On the face of things, the rise of retail bots could look like a boon for online businesses. After all, any sales made will translate into healthy profits being made. However, in truth the situation is more complex than it may first appear, and makes important reading for anyone keen to use web hosting for their business.
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What are retail bots?
Retail bots are applications that are used in order to find the lowest prices
of products and to snap up the goods at the best price if desired. They can
even find out which websites are the first to launch sales of the latest
must-have item. These applications run day and night, searching thousands of
e-commerce websites in order to find the cheapest prices – something that would
be impossible for a human to achieve. Depending on their settings, the bots
will either alert their user to the website where the requested product is
available, or automatically make a purchase. Retail bots are used by
individuals who genuinely want to be sure of getting their hands on a popular
new product, but are also used by others with unscrupulous intentions, and this
is where the problems can arise for businesses.
A tool for touts
Retail bots are being increasingly used by those who want to snap up all the
available stock of a new item that they know will be in great demand. These
people can then sell the items on at a vastly inflated price. You only need to
think back to the scenario making the news in autumn 2020, where the
Playstation 5 sold out almost instantly following its launch, only for it to be
offered by resellers at double the original price, as seen https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55074383.
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A serious business
Such are the profits to be made that people will go to some considerable
lengths to give their bots the advantage. It’s now common for bot users to
exchange information about stockists and launch dates in private forums,
enabling them to target websites even more effectively. Some users will even
choose to find out where the targeted website’s server is located and rent a
server for their bot application nearby, just so that they can shave off a
precious few milliseconds of latency, and beat their rival bot users to the
prize.
Businesses using web hosting providers such as names.co.uk web hosting should be mindful that
although bots will make them money through sales if they are targeted,
ultimately genuine customers will be disappointed if they cannot buy your
products, and may start to shop elsewhere.
The answer then is to investigate new strategies, such as emailing loyal
customers to give them the chance to reserve a product ahead of launch dates.
Other options include limiting the number of a given product that can be bought
by a single purchaser. It’s clear that it’s not a challenge that is going away,
so think now about how you can beat the bots for the sake of your future
business.
