Digital shelf analytics is software that checks, every day, how a brand's products appear on each online marketplace and quick-delivery app. It checks the photos, the title and description, the price, the rating and reviews, whether the product is in stock, and where it appears in the search results. In a physical shop, a brand wants its product on a good shelf, at eye level. Online, the "shelf" is the product page and its position in the search results, so the industry calls it the digital shelf.
A brand cannot see what buyers see simply by opening an app once. Prices and stock can differ from one pin code to the next, because quick commerce apps deliver from small local warehouses, each with its own stock. Search results also change from hour to hour. So the software opens the brand's pages automatically, from many locations, and records what it finds. This automatic reading of public websites is called web scraping.
Take, for example, a detergent brand with 25 products. Every morning at 6 am, the software opens each product's page on five marketplaces and three quick-commerce apps, in 40 pin codes. That is 8,000 checks. By 8 am, it reports three problems. First, the 2 kg pack is out of stock in six Pune pin codes on one quick-commerce app. Second, the rating of the 1 kg pack has fallen from 4.3 to 3.9 in a week. The new reviews say that the pack leaks. These reviews are collected by ratings and reviews software. Third, the 1 kg pack now ranks ninth in the results for "detergent powder", down from third last month.
The brand's team acts on each problem. It asks the app to restock the Pune warehouses. It sends the leaking-pack reviews to the packaging team. It raises its ad bid for "detergent powder". These actions are often taken in marketplace management software, which uses the same data.
The software also checks that each page is correct. It flags a page that shows an old photo, a wrong pack size or a missing ingredient list. A wrong page loses sales, and on some products it can break labelling rules.
How is digital shelf analytics different from checking shelves in physical shops? In shops, a sales representative photographs the shelf, and shelf image recognition reads the photo. Online, no photo is needed. The software reads the product pages directly, and it can check thousands of them before the brand's team arrives at work.