Getting started
Sign up, import your catalog, and run your first competitor scrape
You can get up and running in about 5 minutes.
Sign up
- Go to vantagedash.io and click Sign up.
- Enter your email and choose a password. You type the password twice, so a slip is caught straight away.
- Enter your store's web address, in any form. If your store isn't online yet, choose I don't have a website yet.
- Check the name and the highlight color VantageDash read from your site, and change either if you like. The color is used for buttons and links in your dashboard. Both can be changed later in Settings.
- Confirm your email. You'll be dropped into the onboarding wizard.
The onboarding wizard
The first time you sign in, a short wizard walks you through setup. You can skip any step and come back to it later.
If you gave your store's web address when you signed up, VantageDash starts importing your products as soon as setup opens. When they arrive, the first two steps fill themselves in: the industry your products point to is selected and the ways they are sized are ticked, with a line saying how many products that came from. Change anything that is wrong. You do not have to wait for it; pick your own answers at any point and yours are the ones used.
- Choose your industry. VantageDash includes pre-built matching profiles for common verticals (packaging, cosmetics, supplements, electronics, food and beverage, apparel, home and garden, pet, footwear). The profile tunes how products are matched so you get better results out of the box. You can edit or replace it later in Settings → Matching Profile.
- Check your store's web address (it is filled in from sign-up) and tell us how your products are sized, so that only products of the same size get compared.
- Add your first competitor. Paste the web address of a competitor's store, in any form, or type its name. VantageDash finds the store, fills in its name for you to check, and works out which platform it runs on.
- You're all set. You'll land on the dashboard, where a "Getting Started" checklist walks you through the rest.
Import your catalog
If you gave your store's website when you signed up, your products are imported for you as soon as setup starts. While that runs, the Dashboard, Products and Competitors pages say so, and they refresh by themselves when it is done. To import again later, click Sync from URL on the Products page. On a paid plan your store is also read again on every scheduled price check. There's no product feed to prepare. It uses the address you entered in the wizard, which you can change under Settings → General → Website URL. You can also add products one at a time with Add Product.
If your prices are not on your website. Many businesses have a website with no prices on it and take orders somewhere else, such as an online ordering page. When the import finds no prices on your website, it looks for a link to your ordering page and reads your prices from there. If you have more than one location, it takes the first one it finds. The Products page then shows a line saying where your prices are read from, with Change beside it if you want a different location.
If it finds nothing, the Products page asks you to paste the address where your prices are listed. Only the workspace owner can set or change it.
Using Shopify?
A store that installs the VantageDash app for Shopify has its catalog imported from Shopify and kept in sync as products change, and its plan is billed through Shopify. See VantageDash for Shopify.
Your first scrape
VantageDash starts reading a competitor's prices as soon as you add it. To check again later, click Check Prices on the Competitors page. The first run can take a few minutes depending on the size of the catalog, and progress is shown live.
When the scrape finishes, go to Comparison and click Match my products. It pairs your products with the competitor's using the matching your plan includes, and you'll then see side-by-side prices on the Comparison page. To run matching again later, or to choose a method yourself, use Match Products at the top of that page.