Shopify Commercial Change Intelligence

Monitor public Shopify stores and turn catalog changes and cross-store assortment gaps into prioritized commercial intelligence — not thousands of raw product rows.

Designed for competitor monitoring, ecommerce pricing analysis, assortment tracking, sourcing, retail intelligence, and market research.

What you get

The Actor groups related product changes into decision-ready events:

• Broad price drops or increases across multiple products
• Promotions starting or ending
• Multi-product restocks and stockouts
• Catalog expansion or contraction
• New product categories
• Cross-store assortment gaps corroborated by multiple competitors

Every event includes an impact score, urgency, confidence, evidence, a concise summary, and a recommended commercial response. Assortment gaps also include a transparent market-evidence score, supporting signals, counter-signals, and an emerging, corroborated, or persistent status.

Cross-store assortment gap intelligence

Add the store you want to evaluate first, followed by at least two competitor stores. The Actor compares their public catalogs and reports only opportunities supported by multiple competitors.

For example:

Two competitors carry substantial home-fragrance ranges while the target catalog has no matching product family.

The analysis combines semantic product matching with product-family coverage. The Opportunity Evidence Layer then scores only public proxy signals: competitor corroboration, assortment depth, publicly visible availability, catalog expansion, and persistence across consecutive snapshots. It always returns counter-signals and never claims that catalog presence proves demand or sales.

Why use this Actor

Most Shopify scrapers return product rows. This Actor keeps a persistent baseline for each store, compares later scans, consolidates related changes, and can compare several competitors against one target catalog.

Quick start

1. Add the target Shopify storefront as the first URL.
2. Add at least two comparable competitor stores after it.
3. Keep assortmentGapAnalysis enabled.
4. Keep a stable monitorId for recurring monitoring.
5. Run the Actor.

The first run creates monitoring baselines and can immediately return cross-store assortment gaps. Later runs also detect qualified catalog, price, promotion, and availability changes.

Input

• storeUrls: target store first, followed by competitor stores
• assortmentGapAnalysis: enables cross-store comparison when at least three stores are accessible
• minCompetitorCorroboration: minimum competitors that must support a gap; default 2
• monitorId: stable baseline namespace
• minPriceChangePercent: ignores smaller price movements
• minAffectedProducts: prevents isolated changes from becoming broad signals
• maxProductsPerStore: hard product and cost limit
• maxStoresPerRun: hard store and cost limit
• outputMode: events with summary, events only, or summary only

Example assortment-gap output

{
  "eventType": "category_assortment_gap",
  "title": "Corroborated assortment gap: home fragrance",
  "competitorCount": 2,
  "targetProductCount": 0,
  "confidence": 0.98,
  "impactScore": 64,\n  "marketEvidenceScore": 64,\n  "validationStatus": "corroborated",\n  "signalType": "market_evidence_proxy",\n  "historicalSnapshots": 1,\n  "availabilityRate": 0.92,\n  "supportingSignals": ["2 competitor catalogs corroborate the family"],\n  "counterSignals": ["Persistence is not yet established", "Public catalog signals do not prove customer demand or sales"],
  "recommendedAction": "Validate demand, brand fit, margin, and sourcing before changing the assortment.",
  "evidence": [
    { "storeUrl": "https://competitor-one.example", "productCount": 17 },
    { "storeUrl": "https://competitor-two.example", "productCount": 19 }
  ]
}

Automation and integrations

The structured dataset can be consumed through the Apify API or connected to scheduling and automation workflows. Run the same monitor daily or weekly and continue downstream workflows only when status is changed.

No store login, private Shopify Admin API token, paid external API, browser, or proxy is required by default.

Cost controls

The Actor uses direct HTTP and enforces limits for stores and products per run. Its default configuration is intentionally conservative. Users can also set Apify's maximum cost per run.

Limitations

• Storefronts must expose public Shopify product catalogs.
• A store may block or customize its public catalog endpoint.
• The first store is always treated as the target; later stores are competitors.
• At least two accessible competitor catalogs are required for gap analysis.
• marketEvidenceScore is a proxy evidence score, not sales data or proof of customer demand.
• Semantic matching can produce false positives or miss unusually named products.
• The Actor does not access orders, customers, private inventory systems, or Shopify Admin data.
• A stable monitorId is required for meaningful change monitoring.

Responsible use

Use only with public storefronts and in accordance with applicable law, site terms, and robots policies. The Actor does not log in, bypass access controls, or collect customer data.