# Get up to Speed with our E-commerce blogs | 42Signals

## [Build vs. Buy Before the Sale: In-House Scrapers vs. a Digital Shelf Platform You Can Deploy in 3 Days](https://www.42signals.com/blog/build-vs-buy-ecommerce-data/)

Why the Build vs Buy Ecommerce Data Decision Changes Before Peak Season Every engineering team that has looked at marketplace data has reached the same conclusion in the same week: this doesn’t look hard. Fetch the page, parse the price, store the result. A competent engineer can demonstrate it on a Friday. The demo is […]

## [Quick Commerce Goes Festive: Tracking Brand Visibility on Blinkit, Zepto & Swiggy Instamart During Peak Demand](https://www.42signals.com/blog/quick-commerce-brand-visibility-festive/)

Why Quick Commerce Brand Visibility Is a Different Problem A brand can hold 90% national availability on Blinkit and be invisible in the three Bengaluru pincodes generating a third of its category demand. That sentence describes the entire measurement problem. Quick commerce does not work like a marketplace with faster shipping. Inventory sits in dark […]

## [Winning Share of Search When Everyone’s Bidding: Festive Keyword Visibility on Amazon & Flipkart](https://www.42signals.com/blog/how-to-measure-share-of-search/)

How to Measure Share of Search: The Short Answer Share of search is the proportion of visible search results your brand occupies, across a defined keyword set, relative to all brands competing for those terms. The formula:Share of Search (%) = (Your brand’s result placements ÷ Total placements measured) × 100 Measured across your priority […]

## [The Festive Price War: Tracking Competitor Price Drops in Near-Real-Time on Indian Marketplaces](https://www.42signals.com/blog/festive-price-war-competitor-price-tracking-india/)

Why the Festive Price War Is Won With Context, Not Speed Most brands lose margin during festive sales the same way: someone sees a competitor’s price drop, has no idea whether it’s a 48-hour flash promotion or a sustained repositioning, and matches it. The competitor’s promotion ends on Thursday. The brand’s price stays down until […]

## [Out-of-Stock at Peak Demand: Protecting Availability & Rank Across Amazon, Flipkart, and Quick Commerce During Festive Spikes](https://www.42signals.com/blog/stock-availability-during-sale-peak-demand/)

Why Stock Availability During Sale Peaks Costs More Than Lost Revenue Most brands model a stockout as lost sales. Units you couldn’t ship, multiplied by price. That number is real, and it is the smallest part of the damage. The larger cost is structural. When a product goes unavailable, marketplace algorithms stop showing it — […]

## [Festive Season Digital Shelf Readiness: The 2026 Checklist for Big Billion Days & Great Indian Festival](https://www.42signals.com/blog/ecommerce-festive-season-digital-shelf-checklist/)

Why Ecommerce Festive Season Outcomes Are Decided Before the Sale Starts The brands that win Big Billion Days and the Great Indian Festival are not the ones who discount hardest during the sale. They’re the ones whose catalogue, inventory, and shelf position were in order three weeks before it opened. By the time the sale […]

## [Walmart Marketplace: A Seller’s Guide to Getting Started](https://www.42signals.com/blog/walmart-marketplace-seller-getting-started-guide/)

What It Takes to Become a Walmart Marketplace Seller Walmart Marketplace is not Amazon with a different logo, and the sellers who treat it that way struggle. The single most important structural difference: Walmart’s application is selective. Where Amazon offers effectively open registration, Walmart screens applicants and expects a documented history of ecommerce success before […]

## [Grocery Ecommerce Trends to Watch in 2026](https://www.42signals.com/blog/grocery-ecommerce-trends/)

Why Grocery Ecommerce Trends Matter More Than Category Growth Total grocery spending is growing slowly. Online grocery is growing at roughly twenty times the rate of in-store, and it is absorbing almost all of the category’s net new dollars. FMI and Nielsen project online grocery to grow at an 11.6% compound annual rate from 2026 […]

## [Target Competitor Analysis: What Brands Need to Track](https://www.42signals.com/blog/target-competitor-analysis-what-brands-track/)

Why Target Competitor Analysis Looks Different Now For most of the past three years, the competitive question about Target was whether it could stop losing ground. That question has been answered, and it changes what brands selling into Target need to watch. Target returned to positive comparable sales in Q1 FY2026 after five consecutive negative […]