Imagine getting an extremely relevant and vital piece of information, for as little as $3.33 per hour.
How appealing it sounds? One of the key findings in Distil Networks new report, 2016 Economics
of Web Scraping states that any information can be scraped. Be it an entire website, product description, customers reviews, competitor pricing or any desired information can be extracted for less than a cup of coffee. Adhering to the fact that internet is an ocean of data and the information that this data holds is of paramount importance, Web Scraping has been embraced by businesses.
Businesses are seeking for better techniques to scrape pertinent data from web pages. Dropshipping Business are nowadays making use of this method as it is a “loss-free” process.
With several web scraping tools coming into existence, retrieving data has become trouble-free.
The Extraction Technology (Web Scraping)
“If your content can be viewed on the web, it can be scraped”, said Rami Essaid, CEO and co-founder of Distil Network.
Web Scraping is an approach for gathering data from different or one website and putting it to use in a separate file or program. It is indeed one of the most promising technologies in the context of online businesses. Many of the business enterprises are currently making use of this technique as the benefits are diverse.
Looking into some of the advantages of web scraping:
Efficient: It has extensive and global influence attributable to its perceptive technique making business way more resourceful and effortless and less laborious.
Cost-Effective: The web scraping tools come at affordable prices as compared to the essential information it extracts for the businesses.
Error-less Data: It directly converts raw unstructured data into a structured usable form. It is a very dependable technology and eliminates the probability of errors. It also maintains the accuracy and quality of data.
The Newly Designed Retailing: Dropshipping Business
Dropshipping is a business type which allows a certain company to work without managing an inventory, or owning a depository for storing their products.
How exactly? The partnership between the retailer and the dropship supplier is all that is takes.
The following steps describe the working of the drop shipping business in an undecorated way:
The customer sets an order for a particular product or products on the retailer’s online website or store.
Entire details of the consumer and the order get automatically or manually forwarded to the dropship supplier.
This dropship supplier parcels the commodity straight to the buyer in the retailer’s name.
This kind of retailing puts an end to the mainstream marketing or selling where one has to confine themselves to four walls. All they have to own is a laptop and an internet connection.
When one talks about dropshipping, it cannot end without laying emphasis on the two giant retails- Amazon and Walmart. Ever since their formation, not only they have eased the shopping process but also given a fierce competition to the local brick and mortar stores.
Why a Dropshipping Model for retail is preferred
The above-stated facts already help us deduce the effective utilization of this business model and its leading benefits in this world where the internet has taken over many of our activities. Hence, some of the privileges offered by drop shipping are as follows:
1. Effortless Mounting
3 simple steps have to be taken for the configuration of this business type:
Association with a drop ship supplier.
Formation of a website.
Laying the first stone for selling products.
This seems less complex than establishing a regular retail store where a lot of labour will be required.
2. Practical and Profitable
In comparison to the traditional way of business, the newly formulated model cuts off the cost at various places. For example, the value of purchasing and running an inventory is eliminated by the entry of drop shipping.
Only handling the costs of management of website (hosting, theme, apps, etc.) have to be taken care of which is quite low-end. So, it eventually adds up to the savings of the retailers.
3. Prevents any major loss
In the worst cases of the company not being able to attract customers towards their products,
it is not a big deal. The businesses still don’t lose anything. Simply, because they make certain purchases after the order has been placed. Hence, it removes the stress of having to sell his archive.
4. Provides a platform for effective scaling
Unlike the customary retail businesses where scaling would require investments and monetary resources, the online retailers wouldn’t have to worry about that. Retailers work by handing over more and more orders to the dropship suppliers and letting them manage deliveries. Meanwhile, merchants can sit back and enjoy the fruit.
Not only that, it also leaves the online ventures with abundant time to put in efforts and ideas to rank their work in the interim.
How Web-Scraping tools help to increase Dropshipping Business
It cannot be denied that standardized information and data can increase the productivity of any business. For the businesses to stand out, they need well-extracted data for that case. This can be achieved with the utilization of proper tools and services thereby resulting in expandability of businesses.
For a little setup charge and periodical fee, companies like Datahut devoted to web scraping services scrapes the supplier’s invention and places them in an a.CSV file for businesses.
So, how does web scraping affect dropshipping sales:
1. Getting better traffic to the website
Generating good traffic to the website amidst so many other competitors is a challenging task today. In order to develop a good strategy, the company needs to review it’s every aspect.
They need to identify who are their target customers. How does one achieve that?
Manually; well that would be the last option one would choose. Now, to get proper insights from the data, the businesses need to analyze it well. One important factor is how the website acquires visitors. It may be through social media networks, direct landing or through search engine results; the last one being the most prominent today.
So, the goal is to improve how the website is shown in search engines and what rank it gets.
To get higher ranks, it is not necessary to have multiple keywords making no significance; instead, it would be better if one has few but most relevant keywords. At times, this may not suffice at this level of competition but with the power that data extraction tools of the modern-day leverage are amazing. So, the businesses must know to how to use these tools and get an insight into the next door competitor’s strategy and improvise accordingly.
2. The extraction of opinions
Being aware of the competitor’s those area(s), through reviews, which did not go down well with their customers or which they do not boast much of or are highly unlikely to recommend to others, is one of the key business policies adopted for ultimate gain. Scraping data from internet sites of big business brands in their niche can help in doing so. Now, with the emergence of web scraping tools, the businesses are able to draw out data the related customer sentiment information out of other drop shipping sites and make full use of it. The companies should concentrate on not repeating the mistakes of the competitor and work on the reviews. Therefore, this will help in the growth of the business in the market.
3. Drawing out the prices
Evolving through a great pricing strategy before starting a drop shipping business should be a matter of importance. The businesses should have a clear knowledge of the pricing at their competitor’s website so that they could maintain a charge less than that. This will attract more customers towards their site in due course of time.
The use of web extraction assists the businesses to gain an understanding about the costs of the services and products in other competitive sites. The scraping tools also inform in the case of changes in market price.
4. Scraping conducts
The use of web scraping tool can be made in the generation of leads. This technology enables the businesses to withdraw an index from several websites. The company can contact them for their revenue sales.
5. Understanding the needs of the customer
For any business to succeed, the first step is to fulfil the requirements of the buyers. And in order to proceed, the businesses have to know their client’s requisite demands and wants. Web scraping tools can draw out the data like the consumer’s needs, what their customers are likely to purchase and how they expect their retailers to exist. This will help the drop-shipping businesses to create a targeted marketing strategy.
6. Keeping up with the trend
Various strategies like business development strategy, marketing strategy, etc, are very essential for nowadays businesses to move forward in this smart world. Businesses can grasp the latest trends by acknowledging to the web scraping tools and make certain that their dropshipping business is up to date. Therefore, implementing web scraping to dropshipping not only provide convenience for the business but also enhances the qualitative value of the undertaking.
Wish to leverage Web Scraping services for your Dropshipping business? Contact us at Datahut, your big data experts.