n8n Workflow: Competitive Price Monitoring & Alerting

This n8n workflow provides a robust solution for competitive price monitoring, allowing you to regularly check product prices from a list of URLs, identify price drops, and send out alerts via Slack and email. It's designed to help businesses stay informed about competitor pricing strategies and react quickly to market changes.

What it does

This workflow automates the following steps:

1. Schedules Execution: The workflow runs on a predefined schedule (e.g., daily, hourly) to initiate the price monitoring process.
2. Fetches Product URLs: It retrieves a list of product URLs and their current prices from a Google Sheet. This sheet acts as your central repository for products to monitor.
3. Scrapes Product Prices: For each URL, it makes an HTTP request to scrape the current price from the product page.
4. Compares Prices: It compares the newly scraped price with the previously recorded price (from Google Sheets).
5. Identifies Price Drops: If a price drop is detected, the workflow prepares an alert.
6. Formats Alert Data: It structures the alert information (product name, old price, new price, URL) for clear communication.
7. Sends Slack Notifications: For each identified price drop, it sends a detailed notification to a specified Slack channel.
8. Sends Email Notifications: It also sends an email summary of all price drops to a designated email address.
9. Updates Google Sheet: Finally, it updates the Google Sheet with the new prices, ensuring your data is always current for the next monitoring cycle.

Prerequisites/Requirements

To use this workflow, you will need:

• n8n Instance: A running n8n instance.
• Google Sheets Account: A Google Sheets spreadsheet containing the product URLs and their current prices. You'll need to configure Google Sheets credentials in n8n.
• Slack Account: A Slack workspace and channel where you want to receive price drop alerts. You'll need to configure Slack credentials in n8n.
• SMTP Server/Email Service: Access to an SMTP server or an email service (e.g., Gmail, SendGrid) to send email notifications. You'll need to configure Send Email credentials in n8n.
• Bright Data (or similar web scraping API): While not explicitly shown in the provided JSON, the context "bright-data" in the directory name suggests using a web scraping service like Bright Data for reliable and scalable data extraction. The HTTP Request node would be configured to interact with such a service.

Setup/Usage

1. Import the Workflow:
   • Download the workflow JSON.
   • In your n8n instance, go to "Workflows" and click "New".
   • Click the "Import from JSON" button and paste the workflow JSON.
2. Configure Credentials:
   • Google Sheets: Add your Google Sheets credentials (OAuth2 recommended) to allow n8n to read from and write to your spreadsheet.
   • Slack: Add your Slack API token or OAuth2 credentials to enable n8n to post messages to your chosen channel.
   • Send Email: Configure your SMTP credentials or other email service credentials for sending email alerts.
3. Update Node Settings:
   • Schedule Trigger (Node 839): Adjust the schedule to your desired frequency (e.g., every hour, once a day).
   • Google Sheets (Node 18):
     • Specify the "Spreadsheet ID" and "Sheet Name" where your product data is stored.
     • Ensure the sheet has columns for Product URL, Current Price, and potentially Product Name.
   • HTTP Request (Node 19): This node will be responsible for scraping the product prices.
     • You'll need to configure the URL to be scraped (likely dynamically from the Google Sheet data).
     • You'll also need to configure how to extract the price from the HTML response. This might involve CSS selectors or XPath expressions. If using a scraping API like Bright Data, this node would call that API.
   • Code (Node 834): This node likely contains logic to compare the old and new prices and determine if an alert is needed. You may need to inspect and adjust the JavaScript code based on your specific data structure and alerting logic.
   • Edit Fields (Set) (Node 38): This node prepares the data for Slack and email. Ensure the fields being set match what you want to include in your alerts.
   • Slack (Node 40):
     • Specify the "Channel" where alerts should be posted.
     • Customize the "Message" content to include relevant product details and the price drop information.
   • Send Email (Node 11):
     • Set the "To" email address for alerts.
     • Customize the "Subject" and "Body" of the email to summarize the price drops.
4. Activate the Workflow: Once all configurations are complete, activate the workflow to start monitoring competitive prices.

This workflow provides a powerful foundation for competitive price monitoring. You can further enhance it by adding more sophisticated price comparison logic, integrating with other data sources, or adding different notification channels.