The strategy wizard

The wizard walks you through a new strategy one step at a time and shows you what its rules would do before any of it goes out to your listings.

A strategy is the set of rules the Repricer follows when it decides what one of your listings should cost. The wizard is the dialog, over the page, where you build one. It asks for those rules a step at a time. You say what price you are aiming at, how to price against it, how low you are willing to go, and what the final number should look like.

You have strategies before you ever open this dialog. Every region you connect gets a default strategy of its own, and every listing that arrives goes onto it. You build a new one when that default is not what you want for some of your listings.

You get to the wizard from Strategies in the left sidebar. Create strategy above the table opens it on a new strategy, and clicking any row in the table opens the same dialog on the strategy in that row. The steps run across the top of the dialog as a numbered row, and Back and Next are at the bottom.

One strategy covers one connected account and one region inside it, which is why the first thing the wizard asks is where you sell. It is also the one answer you cannot change afterward.

Before you start

What your role lets you do

An Editor and an Analyst still walk through every step and read everything on it, with nothing to type and no button to save. Roles are set in team, roles and permissions.

How to build a strategy

1. 1

   Open the wizard

   Click Strategies in the left sidebar, then Create strategy above the table.

2. 2

   Pick where you sell

   The wizard opens on a grid of integration cards. Click the one you sell on, then click Next at the bottom right. A card you have not connected is grayed out and cannot be picked.

3. 3

   Name it

   On Basics, type a name into Strategy Name. Select Account and Select Region appear under it when you have more than one of either. Click Next.

4. 4

   Say how you want to price

   Pricing is where the strategy gets its rules. On a marketplace, click a card under Target price and a card under Pricing mode. On a store of your own, start with Pricing method.

5. 5

   Work through the steps in between

   The steps between Pricing and Preview already have an answer in them, so read each one and click Next. On a marketplace, Price Floor is the exception: pick Calculate from cost or Set manually before Next turns on.

6. 6

   Read the preview and create it

   The last step, Preview, prices a sample of your live listings with the rules you just set. Click Create at the bottom right.

That is the whole flow. Your strategy appears in the strategies table right away, and it changes no price yet, because no listing is on it.

Everything below goes through the steps one at a time and covers editing a strategy that is already running. You do not need any of it to build your first one.

Every option in detail

The wizard is a single dialog with a numbered row of steps across the top. The sections below follow those steps in order. Every step you have already been through stays clickable in that row, so you can go back to one and return without losing what you typed.

How many steps you get

Most strategies are built in 6 steps: Basics, Pricing, Price Floor, Safety Nets, Rounding and Preview. Two things change that count, and both are about what you are pricing.

The count can change while you are inside the wizard. Switch Pricing method from Cost-based pricing to Competitor-based pricing on the Pricing step, and Price Floor appears in the row of steps as you do it.

On an Amazon account with business pricing, the wizard opens with 6 steps and gains the seventh once you choose a region on Basics. Business pricing is a setting on the account behind that region, so the wizard cannot know until you pick one.

Step 1: Name it and pick where it applies

Basics is the first step, and it has four fields on it at most.

Name it for what it does. A strategy called Test 2 tells you nothing later. The name is what you pick from in the Strategy dropdown on a listing, and in the Assign Strategy menu above your listings table.

With one connected account and one region in it, neither dropdown appears and the wizard has already chosen for you. Next turns on once the name is filled in and a region is chosen for you or by you.

Step 2: Choose how you price

Pricing is the step that gives the strategy its rules, and it is the only one that looks different depending on where you sell.

On a marketplace you get two sections. Target price is the price you are aiming at, such as the Buy Box price. Pricing mode is what you do about that price, such as beating it by a fixed amount. Amazon adds two more sections under those, one for pricing differently against particular sellers and one for choosing which sellers count at all.

On a store of your own the first question is Pricing method, because there is no shared offer to measure against. You either price against competitors you are tracking by address, or build the price out of your own cost and the profit you want.

Nothing is picked for you on a marketplace, so Next stays off until you have chosen a card in each section. A store of your own is filled in already, set to Beat lowest competitor by 0.01.

Targets and modes covers every card on this step.

Set your price floor

Price Floor asks one question: where the lowest price this strategy will ever set comes from. Calculate from cost has the Repricer build that number from your cost and a profit target you set here. Set manually uses the Minimum Price you type on each listing instead.

Pick Calculate from cost when your costs are loaded and your listings are not. One profit target then covers every listing on the strategy. A listing with no cost on it keeps the price it has instead of guessing. Pick Set manually when each listing already has a minimum price you set yourself.

Nothing is picked for you here either, so Next stays off until you choose one. The price floor covers the calculation, the fees inside it, and what a missing cost does.

Price for business buyers

B2B Pricing appears only on an Amazon account with Amazon Business turned on, and it gives business buyers a separate price. The step starts switched off, so click Next to leave business pricing alone and come back to it later.

Business pricing covers the step in full.

Set your safety nets

Safety Nets is where you stop the rules on Pricing from doing something you would not want. It gathers profit protection, the MAP and MSRP switches, what to do when there is no competitor to price against, and the days and hours repricing is allowed to run.

Every switch on it starts off and both dropdowns start on a safe answer, so the step is safe to click past on your first strategy. Safety nets goes through each one.

Choose how the price looks

Rounding shapes the number a shopper sees. It starts on No rounding, and your other choices are End in .99, End in .95, Whole unit and Custom step, which takes a step of your own between 0.01 and 0.99.

Rounding is the last thing that happens to a price, after every limit above has been applied. Rounding covers what it does to a floor built from cost.

Preview what the strategy would do

Preview is the last step and the only one that shows you your own listings. Three counters run across the top, Price decreases, Price increases and No change, and under them is a table with SKU, Product Title, Current, Target and % on it.

It is a spot check and not a report on your catalog. You get up to 10 listings. They are the active ones on the account and region you chose that have a price today, with the freshest competitor data first. An empty table means that account and region has no active listing with a price on it yet.

The preview runs again every time you arrive at the step. So go back, change a card on Pricing, come forward again, and the numbers are rebuilt around the change.

Move between steps and go back

Back is at the bottom left and Next at the bottom right. The numbered steps at the top are buttons too: any step you have already been through is clickable, so you can jump from Rounding back to Basics and forward again.

Click Back on Basics and you go to the grid of cards, where a different integration can still be picked. Picking one there clears everything you have set, because the questions on a marketplace are not the questions on a store of your own.

You cannot jump forward to a step you have not opened yet. Click a later step while the one you are on is unfinished, and the missing fields turn red instead of moving you.

Close the wizard before you finish

The X at the top right closes the dialog. If you have changed anything, Discard strategy? asks first, with Discard and Keep editing on it. The Escape key does not close it.

Nothing is saved until you click Create, and there is no draft to come back to. While you are creating, your browser’s back button closes the dialog with no question asked, and your progress goes with it.

Edit a strategy that is already running

Click any row in the strategies table and the same dialog opens on that strategy, titled Edit strategy. Two things are different. Basics shows the name and the description only, since the account and the region are fixed. Every step is clickable in both directions from the moment it opens, so you can go straight to the one you came for.

Update replaces Create at the bottom right, and it stays gray until you actually change something.

Read the Listings column on the row before you edit. That number is how many listings the Repricer starts repricing the moment you click Update. Listings that are paused or not active reprice the next time their state changes.

Limits

What the wizard cannot do

What you have after you click Create

Your strategy is in the table, on the account and region you picked, and it is pricing nothing. A new strategy is never the default for its region, and no listing moves onto it on its own, so nothing you already sell changes.

To put it to work, assign listings to it. Assign Strategy above your listings table moves a whole selection at once, and the Strategy dropdown on a listing’s Pricing tab moves one. Either way the Repricer prices those listings from the new rules the next time it looks at them.

When something goes wrong

Why Next will not turn on

Hover the grayed-out Next and a tooltip tells you what is missing.

Create needs a name and nothing else. On an edit, Update also stays gray until something has changed, and hovering it reads Enter a strategy name first.

Error messages

Where to go next