In the age of Big data, companies realize its value in the E-commerce business. Data points like pricing, product IDs, images, product specifications, brand and many more are extremely useful for a variety of purposes. Product data feeds from e-commerce sites are used to gain a competitive advantage over others. It is one of the most reliable and easiest ways to monitor your competitors and market.
Even though some sites have API’s, web scraping is the only way out in most cases. Getting ready to use product feeds is not always easy. Web sites might change its pattern now and then. As a result, web scraper will crash or give incorrect data. Some sites use an anti-scraping mechanism to block bots. Only a competent company will be able to meet your demand.
The following are the most common use cases of e-commerce product feeds.
Price comparison
Price comparison sites, compare data from other sites and display the best deals. They earn their revenue from affiliate commission. Most accurate and ready to use data are essential in setting up a price comparison site and its success.
Affiliate sites
Like price comparison sites, affiliate sites also use data from other sites. They don’t really compare prices instead they use the product feed the way they are. But at the end of the day it is the trust that matters, you can earn the trust only if the data you provide is accurate.
Strategy development
E-commerce is a very competitive landscape. A good sales, marketing and growth strategy is essential to stay healthy in the market. Development of a killer strategy depends a lot on data about the competitors, their products, price, etc. Web scraping can play a crucial role here by supplying the most accurate and ready to use data.
Decision making
Decision-making on key issues in E-commerce business depends on the amount of data you have about yours and competitors. The decision is made by analyzing the data you have. Decisions like When to give discounts?, How much discount?, For what products?, etc. can make a huge difference in the revenues. Web scraping can be helpful in supplying data for decision making.
If you’ve come this far, you already know the value web scraping can bring into E-commerce.
If you’re concerned about using a hosted scraping platform because it might disappear, check
out the open source Ones.
Thanks for reading this blog post. Datahut offers affordable data extraction services (DaaS).
If you need help with your web scraping projects, let us know and we will be glad to help.