This article will serve as a deep dive into PriceSpider's unique Sales data collection abilities, and a guide to interpreting it via the Sales Details Dashboard. The core concepts and quality of data have not changed with the new reporting dashboards, but how we display the information has. Read on to find out more!
Where does Sales data come from?
PriceSpider has long-standing partnerships with many of the world's largest online retailers and their affiliate networks to provide our brands with access to sales data details on exactly what consumers are buying. For the retailers themselves, we offer multiple avenues for data sharing, including via pixel, Google Tag Manager, and Google Analytics. All partners sign a partnerships agreement which outlines permissible usage of their data, our data security and privacy practices, and GDPR compliance.
PriceSpider's Sales Tracking follows the last click attribution model. As long as one of PriceSpider's WTB Modules was the last marketing touchpoint a Shopper interacted with prior to making a Purchase, PriceSpider will be credited with driving that Purchase and will receive insight from the Retailer into what was bought.
Note that each Retailer or affiliate program has their own attribution window - for more information on your set of Retailers and their attribution windows, please reach out to your CSM or via our Help Desk.
Not all Sales data is created equal!
In all cases, PriceSpider works to negotiate full cart data visibility with our partners. The majority of these data-sharing relationships allow PriceSpider to report every item that was in a Shopper's cart when they completed their Purchase, after interacting with a WTB Module or tracking link.
However, sometimes a Retailer is unwilling or unable to provide this level of visibility into the purchases that occur on their website. In these cases, PriceSpider may not be able to provide insight into every item that was purchased by a Shopper, or understand exactly where the Shopper started their journey. Rest assured, our Partnerships team is always pursuing deeper engagements with these reticent retailers and change is possible (ask your CSM about the Chewy success story)!
Now... the fun stuff!
The Sales Details Dashboard
The dashboard is broken down into few key sections we’ll cover in detail:
- Filters
- Purchased Brands & Device Types
- Purchase Details
Filters
There are a handful of unique filters on this dashboard - refer to the Filters Guide for details on all.
- The filters on the Sales Details Dashboard will only contain options that received at least one Purchase within the selected timeframe.
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- For example, if one of your Modules has not recorded a Purchase in the last week, then it will not be selectable from the Modules filter as long as you have 'last 1 week' or 'last 1 complete week' selected in your Date filter.
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- Purchased Brand
- This filter allows you to search the sales data for particular brands that appeared in Shopper's Purchases.
- For example, you may be interested in identifying any of your competitors' items that were purchased (and which of YOUR items drove the Shopper to said competitive purchase!).
- Keep in mind that the Brand values in this filter were provided directly by the Retailer.
- Make sure to account for differences in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization when using this filter!
- Purchased SKU
- This filter allows you to search the sales data for particular SKUs that appeared in Shopper's Purchases.
- For example, you may want to search for any purchases of a specific Amazon ASIN or Home Depot OMSID without having to worry about the name of the product, brand, or where the Shopper started their journey.
- Reconcile Status
- This filter appears on all dashboards, but behaves a little differently here. Because it can be valuable to view ‘Same Product’ purchases in isolation (these are purchases where the Shopper bought exactly what they were viewing in the WTB), you must enter both ‘Same Product’ and ‘My Products’ if you with to view all purchases of your account's products.
- Possible values:
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“Same Product”- a Shopper purchased the exact product they were viewing in a WTB before clicking out to a Retailer.
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“My Products”- a Shopper purchased a product that belongs to your account, though it may not have been the exact product or brand they were viewing in the WTB.
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“Other Products”- a Shopper purchased a product that does not belong to your account. This could be a purchase of a competing brand's product, or something completely unrelated to your industry (ie. a snow globe or a pair of socks). This bucket also contains purchased items that are unknown and have not yet been reconciled.
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- This filter appears on all dashboards, but behaves a little differently here. Because it can be valuable to view ‘Same Product’ purchases in isolation (these are purchases where the Shopper bought exactly what they were viewing in the WTB), you must enter both ‘Same Product’ and ‘My Products’ if you with to view all purchases of your account's products.
Purchased Brands & Device Types
This section highlights key insights from your Shopper's purchasing behavior.
Purchased Brands
- This chart displays your brands that appeared in Purchases (ie. it's filtered to the 'My Products' reconcile status).
- The slices of the pie are sized based on the money spent on purchases of each brand's products.
- This allows you to see where Shopper's money is going within your catalog of brands. The brand names themselves are sourced from your Product Feed - if you see a value that you don't recognize, please consult your Feed first before submitting a Help Desk ticket.
Other Purchased Brands
- This chart displays other brands that appeared in Purchases (ie. it's filtered to the 'Other Brands' reconcile status).
- This allows you to see where else Shopper's money is going besides the branded products you are including in your WTB program.
- Please note - it is likely that you will see your own brands appear in this list from time-to-time. This is due to the difference in the rate at which data appears in the Insights 360 portal vs. the rate at which our system fully processes Purchases. In the interest of providing rapid insights to our customers, PriceSpider does not wait for Purchases to be fully processed before syncing them to the portal.
- Sales Reconciliation is the vital backend process that takes the Purchases provided to PriceSpider by Retailers, fills in gaps in the data, and categorizes items into the three Reconcile Statuses ('Same Product', 'My Products', and 'Other Products').
- In many cases, Retailers do not reliably provide Brand or Product Names in their data - Sales Reconciliation's job is to fill in those gaps wherever possible, by fetching additional data from the Retailer's website.
- Most Purchase data can be considered fully 'reconciled' after about 1 week from the date it was reported to PriceSpider - this is usually close to the purchase date, but some Retailers (mainly Amazon) have longer attribution windows.
Purchased Device Type
- This chart displays the types of devices Shoppers are using to make Purchases.
- The User-Agent of the Shopper's browser they used to make a Purchase is what determines the device type of that Purchase.
- The slices of the pie are sized based on the money spent via each type of device
- "Desktop", "mobile", and "tablet" are the primary types, though you may occasionally see "smarttv", "console", or other device types appear!
- "Other" represents Purchases where the device type was undetermined.
- Please note - due to more stringent privacy restrictions outside of North America (and more widespread use of 'do not track' browser settings), the "other" type will be larger in those parts of the world.
Purchase Details
This section is the heart and soul of PriceSpider's sales data. Here you will find line-item level information on what was in Shopper's carts when they completed their Purchases, and end-to-end details of the journey that led a Shopper to their ultimate buying decision.
The data table can seem overwhelming at first, but never fear - it's easily broken down into a few key sections:
When, Where, and (Which) Retailer?
This section informs where the Shopper started their journey
| Column Name | Definition | Notes |
| Date |
The date of the Purchase
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| Country |
The country of the Retailer where the Purchase was made
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| Module Name |
The name of the last WTB Module the Shopper interacted with before making their Purchase
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| Originating Product Category | The Category of the Product the Shopper viewed before making their Purchase | "(Other)" in this field means that no Category was detected for the Originating Product |
| Originating Brand |
The Brand of the Product the Shopper viewed in the WTB Module before making their Purchase
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∅ in these field means that the Shopper did not interact with a SKU-based WTB Module. For example, a Generic Module or a direct-to-retailer tracking link that did not drive to a product detail page. |
| Originating SKU |
The SKU of the Product the Shopper viewed before making their Purchase
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| Originating Product Name |
The Name of the Product the Shopper viewed before making their Purchase
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| Retailer |
The name of the Retailer where the Purchase occurred
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What did they buy?
| Column Name | Definition | Notes |
| Redirect ID |
The RedirectID represents the Purchase Lead that converted into a Purchase, and can be used to identify items that were purchased together.
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The Purchase Details table is sorted by RedirectID by default. |
| Purchased Brand |
The Brand name of the purchased Product, as provided by the Retailer. This is commonly left out in Retailer's reporting, and must be filled in by PriceSpider's systems
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"(Other)" in this field means the Brand was not sent by the Retailer. PriceSpider may yet fill in this gap via Reconciliation |
| Purchased SKU |
The Retailer's SKU, representing the item that was purchased.
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For example, an Amazon ASIN. |
| Purchased Product Name | The Product Name of the purchased Product, as provided by the Retailer | ∅ in this field means the Retailer did not provide a Product Name for this purchased item |
| Unit Price |
The price of one individual line item
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Negative values in these fields means the row represents a return |
| Quantity |
The number of a given item that was purchased
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| Purchase Amount |
Unit Price * Quantity
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| Reconcile Status |
The relationship of a purchased item with the brand and product that drove the Purchase.
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Same Product, My Products, or Other Products |
| Client SKU |
For line items that are reconciled as 'Same Product' or 'My Products', this field represents the SKU value of the product
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How did the Shopper get to WTB in the first place?
| Column Name | Definition | Notes |
| Campaign ID |
If the Shopper interacted with a Campaign prior to reaching a WTB Module and making a Purchase, that Campaign's ID will appear here. Read more about CampaignIDs in this guide
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If this field shows ∅ it means that the Shopper either reached the WTB organically, or the Campaign Parameters in the tracking link that drove them to WTB were not registered with PriceSpider... ...or your account is not subscribed to the Campaign Tracking solution! Reach out to your CSM for more information if this is the case!
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Identify items that were purchased together
As mentioned above, RedirectID is the key to grouping together items that were purchased in the same cart. In most cases, this is sufficient to identify a Purchase and all items within it.
However, some Retailers may occasionally recycle or duplicate a RedirectID. If you notice an large Purchase with an unusually large number of items, you should consult the Date of the Purchase as well. If the line items within the Purchase have different dates, it's likely a mix-up on the Retailer's side causing multiple Purchases to be joined together.
PriceSpider has plans to automate detection and resolution of these scenarios in the future. Stay tuned!