BotDefender helps merchants against pricing bots

A new tool is released which should help online stores be protected against the automated retrieval of prices by competitors. The anti-scraping software BotDefender is developed by France-founded software company Lokad and can be used and implemented for free.

Lokad developed BotDefender to help online merchants who’ve seen customers go to their competitors because those online stores align themselves one euro below the price of the affected merchant. “If your competitors react in near real-time to your prices, then anytime you lower a price, they will lower their price as well. This way it’s relatively simple to out-price your business. They undercut key prices by just a few cents and this will badly hurt your conversion rates when you’re trying to acquire new customers, i.e. those who are still looking at multiple options on the web.”

Such price wars could lead to consequences that are very expensive. “Either you give up on your margins, or you give up market shares.” And nowadays undercutting prices by a few cents can easily be done thanks to price scraping software. BotDefender is developed to protect your shop against these bots. And according to Lokad reverse-enineering BotDefender takes 1000 more time than setting it up. “So keep competition distracted for months, while you make decisive moves on your core business.”

BotDefender can be used for free and this offer will not expire, Lokad promises. “No hidden costs or catch involved. We have a paid plan with extra features but the Express Plan is fully functional.” Lokad is a French company based in Paris and was founded in November 2006. Since then it developed several Big Data apps for retail.