Selling prices
On this page, we explain step by step how you can determine the optimal selling price for your items.
Determine your pricing approach
Make your costs transparent
To establish a good pricing strategy, you first need a clear overview of your costs. These consist of:
- Purchase price
- Logistical costs
- Average return and customer service costs
- Commission
- Overhead (office, personnel, etc.)
Return and customer service costs can sometimes be made transparent per item, but if you don't have enough data, you can also make an estimate at the product category and/or brand level. Retailers often account for the costs of shipping and processing returns, but there's also a portion of returns that cannot be re-added to stock and cannot be recycled/upcycled.
For overhead, it's sometimes included as a cost item and sometimes as a profit margin per item that needs to cover the total fixed costs.
Only when you have a clear view of all your costs can you effectively determine the best price to use for your items.
A. Make potential price points transparent
Once you have mapped out your costs, you will look at the price you want to focus on. There are different price points you can aim for. We will go through the most important ones with you.
Market price
You can choose to aim for the best price in the market (even outside bol). In those cases, you focus on the market price. This will attract by far the most customers and allow you to achieve the most sales.
Fortunately, you don't have to figure out market prices all by yourself. bol determines this with its price star system. If you apply a 5-star price, you have the most competitive price in the market. With a 4-star price, you are competitively priced. In this case, your price is equal to the current market price of relevant competitors or the recommended retail price for this item.
Items priced at market price have several advantages:
- More SEA advertising budget is paid by bol*
- Your items can participate in Promotions via bol
- The average conversion is the highest
*Read more about the advantages of price stars and the conditions
Buy box
If you cannot match the most competitive prices in the market, you can focus on getting the buy box. This is the first result shown when a customer searches for an item. In this case, you can try to get the buy box by setting the most competitive price on bol as your price point. Please note: in addition to price, other factors influence obtaining the buy box, such as delivery conditions and performance score.
Minimum 2-star price
If you can't match the most competitive prices on bol? Then at least ensure you apply a minimum 2-star price, so your item isn't taken offline. All prices below the 2-star threshold are not good enough to show to our customers.
Recommended retail price
Another price point you can focus on is the recommended retail price. For some items, there is a recommended retail price suggested by the supplier.
2. B. Determine your minimum margin
Once you have a clear overview of your costs and know your minimum desired margin, you can determine the price point you want to aim for. In many cases, you determine your margin as a percentage of the selling price. If you use your own pricing software or a repricer, you often set a minimum margin. Up to that margin, you might follow the market price or the buy box price, for example.
In some cases, you might be willing to accept a lower or even negative margin, for example, if the item is often sold in larger quantities, if it's frequently sold with other items from your product range, or if you have too much stock of an item.
Tip
Keep in mind that traffic, conversion, and sales will generally be optimal if you follow the current market price. At bol, we represent this market price as a 4- or 5-star price.
Refine your pricing strategy
You now have the basics in order. If you want to go a step further, you can consider the following to further refine your pricing.
Use bol data
Conversion insight
If an item has a high number of views but low sales, it might be a good idea to check if your price is too high. In the conversion analysis in your seller account, you can see, among other things, if your items have a good price star rating and high conversion. This allows you to investigate the effect of price stars on conversion and potentially choose to sharpen your price (further).
Commission discount
When making your costs transparent, you accounted for commission costs. However, you might receive a discount on commission costs, for example, reduced commission for competitively priced items or during promotions. Keep a close eye on commission discounts and consider them when calculating your costs. In your seller account, you'll find the items that receive commission discounts.
Use your own data
Price sensitivity
Price sensitivity refers to the relationship between the number of sales and the price. High price sensitivity means that a price adjustment will have (significant) consequences for the number of sales.
Generally, based on experience, you can estimate price sensitivity per product category or brand. In that case, for example, you can price items with high price sensitivity more competitively and accept a lower profit margin. Conversely, for items with low price sensitivity, you can achieve a higher margin.
Available stock
A large stock entails significant costs. This can be an argument to perhaps lower your prices, so you sell more and have less stock remaining. This can lead to cost savings on capital costs, storage costs, and potential depreciation of your items.
Competitor insights
Keep a close eye on the competition for your product range. And decide how you will deal with it. Do you want to match competitor prices? And in which cases yes, and in which cases no? Suppose a competitor had an exceptionally good purchase deal and is offering items at an extremely low price. Then it might be a choice to wait until that product range is sold out instead of matching a price that is too low and makes your margin insufficient.
Automating your pricing approach with a repricer
As you can see, there are many elements to consider when determining your price. To do this effectively, you need to gather and keep many insights up-to-date, which can be very time-consuming. A repricer can help you monitor market prices, automatically adjust prices accordingly, and implement your chosen pricing approach. This saves you time and energy and ensures your prices are always current.
