Electronic commerce is the buying and selling of products through the internet. The idea of eCommerce appeared a few decades back. According to Wikipedia, Michael Aldrich is considered as the person who invented online shopping to enable online transactions. Amazon was one of the eCommerce websites that started revolutionizing the concept of online shopping. Since then, the eCommerce industry has grown to such an extent that living without eCommerce is troublesome and inconvenient. The future of eCommerce also looks promising and brighter than ever. According to Statista, global eCommerce sector has witnessed 265 %growth rates from $1.3 trillion in 2014 to $4.9 trillion in 2021.
From this fact, it is clear, most of your product customers might be from an eCommerce website, and the chance of them leaving reviews for your product is also very high. In this world, with everything being customer-centric, every commercial enterprise is competing with each other to outwit one another. For your business to sustain, you shouldn’t compromise on your customers’ feedback. Data Analysis and scraping is one method by which you can get relevant data needed for your business. Data scraping technologies have been witnessing a massive demand of late. With the advancement in technology and AI, companies have started realizing the importance of data analysis.
What is Data Scraping?
Data scraping is the process of gathering data or information from different sources like websites. It is done programmatically. To get a better idea, let’s explain this with the help of an example. Suppose you are having your own business and want to keep track of the price of all your products in some random eCommerce sites. For this purpose, you decide to search for the cost of each item individually by going to some eCommerce sites. Isn’t the entire process time-consuming? By manually checking the price, you are wasting your most valuable time. To help speed up the process, you can write a web scraper instead. By making use of web scrapers you can gather or collect the data from a different eCommerce website in a small time. There are a lot of tools available for doing the same.
How Data Scraping is Done?
Data Scraping is done programmatically. A scraper is used to accomplish the task of data scraping. A GET query is performed, and the request is sent to websites which the user defines. The response would be in the form of an HTML document. The program searches for relevant information from this document. Relevant information is grouped to form the final material, which is defined by the user itself. The entire process looks simple when said, but immense expertise is required to get things done correctly. Any mistake in collecting the data can result in false calculations, which can affect the entire business strategies and operations. There are some guidelines that need to be followed to carry out web scraping so it conforms to the security requirements.
Why is Data Scraping Necessary For Your Business?
Thousands of websites might be having some data related to your product or services. With the rise in the number of eCommerce users coming across your product every day, the chance of getting some valuable information from them is very high. Information can be either related to your product like its quality, durability or related to the customer service you provide. In both cases, it is necessary to analyze that information. As discussed above, data scraping or web scraping can be used to accomplish the task of collecting data. Able to understand your consumers, competition, and customer’s reaction to your products are some of the benefits of implementing data scraping methods. Large chunks of information are available in a lot of eCommerce websites.
Following is the complete list of benefits that data scraping from eCommerce websites provides to your business.
- With data in hand, businesses can analyze this data to understand their customer’s sentiments. Analyzing the data will give you more insight into the different types of customers like customers who are pleased with your product or those who are not satisfied with your product and so on. Businesses can later send notifications to their customers regarding an offer, promotions, and so on to make them attracted to your products.
- By making use of data, businesses can compare their products with that of their competitors.
- People’s buying habits can be understood. By analyzing the big data, you can easily understand the buying behavior of your customers. Customers who are frequent buyers of your products etc. can be figured out.
- Data scraping can be used to collect market data. The general buying trends in the market, how the market will behave in the coming years can be figured out by making use of data scraping.
The business that values their customers would ultimately end up being successful. Spending time to make your customers happy by being available to them all the time is the key to survive in this competitive world.
There is a whole lot of data scattered all over the internet that has the potential to unveil your competitors’ strategies. Data has become the basis of all kinds of decision making. It is very well clear that, companies that make use of data scraping and web scraping tools will outwit their competitors. Not only in business, but data has found its place even in healthcare, academics, financial sectors also. Data analysis and AI is still in its infant stage. With more and more research and advancement being carried out in the field of big data and AI we can expect much more advanced use of data scraping and data analysis in the near future. One thing is clear, data has revolutionized the way people work and think in this world. Start making use of data scraping technologies to raise ahead of your competitors.
* This article was originally published here
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