Get alerted when a competitor runs a sale

Where competitors announce sales

• The homepage: the main banner and the announcement bar at the very top.
• The sale, outlet or "last chance" collection, where reduced prices appear next to the original ones.
• The new-arrivals page, where launch offers and bundles often appear first.
• Product pages, as a crossed-out price or a "save 20%" badge.
• The shipping and returns page, for free-shipping thresholds and return windows.

Manual ways to keep track, and what they miss

• Their email newsletter: you see the sales they choose to email, often days after a site-only offer started, and rarely when one ends.
• Their social media: good for big campaigns, poor for price cuts and code changes.
• Checking their site yourself: accurate on the day you look, but easy to skip, and hard to compare with what it said last week.

What a useful sale alert tells you

• What changed, with what it was before and what it is now ("Up to 30% off" becoming "Up to 50% off").
• The conditions that come with it: "select styles", a minimum order, "new customers only", an end date.
• Any coupon code, exactly as written.
• When an offer is no longer advertised, not only when one starts.

How EcomWatchdog does it

1. Add a competitor's website. EcomWatchdog finds their sale, new-arrivals and shipping pages; you can change any of them.
2. EcomWatchdog reads each competitor's homepage, sale, new-arrivals and shipping pages, plus the product pages you choose, once a day around midnight US Central. It compares each page with the night before, and a short update is written for each meaningful change: what it was before, what it is now, and the exact wording from their page. Every update is checked against the page before it is saved.
3. You get one short email on days something changed, at the time you choose, and every change stays in your dashboard.

What it can't see

• It reads public pages only: not prices behind a login, in a cart or at checkout, or offers sent only by email or text message.
• Some stores block automated visits. Their pages can't be read, and the app says so instead of reporting "no change".
• Prices are what a visitor in the US sees, for the product option in the link you add.
• Checks run once a day, so a change made and undone between two checks can be missed.
• History starts when you add a store; it can't show what changed before that.

Example update

Questions

How soon will I know about a competitor's sale?

The morning after it appears: pages are checked once a day around midnight US Central, and the email goes out at the time you choose.

Will I see the exact discount and code?

Yes. Each update gives the offer as the store wrote it, with its conditions and code, and the exact text from their page.

Will I know when a sale ends?

Yes: when an offer is no longer advertised on a watched page, that is reported too. EcomWatchdog doesn't say a sale "ended" unless the store says so, because a banner coming down doesn't prove it.