In recent years, many businesses realized they should be online to reach a more significant market. Almost everything happens online, and with almost any business present online, clients have a much larger market than the local pool.
However, this also led to a much fiercer competition between companies, and these days, even if you’re online, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be seen by clients. As such, you can use web scraping to gather market prices, so check out this Amazon scraper to see the market prices on a top retail platform and compare them to yours.
What’s Price Monitoring?
Price monitoring is a practice businesses use where they compare the different market prices. When you start a company, you can use it to see what your competitors charge for a service or product and tailor your costs based on that information.
You can also use it as an established business to offer competitive prices to your clients, ensuring they choose you over a competitor. It also gives you data on whether your prices are too high or low and which products are currently popular and selling fast.
What’s Web Scraping?
Web scraping is a process of gathering data from websites and can also be called data mining. A tool like a web scraper automatically does this for you, and the data it collects is related to keywords you entered into the software. As such, you can add the keyword “sneakers,” “price,” and other related words and the web scraper will collect information online surrounding sneakers and their prices.
The scraper presents the data to you in a raw HTML format, or if it has a built-in parser, you receive it in a more readable format, like a spreadsheet or CSV document.
Proxies
Proxies are critical to web scraping since, often, websites will block the scraper when the software realizes it’s not an actual person interacting with the site. Check that your Amazon scraperhas a built-in residential proxy to look like a natural person and bypass blocks. You can also do research in another market without worrying about geo-blocking.
Benefits of Using a Web Scraper
A web scraper is one of the best ways to complete price monitoring. Web scrapers present various benefits when gathering market information, which we explore below.
Cost Effective
It’s much more affordable paying for a web scraper than a team of people to collect the same information. While people can make mistakes or skew results, the scraper collects all the logged data and doesn’t cost as much in comparison. If you’re adding a new market to your clientele, it also saves you the travel costs of checking out the market in that state or region.
Better Time Management
When checking competitors’ prices manually, it can take days, if not weeks, to collect the data. By that time, the information might already be outdated. Entering a new market also means you require accurate data from that market, and geo-restrictions mean you can’t simply search for it online. However, you can research any market within a few hours using web scrapers paired with proxies. The scraper presents all the data in an easily readable format, meaning you can make decisions within minutes.
Accurate Results
One of the best things about how web scrapers work is that they’re much more accurate than people. If you take days to weeks to compare market prices properly, then by the time you present the report, the prices have changed! However, with the quick times of a web scraper, you can receive the information when it’s still relevant to the market.
Constant Updates
Since data mining is a simple and easy process, you can do it multiple times within a week or month. Whereas manual research takes a lot of time and human resources, this tool finishes it within a few hours, and as such, you can do it whenever you need to. This fast process allows you to get multiple information reports to compare to create a price structure, whether a tiered structure or another type.
Provides Multi-Uses
While web scrapers are perfect for price monitoring, that’s not all they’re suitable for. You can data mine for any market information, such as learning the latest trends, what customers say about your brand, top products and services on Amazon, and more. This information helps you construct more than just a price structure; it also lets you create an effective marketing plan.
Identify New Competitors
New businesses constantly enter the market, and you don’t want to be left behind. While the scraper will give you pricing information, it’ll also allow you to see any competitors that entered the market. This way, you don’t only keep on top of consumer habits, but also of who is competing with your company and what they’re offering.
Compete with Others Easily
Price monitoring is crucial to ensure you gain a competitive edge in the eCommerce industry. With many new businesses coming online, the competition is worse than ever, and you must ensure you have the latest industry information to keep on top of it.
Web scrapers are the ideal tools to gather this information, as it quickly and efficiently scrapes sites for relevant information. There are various benefits to using something like an Amazon scraper, so get yours today and see how your information-gathering tactics changed forever.