5 Ways in Which Ecommerce Companies Are Benefiting From Web Scraper Apps
Web scraping, also known as data extraction or web harvesting, is a technology heavily being used by companies to get an insight into various parameters affecting business performance.
Data is the differentiator that is redefining the way businesses plan strategies, conduct market research, and roll out products or deals. Whether it is a new business or an existing one, web scraping allows business owners to access and analyze a vast amount of data to make accurate predictions. Irrespective of the industry, web scraping is being used to extract unorganized data available on the internet to convert it into a manageable and readable format.
In simple terms, web scraping is a process of collecting information from the internet automatically and giving it a structure based on which predictions can be made. This structure could be text, tables, images, graphs, or more.
Web scraper development has completely transformed the way businesses approach data and the innumerable ways in which they use this data to improve their processes. Thus, the data extracted gives them the power to estimate the costs and benefits of each step.
A web scraper not only automates the entire process, but also makes it much simpler, more efficient, and quicker. It saves the business owner the trouble of manually downloading the data and converting it into readable format.
Web scraping has numerous applications that greatly benefit e-commerce business owners. The most important applications include:
1. Competitor Price Shopping
In the era of flourishing ecommerce businesses and rising competition on the internet, the winner is the one that matches user’s price expectations effectively – without compromising on the profits.
Users these days shop smartly and do not purchase items without verifying that it is priced lower or equal to its average price on the internet. However, for businesses, manually keeping track of prices offered on different sites is not a viable option.
Moreover, the price of the item keeps fluctuating on the internet for various reasons. It is virtually impossible to track prices in a manual manner.This is where the web crawler development comes in handy.
It not only automates the process of apprising the user of the latest price trend, but also helps make projections and settling the best price for the item. It can save a business owner valuable time that can be spent on making business strategies for the future.
2. Fetching Product Images and Description
Web scraping tools save a business owner the hassle of manually fetching product images and descriptions. This point is extremely important for big ecommerce websites selling thousands of products. Since it is not possible to add images and product descriptions of various items manually, this tool comes in handy and fills in all the necessary fields.
3. Assessing Customer Sentiment
Web scraper tools can even ascertain how the product is being perceived on the internet by fetching product reviews from across the internet. This is an extremely important exercise as these are the main points that any customer looks for when purchasing items on the internet from an ecommerce website.
Reviews can be made available in a spreadsheet format, which can then be studied and compared by the business owner to get a clear picture of the customer sentiments about the product.
4. Real Time as Well as Predictive Analytics
The web scraper tools are able to provide real-time data about products or customer behaviour, and are able to help the business owner spot trends and fads. This enables him / her to align their short-term and long-term plans to obtain maximum benefits from the situation.
For instance, if a trend is catching on over the internet and a sale of a particular product is sky-rocketing, the business owner can plan deals and sufficient supply of the product to gain maximum profits.
Additionally, predictive analysis can enable the business owner make use of data to plan for the immediate and long-term future. Predictive analysis is a process of analysing existing data to work out patterns and predict future outcomes or trends – and this is an extremely useful benefit of web scraper development.
5. Marketing and Lead Generation
Data is the most vital requirement for any marketing and sales endeavour. In fact, availability of refined data is what distinguishes two marketers. Web scraping can automatically make data available to base marketing decisions upon. It can go a long way in helping brands formulate ace marketing strategies.
Web scrapers can also help collate data from various social media websites and enable a business owner to produce engaging content to capture audience attention. This can in turn lead to growth in business and web traffic.
These tools can also help with lead generation by targeting the section of people who are genuinely interested in purchasing the product that the ecommerce website is offering. Narrowing down the audience to be targeted helps a business save precious time and funds.
The popularity of web scraping tools is increasing by the day and they are now being employed in various industries. Some major industries where web scrapers find immense application opportunity include journalism, academic, reputation management, finance, data science, insurance and risk management, equity, real estate, and more.
The information available on the internet has grown astronomically over the years and collating as well as summarizing it presents a number of challenges.
A web scraping tool offers an easy and automatic way of doing this in a legal and hassle-free manner. It has numerous benefits for business owners hoping to leverage the power of data to produce desired profits for their business.
Data is slowly becoming the basis for all business decisions being taken and the dependency on data is only going to increase. It has also become absolutely clear that creative and advanced use of data to make business decisions and predictions is the only way to gain a competitive advantage over competitors.
Investing in web scraper tools that effectively enable business owners to achieve this end is absolutely vital. Business owners need to carefully assess the features offered by any tool before making the choice of the most beneficial tool for his business.