marketplace. When the repricer is on, the page shows which price list it uses.
With Prices on marketplaces you choose how this works for your shop:
- Own price per marketplace: every marketplace gets a price list of its own, so a product can have a different price on each marketplace. When the price list of a marketplace is also used by another connection, StoreLinkr first makes a copy, so a new price never reaches another sales channel.
- Same price on all marketplaces: all marketplaces with the repricer share one price list and one price per product. When marketplaces ask for a different price, the last check wins. This applies to every marketplace of your shop.
See Sales prices for more about price lists.
Manage prices only
Do you already manage your offers on a marketplace yourself, and do you only want StoreLinkr to set the price? Switch on Manage prices only (repricer) when you connect a Mirakl marketplace or bol, or later in the settings of the channel. See Managing prices only.
Subscription limit
The repricer manages at most as many offers as the product limit of your subscription. Other offers get the status Outside subscription and the repricer leaves them alone. A notice at the top of the page tells you how many offers this is: click Show them to see them, or Upgrade to raise your limit. Products that StoreLinkr creates from your marketplace offers count towards the limit, like any other product.
Buy box history
The Buy box history tab shows what happened over the last 7, 30 or 90 days. Choose a category, search a product, and choose Buy box and prices, Buy box only or Price changes only.
- Per category: for each category the buy box share now, the buy boxes won and lost, the prices changed with the average change, the failed changes and the prices changed outside the repricer. Click a category to show only its timeline.
- Timeline: every event in order, such as Won, Lost, Buy box moved, Not visible, Changed outside (the price was changed outside the repricer) and the price changes. Click a product to open its chart of your price and the buy box.
Frequently asked questions
Why does an offer not get a new price? Check that the mode is Advice or Automatic, that the offer has a minimum and a maximum, that Reprice offers with this rule is on and that the offer is not skipped because of a discount or channel prices. The wait time and the maximum number of changes per day can also hold a price back for a while.
Why does an offer show At minimum? Winning the buy box would take a price below your minimum. The repricer never goes below your minimum, so the offer stays at that price. Lower the minimum if you want to compete further.
Does the repricer change my stock or product data? No. Only the price of the offer changes.