Get alerted when there is a change to product availability

In this article, we will address the specific use case of needing to monitor an e-commerce site for updates to a product's availability. If you need to be notified when a product goes on sale or is out of stock, ChangeTower can help you!

We will cover the 2 most commonly used Monitor-types for this scenario but first, we want to caveat that monitoring e-commerce sites can be a little challenging given that many of these sites invest in preventative protocols to prevent their pages from being systematically monitored. Where possible, we suggest limiting the frequency with which you crawl these pages to reduce the risk of detection 😉

Option 1: Use ChangeTower's Visual Monitor to monitor a part of the website where you expect the change to happen

Step 1: Create the monitor by entering the URL of the website that you are monitoring

A screencast of entering monitor URL to create a monitor in ChangeTower.

Step 2: Set your notification criteria - select the part of the page to monitor and the % threshold as the change criteria

ChangeTower’s Visual Monitoring Tool is useful here as it allows you to monitor the sub-section of the page that you know will change when tickets go on sale (e.g. a “Sold Out” or “Unavailable” button). This helps to prevent you from getting alerted of other changes on the page which aren’t related to the product's availability.

A screencast of selecting the area you want to monitor in ChangeTower.

Step 3: Set your notification preferences and save the monitor!

A screenshot of the section of ChangeTower where you can customize notification preferences and monitoring frequency.

Option 2: Use ChangeTower's Newly Published Keywords / Custom Multi-Criteria Monitor

By using the Newly Published Keywords or Custom Multi-Criteria monitor, you are telling the system to check the website at whatever cadence you set, and only look for new instances of a certain keyword or a phrase of your choice. So, if you are expecting a product to be available for pre-ordering soon, your selected keyword can be 'Pre-Order'. In case the system detects this keyword on the website, you will be alerted.

Here's how you can set this up:

Step 1: Select newly published keywords/custom multi-criteria monitor type during monitor creation

Step 2: Set your notification criteria - enter a keyword or a phrase. If and when detected, this keyword/phrase will trigger a change notification

A screenshot of the step in monitor creation where you enter keywords or phrases that you're monitoring on a page.

You can also enter multiple keywords or phrases. In that case, you will separate them with a "pipe" or vertical bar symbol.

e.g. keyword1|keyword2|phrase1

Step 3: Set your notification preferences and save the monitor!