Ecommerce competitor intelligence glossary

Compare-at price

Compare-at price is the "was" price a Shopify store enters alongside the current selling price to display a product as discounted, for example a crossed-out $80 next to a $60 sale price. It is set manually by the merchant and is not validated against any real sale history. For a Shopify store owner, tracking whether a competitor keeps items permanently marked down at a compare-at price shows whether their "sale" is a real event or a standing pricing strategy.

Learn more: How common permanent compare-at pricing is

Price change noise

Price change noise is small, sub-1% price fluctuation caused by automated repricing tools, currency rounding, or bulk pricing rules, rather than a deliberate pricing decision. Most raw price-change data is dominated by this kind of noise, not meaningful moves. Filtering it out is what separates a real signal, like an actual price cut, from routine background activity that does not need a response.

Learn more: How much of competitor price data is noise

Catalog-wide price change

A catalog-wide price change is when many SKUs from the same store change price at the same time, typically 50 or more. It is almost always a sign of automation, a repricing app running a rule, or a sitewide sale going live, rather than a single human decision on one product. Spotting the pattern helps a Shopify store owner tell a targeted competitive move apart from a routine automated event.

Learn more: How to spot automated catalog-wide changes

Significance scoring

Significance scoring is an AI classification, low, medium, or high, applied to each detected competitor event to separate background activity from events worth a person's attention. Only a small share of events are typically flagged high-significance. This lets a Shopify store owner skip routine updates and focus on the handful of changes, like a real price cut on a bestseller, that actually call for a response. Available on the Growth plan and above.

Learn more: How significance scoring splits real event data and Intelligence Digest features

Intelligence Digest

The Intelligence Digest is Beaconmon's scheduled Slack or email summary that groups every competitor change detected over a period into a plain-language digest, rather than a raw list of diffs. It is available on the Starter plan and above. Instead of checking a dashboard, a store owner or their team gets a readable roundup of what competitors did and when.

Learn more: How the Intelligence Digest works

CSS-selector monitoring

CSS-selector monitoring means tracking one specific element on a competitor's page, a price, a stock badge, a promo banner, by its CSS selector, rather than comparing the entire page as an image. This is more precise than pixel-diffing because it targets the exact piece of content that matters and ignores everything else. For a Shopify store owner, this means an alert only fires when the price or promo actually changes, not when a blog timestamp or a navigation menu updates.

Learn more: How CSS-selector change detection works

Content monitoring vs. uptime monitoring

Content monitoring watches for changes on a page you don't control, like a competitor's pricing page. Uptime monitoring watches whether a page you do control, like your own storefront, is up and responding. Both matter to a Shopify store owner: uptime monitoring protects your own revenue by catching outages, while content monitoring keeps you aware of what competitors are doing on pages you have no control over.

Learn more: The uptime monitoring guide and Shopify competitor monitoring

Data tier (full catalog, selected products, limited)

Data tier describes the depth at which Beaconmon can track a given competitor, ranging from full product-feed access down to a handful of manually specified product URLs. A competitor with a full catalog feed gets broader, more automatic coverage, while one tracked at a limited tier only reports changes on the specific pages a store owner has added. Which tier applies to a given competitor depends on what data that store's site exposes, not on the plan a customer is on.

Restock speed / stockout resolution time

Restock speed, or stockout resolution time, is the time between a product going out of stock and coming back in stock. A fast restock, hours rather than days, often points to manufactured urgency rather than a genuine shortage, while a slow restock suggests a real supply constraint. Comparing restock speed across competitors helps a Shopify store owner tell which "low stock" messaging is a sales tactic and which reflects an actual inventory problem.

Learn more: Median restock speed across tracked competitors

Product churn (Shopify)

Product churn is when a new product listing appears in a competitor's catalog and then gets pulled again within a short window. It often signals a failed test launch rather than a permanent addition to the catalog. Tracking churn tells a Shopify store owner which of a competitor's new products are worth watching and which were pulled before they gained any traction.

Learn more: How often new Shopify listings churn

Domain / SSL expiry alert

A domain or SSL expiry alert is a warning fired when a monitored domain's SSL certificate or registration is approaching expiry, at 30, 14, and 7-day thresholds. It is distinct from an incident because it does not indicate current downtime, only a risk of downtime if the certificate or registration is not renewed in time. Catching this early gives a store owner time to renew before a browser starts warning visitors that the site is not secure.

Learn more: How Beaconmon handles security and monitoring data

The two tribes of DTC discounting

The two tribes of DTC discounting is Beaconmon's own term for a bimodal pattern in how direct-to-consumer brands discount: most brands cluster into one of two groups, those that almost never discount and those that almost always do, with comparatively few landing in the middle. Knowing which tribe a competitor belongs to tells a Shopify store owner what to expect from their pricing behavior, rather than reacting to each price change as a surprise.

Learn more: The two tribes of DTC discounting, explained