Strategies

A strategy is the set of rules Repricer follows to work out what a listing should cost, from what your price competes with down to how low it can go.

A strategy is the set of rules Repricer follows to work out what one of your listings should cost. It picks what your price is measured against, it says how your price reacts to that, and it sets the lowest price you are willing to accept.

Every listing has one strategy on it, and never more than one. What that strategy calculates is the price Repricer publishes, so a strategy is not a note you keep for later. It runs, on every listing that has it, from the moment you save it.

Strategies in the sidebar is where all of yours are. The table has one row per strategy, with the account and the region it works on and how many of your listings are on it. Create strategy, at the right end of the toolbar above the table, opens a wizard, and clicking any row opens that same wizard on the strategy you clicked.

You do not start with an empty table. Every region you turn on gets a strategy built for it, and every new listing gets that one. So something is already pricing your listings before you build anything yourself.

Before you start

What your role lets you do

You can read every strategy whatever your role. Changing one needs the Manager role.

Below Manager, the table is still yours to read, and three things are different. Create strategy is not above the table, and the actions at the right end of each row are gone. Clicking a row opens the wizard titled View strategy, which you can page through and cannot save. Roles are set in team, roles and permissions.

Saving a change reprices every listing on it

There is no draft and no scheduled change here. Update is the moment your new rules start deciding prices, on all of the listings at once. A strategy with thousands of listings on it is worth reading twice before you touch it.

How to build a strategy

1. 1

   Open the strategies table

   Click Strategies in the sidebar. Above the table is a toolbar, and Create strategy is the button at its right end.

2. 2

   Say where you sell

   The wizard opens by asking where you sell, as a grid of cards with one integration on each. Click the card for the account you are about to price, then click Next at the bottom right. An integration you have not connected cannot be picked.

3. 3

   Name it

   On Basics, type a name into Strategy Name. Select Account and Select Region are under it, and each one appears only when you have more than one to choose from.

4. 4

   Choose how it competes

   Pricing is where you pick what your price is measured against and how it reacts to that. Click Next through the steps after it, which are your price floor, your safety nets and your rounding.

5. 5

   Read the preview and save

   The last step, Preview, runs your rules over up to 10 of your real listings and shows what each one would be priced at. Click Create at the bottom right.

That is the whole flow. Your strategy is at the top of the table right away, and it is pricing nothing yet, because a strategy does nothing until a listing is on it. Putting listings on it is a separate step, and it has its own section below.

Everything under here explains the table, the strategy you were given and the three actions on a row. You do not need any of it to build one, and the strategy wizard goes through the steps one at a time.

Every option in detail

The sections below follow the strategies table. They cover what its columns tell you, the strategy every region starts with, how a listing gets one, and each of the actions on a row.

Reading the strategies table

Connection starts hidden, so turn it on from Columns in the toolbar when you want it. An Inactive strategy is not broken and nothing about it is lost: reconnect the account or turn the region back on and the column reads Active again by itself.

The toolbar, the filters and the pages under the table work the same way here as on every other table, and filters covers them.

The strategy every region starts with

Turning on a region builds a strategy for it and marks it the default, so you never have a listing with nothing pricing it. It is called Default Strategy for and then the region’s name, and those first three words are in English whatever language you use the app in.

Every new listing in that region gets the default put on it. That is why the Listings count can be in the thousands on a strategy nobody on your team built.

Read it before you let prices go out. Nothing in it came from your business, your margins or your cost, and it is pricing every listing you have. Open it from the strategies table, page through the wizard with Next, and you have read the whole thing in a minute.

Putting a strategy on a listing

A new strategy prices nothing until a listing is on it, and there are three places to put one there. All three need the Manager role.

Each of the three offers you the strategies built for that listing’s own account and region, and nothing else. A listing on Amazon.com cannot take a strategy built for Amazon.ca, and a selection spread over two accounts needs the bulk action run once for each. Bulk actions has the rest of that.

A listing you move starts being priced by its new strategy on the spot, and the Strategy column on your listings table shows the new name.

Editing a strategy that is already running

Click the row you want on the strategies table and the wizard opens on Basics, filled in. Every step is already complete, so you can click any step marker along the top to go straight to the one you came for.

Two things about saving surprise people. Update is only on the last step, so a change you make on Pricing is saved by walking to Preview and clicking it there. And Update stays gray until you actually change something, which is your sign that a strategy you only looked at cannot be saved by accident.

Closing the wizard with the × or by clicking outside it asks you whether to discard, with Discard and Keep editing, and only when you changed something. Your browser’s back button closes it the same way.

A strategy stays on the account and region it was built for. The account and the region are only offered while you are creating one. They are not on Basics when you open a strategy again. To price a second region, build a strategy there.

Making a different strategy the default

Set default is in the actions at the right end of a row on the strategies table. Click it and that strategy becomes the one new listings in its region get, and the one that was the default becomes an ordinary strategy. There is one default per region and the swap happens at once, so nothing is left without one.

Your existing listings do not move. They keep whatever strategy they are on. Changing the default only changes what happens to listings arriving from now on. To move the listings you already have, use one of the three ways above.

Set default is gray on the row that already is the default. Hovering it reads Already the default strategy.

Duplicating a strategy

Duplicate is in those same actions at the right end of a row. It makes a second strategy with every setting copied, on the same account and the same region, and it is never the default. Your copy is at the top of the table right away, with no wizard to walk and nothing to confirm.

This is the fastest way to try a change. Duplicate the strategy that is working, edit the copy, put a handful of listings on it, and compare the two in pricing activity before you move the rest.

Deleting a strategy

Delete is the last of the actions at the right end of a row. It asks you to confirm first, in a dialog over the page naming the strategy, and the button on that dialog reads Delete.

Your listings are not deleted with it. Every listing on that strategy is moved onto its region’s default, and each one is repriced under those rules. On a strategy with a lot of listings that is a large change made in one click.

Delete is gray on the row that is the default, and hovering it reads Cannot delete the default strategy. Make another strategy the default with Set default first. The one you wanted to delete is then an ordinary row you can remove.

Limits

What a strategy cannot do

When something goes wrong

Why the button you want is gray or missing

Messages you can get

Where to go next