Changing Product Prices On Ecommerce Site?

[olimits7]

Hi,

I was wondering what types of functions do you guys use to modify/change prices on your ecommerce sites?

I currently use a percent (%) markup based on my wholesaler price; which updates all the prices on my website depending on product type. This is a good method because it does a bulk change in price.

However, I noticed that on some products the method above does not give pricing in line with my competitors; so I also have an admin page where I can search for specific products and change the wholesale prices there one-by-one.

These methods are ok for now, but I have a lot of products listed on my website; so managing pricing is a difficult task for products that are not in line with my competitors.

I've been trying to brainstorm to come up with an easier way to handle this, or to automate this process better but I haven't been able to come up with a good idea yet.

Any ideas? Suggestions?

Thank you,

olimits7

[enigma1]

One way or another you need to somehow group products. Like you already done with some sort of type where you can alter prices thereafter by a percentage.

Now instead of going product by product you could perhaps find other similarities in products you need to alter (eg: by category) and apply the same mechanism (a percentage adjustment or some temporary discount).

Perhaps you could automated these scripts to be activated on a specific time of the year (Eg: xmas/new year sale between 12/20 - 1/3) where the script could setup a specials table that can later parsed by your catalog scripts.

It also depends on the type of business. If you carry products from a manufacturer who has an rss feed, it will be easier, because you can setup a script that could setup the sale prices on the fly. At the same time you could feed it with a spreadsheet that contains specific products you want to promote.

Anyways just few ideas.

[sun818]

I think the percentage markup as a default is fine. Consider having another additional fields which take priority over the default markup. At a minimum, have a separate sale price field. If the value is null or greater than 0, then that takes precedence over the default. This is also a field you can use if your distributors and/or manufacturers enforce MAP (minimum advertised price). If the default price is less than MAP, then you can populate MAP in the sale price field to meet the MAP.