What is price mismatch?
A price mismatch happens when the price submitted in your product data does not match the price shown to a shopper on the product page, which stops the item being shown.
Worked example, not a result
A sale that ends before the feed notices
Say a store runs a promotion that drops an item from 89.99 to 79.99 for six days. The feed picks up the sale price. When the promotion ends, the storefront returns to 89.99 immediately, but the feed still carries 79.99 until the next scheduled fetch.
In that gap, shoppers who click the listing see a price 10 higher than the one advertised. The item gets disapproved, and it stops appearing until the data is corrected and reviewed.
The damage is larger than one product. Frequent mismatches on a store make its whole catalogue less reliable, and the visitors who did click arrived expecting a price they will not get, which is exactly the experience that loses a sale and a return visit at the same time.
Currency, tax display and a price that only applies to logged in customers all cause the same problem in a less obvious way. The figures here are an example.
Why it matters
Price is one of the values checked directly against your landing page, so a mismatch removes a product from every shopping surface, paid and free. That is a straight loss on the visitors lever, and it usually strikes during exactly the periods that matter most, when promotions are running and prices are moving.
It also costs conversion twice over. The shopper who clicked expecting one price and found another rarely buys, and the money spent on that click is gone. Consistency between advertised and actual price is one of the cheapest trust signals a store has.
For a store owner the useful response is process rather than repair. Schedule promotions so the feed can keep up, avoid prices that only appear after login or in a cart, and check the diagnostics during any week when prices move. Doing that means the busiest trading periods are not the ones where half the catalogue quietly disappears.
Common mistakes
- Ending promotions without allowing for feed timing. The gap between the site changing and the feed updating is where nearly all of these errors are created.
- Showing a discount only in the cart. If the page price does not match the feed price, the listing is judged on what the shopper sees on the page, not on what they would eventually pay.
- Sending prices in one currency and displaying another. Country settings, tax display and currency all have to line up, and a mismatch here affects entire regions rather than single products.
- Excluding tax in the feed where local rules expect it included. The comparison is against the displayed page price, so the convention has to match the market you are selling into.
Related terms and answers
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