Every competitive watch starts the same way. Someone opens the competitors' sites, notes the prices in a spreadsheet, and does it again the following week.
It works for a while. Then these five signals show up.
1. The readings take more than an hour a week
An hour a week is close to a full working week each year spent copying and pasting. By someone whose job it is not and whose choice it was not.
2. You no longer record everything
The scope shrinks without anyone deciding it. You keep the ten references that matter and drop the other ninety. The watch becomes a sample, and the sample stops being representative.
3. You find out about changes too late
A weekly reading will never catch a three-day promotion. You see the dip in sales without being able to name its cause.
4. Nobody knows what a price was six months ago
A spreadsheet overwritten at every reading keeps no history. The most useful questions become impossible. Is that competitor cutting structurally or occasionally? Does their back-to-school promotion come round every year?
5. Two people do not record the same thing
Shipping included or not. List price or price actually paid. With or without basket discount. Without a written rule, everyone applies their own, and the figures stop being comparable, with each other and over time.
Taken separately, none of these signs is serious. Together they describe a watch that costs time and that nobody really leans on to decide any more.
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