Sales tracking

Sales tracking is the practice of monitoring a store regularly to see what it sells and roughly how much. Since no outsider can see a store's orders, trackers rely on public signals that change when products sell, such as catalogue data, product order on best-selling collections and product updates.

Done by hand, it looks like this: check the store's public product feed and best-selling collection at the same times each day, write down changes, and compare day by day. It works, but it is slow and easy to miss changes.

RivalSonar's sales tracker does this automatically. When you track a store, we check its public catalogue every hour and refine its estimated orders from catalogue changes. You see estimated hourly orders and which products sold. The first report is ready about 24 hours after you start, and you can get reports by email. Tracking uses tracking slots, not credits.

Remember the limits:

• every figure is an estimate
• stores that hide stock levels or change catalogues for other reasons can blur the signal
• one day of data is noisy, so look for patterns over a week or more

See how to track competitor sales daily.