It’s no secret that competitor research and analysis can be the difference between success and failure in ecommerce. But did you know that it’s never been easier to do this – and you can even do it for free?
Tools are now available to simplify the competitive analysis process and save huge amounts of time. Browser extensions that can the job in just a few clicks.
Commerce Inspector is one such tool that helps you analyze competitors quickly and effectively – either through its free Chrome extension or via its paid web version.
If you made a New Year’s resolution to start following all of the best moves that your competitors are making in 2021, this Commerce Inspector review will help you get it right….
What is Commerce Inspector?
Let’s learn how to use Commerce Inspector.
Think of Commerce Inspector as a legal way to track and spy on your competition. “Competitive intelligence”, if you like.
This simple tool comes as a web-based app or free Chrome extension that allows Shopify store owners (all types of stores, including dropshippers) to analyze competitors without breaching privacy or data security laws.
It is a site-properties identifier, designed for scanning ecommerce stores and collating all the information it receives into an easily intelligible format.
The type of information it can track and uncover is:
- Competitor product launches
- Best-selling products of competitors
- A store’s app usage
- Competitor traffic
- Competitor ad campaigns
- Competitor sales
Commerce Inspector is not a particularly new tool but major updates to its capabilities (including traffic and social media ad analysis) have caught the eyes of some of the most successful stores out there.
This has created more buzz about the tool, leading to this review.
Which browsers does the Commerce Inspector Extension work with?
The Commerce Inspector extension is available only for the Google Chrome browser at present.
It works on both the Mac and Windows PC versions of the browser but does not work with Firefox or Microsoft Edge.
Commerce Inspector: Main features and benefits
Let’s tale a look at the main features and benefits of Commerce Inspector:
Easily analyze the best-selling and newest products in a store
Which are the best-selling products in a competing store? Which new products have been added recently?
This is vital information if you are researching potential new products for your own store – either to refresh your product catalog or to increase options for your customers.
Even the free Commerce Inspector Chrome extension allows you to check new product launches and the best-selling products in any given store.
Analyze sales figures
You can find out the number of units sold per month and the revenue generated – for as many stores as you like.
While such in-depth sales analysis is not available on the free browser extension, extensive features are available on the premium paid versions, including shop level revenue, product-level revenue, last week’s bestsellers, and so on.
Analyze which apps a store is using
Maybe the next killer app is already out there and you have missed it?
Could there be little-known apps you haven’t heard of that do exactly what you’ve been looking for?
In many ways, a Shopify store is only as good as the apps that it uses. The Shopify platform is the best around but your success is greatly influenced by your ability to identify and employ the best apps to enhance the user experience and grow sales.
Commerce Inspector will crawl competitors’ websites and identify which apps are currently in use by competing stores so that you can go off and investigate whether they’re right for yours.
Analyze the amount and origin of traffic
Commerce Inspector allows you to track and analyze the traffic arriving in any store.
This includes:
- The number of visits per month
- The origin of traffic: social, paid referrals, mail, referrals, search engines, etc.
- The social networks that the store is active on
Advanced search tools
The premium paid versions of Commerce Inspector have advanced search features, such as the ability to search products across shops, search apps across shops, etc.
Analyze Facebook ads
If a store is currently running ad campaigns on Facebook, you can find out what type of ads it is running on the paid version.
You can also access inactive ads from the past. This can give you plenty of ideas for your own ad campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Commerce Inspector: Free Chrome extension vs paid app
Are the premium paid versions of Commerce Inspector worth the monthly fees?
The paid versions vary from $29/month to $299/month. What you are prepared to pay probably depends on how many stores you run and how established they are.
All of the paid versions include the same feature set but vary in monthly fee according to how many stores they cover: from three stores up to an unlimited number of stores (designed for marketing and store management agencies to use).
If you time it right, you may be able to get a free or discounted trial of a paid version. At the time of writing this Commerce Inspector review, a three-day trial of the Grow plan was available for just $1.
The free version looks and feels the same but certain key information available on the premium paid versions is blurred out.
Here’s a quick overview of the basic differences between the free Chrome extension and the paid version:
Free Chrome extension
This free plugin allows you to track:
- All-time best sellers
- Recent product launches
- Product launches by tag
- Product launches by day
- Apps used
Premium versions
The PAID versions include unlimited data and allow you to track:
- All-time best sellers
- Recent product launches
- Product launches by tag
- Product launches by day
- Apps used
- Shop-level revenue
- Product-level revenue
- Last week’s best sellers
- Search products across shops
- Search apps across shops
- Top selling and trending shops lists
- Current ad creative live
- Historical ad creative
You will need to create an account with Commerce Inspector even to use the free Chrome extension.
From there, it is a good idea to try the free version to see if it tells you what you need to know. You can upgrade to a paid version from there, once you know the ropes and providing the additional features add value to your store.
Summary of Commerce Inspector pros and cons
Main pros
- A comprehensive tool that regularly improves its feature set
- Allows you to easily track multiple aspects of competitors: products, app usage, sales, traffic, social media, ads, etc.
- Very simple to use
- User-friendly interface
- Free Chrome extension available
Main cons
- The free Chrome extension does not provide access to all features
- The premium paid versions may be beyond the budgets of smaller stores
- No tutorial readily available
Who will benefit most from Commerce Inspector?
Commerce Inspector brands itself as providing “all the insights and inspiration you need to scale and grow your store”.
It is geared towards dropshippers – as you can see from this screenshot of the homepage:
But whether you’re just starting out with your Shopify store or you are already established and are just looking for a new competitive edge, the benefits of using the Commerce Inspector extension should be clear.
Sometimes, established stores become complacent and stop doing the things that their success was built on.
If that’s you, this tool can help you get back on track with rebuilding and re-working your store.
Similarly, if you’re just starting out and wondering which products and apps to prioritize for your store, this tool has what you need.
Commerce Inspector Alternative
Check out our post [11] Ways To Spy On Your Shopify Competitors for alternative to spy on competitors.
Commerce inspector helps you hain a head start on your competitors…
The Commerce Inspector tool and Chrome extension is not the only tool doing what it does but it is one of the simplest, most comprehensive, and most effective.
There are Shopify stores that use this tool exclusively for competitive analysis and are killing it.
The free version of Commerce Inspector is a great starting point and, as it is already well-established, there are very few downsides to using it to improve your ecommerce store. There’s a lot to gain and nothing to lose by giving it a go.
