Look at your competitors

One unfortunate aspect of online selling is that 99% of items are price driven. Even if we want to believe that our levels of service and attention to detail are key parts of the mix, they play far less importance than we would like.

For this reason it is essential to identify the companies online that sell what you sell , are as easy to find as you are, conduct adword or facebook advertising or generally could be considered competitors.

In the past doing 'mystery shopping' was time consuming, hard and there was always a risk of getting caught. With the internet it is far easier to do.

Once you have created your list of competitors you need to spend some time taking a good look at their sites. The first time you do this you will need to spend at least 15 minutes looking at and reading every page.

Don't try to compare every price of every product, select maybe 10 that you note the price of and compare across all the competitors and yourself. With this analysis you will be able to see if you are pricing your products correctly.

This mystery shopping should be conducted on a weekly basis. The more information you have about how your competitors are operating, the more chance you have to compete effectively and react in a timely manner if they start a price war.