Utilizing a web scraper allows your organization to have a bird's-eye view of industry trends. This has numerous advantages. Based on the information that you collect, you can adjust your business strategy to gain an edge over your competitors.
Let's take a look at five use cases where using a web scraper can really make a difference for your eCommerce business, andhow to make the most of such cases by using the right scraping tool.
1. Monitoring Competitor Price Patterns
To keep up with what your competitors in the eCommerce marketplace are doing, it's absolutely critical to keep track of their pricing patterns and how they may be changing. Are your prices reasonable enough compared to the general market trend? Are they higher or lower than those of your competitors? Is your competition undercutting you and taking away your potential customers? Web scraping can be used to gather all of this important information.
In fact, web scraping is used by every major eCommerce company, including global leaders like eBay and Amazon, to monitor the pricing strategies of their competitors. If you are falling behind in the competition, you can make use of web scraping to extract information pertaining to your competitors' prices and products and re-adjust your own stock prices accordingly.
Additionally, the fact of the matter is that businesses often keep changing their strategies when it comes to pricing. By using a web scraper like Bright Data's Web Scraper IDE that updates such information in real-time with a 99.99% success rate, you can prevent your competition from taking away your potential customers when they lower prices.
When using web scraping software like Bright Data's for price monitoring, here are some specific benefits you get that let you stay on top of the game by revolutionizing your pricing strategy:
- Find the list price, selling price, and discount for your competitors' products.
- Enable dynamic pricing models in real-time by comparing the costs of comparable products across all competitors.
- Find the exact match for every SKU, and keep an eye on price variations.
- Be informed of fresh sales and offers.
- Set the appropriate price for each SKU that is neither too high nor too low and applies to all channels and times.
To sum it up, utilizing web scraping for price monitoring ensures that your customers continue to choose to buy from your company rather than your competitors and thus keep the revenue flowing in.
2. Researching the Right Keywords
Keyword research can be described as the process of discovering and analyzing the search terms entered into search engines by internet users seeking information on various topics. Within the eCommerce marketplace, keyword research gives you insight into the terms your potential customers are using to discover the things they want to purchase.
Scraping product names from Amazon or eBay could be a great way to find out about the terms used by your potential customers to find similar products as yours. By scraping and collecting such keyword-related data, you can easily find the most widely used keywords associated with your product. Once you know what your potential customers are looking for, you can then implement these keywords on your own website to reach out to them.
But scraping popular eCommerce websites is only one aspect of keyword research. You can also scrape search engines like Google for the same information and use it as part of your SEO strategy. You can scrape and gather information about the search terms used by sellers to rank higher on search engines and get more traffic to their page, and then utilize this information to improve the page ranking of your own website and products. You can also utilize these keywords in marketing campaigns.
Such information is also useful for more than just coming up with new keywords; it also helps you monitor the performance of your own and your competitors' keywords and remain on top of consumer and market trends. By doing this, you would be able to make decisions based on solid data rather than stumbling around in the dark.
Now the next question: how to go about doing this? Well, to simplify the process, you can opt for dedicated tools that automate keyword research for you. For example, Bright Data's SERP API extracts data from search engines automatically
The benefit of using Bright Data's SERP API is that it provides the data you need in high volume and for every major search engine--Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, Baidu, you name it. The SERP API also supports customizing the search parameters. This means that you can tailor your search according to criteria like the number of results shown per page, language, location, time range, safe mode, etc.
Source: https://brightdata.com/products/serp-api
The SERP API lets you automatically extract all the information you need to perform organic keyword tracking with the highest level of accuracy and speed so that you can stay on top of the competition. Moreover, it easily lets you bypass Captchas and other such typical hindrances.
3. Generating New Leads
In today's era, generating new leads is one of the most important factors in running a successful eCommerce business. You may already have a steady existing customer base that is purchasing your products but you also need to retain, improve on, and even expand your base in order to remain competitive. The ultimate goal of lead generation is precisely this. But arguably, this is also one of the most difficult challenges eCommerce businesses face today. Finding new and innovative ways to improve or expand your customer base is by no means a simple task.
This is again where web scraping may come to the rescue. Using a scraper allows you to hone in on the right kind of companies and sellers for your platform that may appeal to your existing customers or even bring in new customers (assuming you scraped the relevant data to verify which products are popular among your competitors that may be missing in your inventory).
For example, you could gather data from online business directories like Yellow Pages. Such data lets you gather important information like business names, addresses, contact information, industry, etc. Once you have that data in your hands, you can zero in on those businesses that may be particularly useful to your eCommerce platform and thus quickly come up with a list of qualified leads.
Besides scraping business directories, you could also look up relevant industry forums, websites, blogs, and social media pages--for example, that of your competitors--and extract the data there to find new potential sellers. Bright Data's Web Scraper IDE is able to collect real-time data about leads that are interesting and relevant from the comments sections of websites and blogs related to your industry.
But that's not all; not only can you use Bright Data's Web Scraper IDE to zero in on the right businesses but you can also gather information about job titles and who the decision-makers are in those businesses. You can thus reach out to them directly without the hassle of advertising.
Additionally, by gathering precise information about both new and existing leads from search engine results, Bright Data's web scraping services enable you to assess the reputation risk of companies. Meaning that once you've created your list of qualified leads, you can further filter it down to prioritize the best new potential leads from the same.
4. Analyzing Market Sentiment
Understanding consumer sentiment is important for any eCommerce business. Businesses can understand the present trend in the market by following what customers are purchasing and talking about. This data can be obtained by scraping eCommerce sites like Amazon, where customers write reviews for products they have purchased, or on social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook where people talk about products they swear by or would like to purchase.
Bright Data's web scraper can scrape Amazon reviews or comments on social media sites and lay down tables of data that can be analyzed to formulate effective strategies.
For example, you can easily discover which product categories and brands are popular in which country, recognize changes in consumer demand and quickly pinpoint products that are becoming more or less popular with consumers, understand the obstacles potential customers face by understanding their journey and more.
Analysis of consumer sentiments helps in discovering the most minute details about your target customers and thus in building ideal customer profiles. This in turn helps in the creation, promotion, and sale of viable products that are aligned with market expectations on eCommerce stores.
Using such data, you can catch a sniff of categories, brands, or products that are going in and out of fashion among your customer base and plan and adjust your inventory accordingly.
5. Discovering the Right Suppliers
That suppliers are essential to a successful eCommerce business is not exactly a secret. Your ability to manage product inventories and negotiate advantageous terms and prices depends heavily on your suppliers. After all, your customers have a wide range of options available to them online, and they are frequently only a click away from purchasing a product from a different website if it is more beneficial.
Additionally, Covid had a significant negative impact on global supply chains, making it even more crucial for businesses to find the right suppliers in the post-Covid world.
Nowadays, a lot of online stores choose to purchase their products from domestic suppliers rather than foreign ones. Whichever route you take, you'll need to identify the best suppliers if you want to succeed in the extremely competitive eCommerce market.
Web scraping can be very helpful in finding the right supplier for your products. For instance, you can find the best suppliers quickly and easily by using Bright Data's Web Scraper IDE to crawl directories like Alibaba (or any of your competitors' websites) and gather information about their contact details, store locations, the products they offer, and more.
This is a great way to find all the relevant information you need in order to pick the best supplier for your company.
Along with that, you can also analyze and keep track of the suppliers your competitors are using as well as be notified any time they change their suppliers because Bright Data's web scraping service can track real-time updates.
Conclusion
Web scraping has become instrumental to the success of modern eCommerce businesses.
When used correctly, web scraping can prove to be a very useful tool in identifying the right keywords, monitoring the competition, adjusting prices, generating leads, creating customer profiles, and finding the right suppliers.
While choosing the best web scraping software for your business can be challenging due to various restrictions, you really can't go wrong with Bright Data's Web Scraper IDE. It is an enterprise-grade scraper used by 7 out of 10 global eCommerce brands. By utilizing an advanced scraping service like Bright Data, your team can focus solely on data analysis rather than investing time and resources in data collection, verification, or cleaning. It also has the added benefits of giving you access to real-time monitoring of competitor inventory and pricing as well as 24/7 live support, which gives it a real edge over other scraping software.