Web scraping is a powerful tool you can use in various industries, including e-commerce, real estate, and media. You can collect information on competitors, such as pricing, product offerings, listings, and more data. Think of all the things you can do with that kind of data!
A custom web scraper makes it easier to gather useful business data and provide valuable insights, helping you understand what your customers want and keep up with the competition.
You can use it to make informed business decisions, such as pricing products competitively, finding the right deals, and keeping ahead of the competition.
Web scraping is legal as long as you do it ethically. It means you should not scrape data that is not publicly available and you should not overload websites with requests.
We will dig into the many facets of web scraping like, what it is, how to do it, and why.
In this article:
- What is Web Scraping?
- 3 Example Industries Where Scraped Data Makes All the Difference
- Web Scraping is Here to Stay
- How to Choose the Right Web Scraping Tools
- Case Study
- FAQ
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What is Web Scraping, and Why Should You Do It?
Web scraping is the automated process of collecting data from websites. Businesses might use web scraping to gather real-time information, analyze competitors, or fuel data-driven strategies.
Read on to learn how web scraping is all about getting the correct data to make the right business decisions - no matter your business.
The internet is a vast resource for data, but it was designed to be used by humans, not machines, so it can be challenging to get that data at scale and use it in databases, data vaults, spreadsheets, or applications.
Web scraping changes all that by using bots - small snippets of computer code - to rapidly visit web pages or whole websites and collect specific information.
That data is then packaged in a structured format that is perfect for use in other purposes. When you do web scraping ethically, the target website can even be unaware that any data was scraped.
The data is public, and from the website's point of view, it's the same as if many regular visitors had been reading those pages.
But you ultimately get data in a format usable by computers. Data is essential for any business that wants to succeed in an increasingly data-driven world.
“Data is the new oil.” – Clive Humby
3 Example Industries Where Scraped Data Makes All the Difference
- eCommerce - Gaining a competitive edge
Oberlo predicts that global e-commerce growth will rebound to 10.4% in 2023 following the market downturn caused by the pandemic.
Looking ahead to 2026, retail e-commerce sales are expected to hit 8.1 trillion dollars, presenting substantial opportunities for businesses looking to expand.
Online shopping is becoming one of the most popular online activities if it isn’t already the most popular.
How is web scraping affecting e-commerce?
- E-commerce moves fast. Online businesses, Amazon sellers, and dropshippers all change prices continuously. Trying to keep up with that manually will affect your revenue growth.
Web scraping, powered by JavaScript and other programming languages like Python and PHP, enables any seller to monitor their competitors' prices and products at scale. This automated process surpasses manual methods, allowing businesses to gather data from websites efficiently.
Discover more about JavaScript for web scraping to optimize your business strategies. - Performance tracking. Web scraping can also be used to track the performance of products over time, watch trends in reviews or comments, and evaluate shifts in listings and sales data.
The more data you have on the products you’re selling, the easier it will be to make the right business decisions. - Don’t be left behind. Even if your current range of products is doing well, you need to get ahead and find out what will be popular in the future.
Market research can be carried out at scale with web scraping. Scrape reviews, likes, and comments on social media sites to understand what might be trending or find new niches that have yet to be identified.
- Real Estate - Finding the right deals
Web scraping is revolutionizing the real estate industry.
Now, anyone can scrape real estate listing websites and other sites and use them to learn where the market is headed first and plan for future investment.
An agent real estate CRM system can enhance your ability to make informed decisions and stay ahead in the constantly evolving real estate market, utilizing the insights gathered through web scraping.
Modern property investors can no longer rely on faith that real estate prices will always go up.
They need to make the best decisions based on the correct data, including invoice scanning AI, to ensure they get their clients' returns. It's not about the current situation; it's about future trends.
Scraping big data enables those investors to gather real-time information on how the markets behave and combine it with updates on government planning, local shifts, and buyer sentiment.
The digitization of business is also transforming real estate marketing.
Web scraping can enable real estate businesses to create lists of potential buyers and sellers to automate lead generation and keep the property deals going throughout the year, even in tricky spells.
- Media - Keeping ahead of the story
The media industry doesn't need new ways of gathering information. After all, they've been finding out facts and reporting them for a long time.
However, web scraping makes it easier than ever to collect data at scale and lets media companies do more than ever.
The media industry survives on advertising. Knowing what display ads are doing well and what kinds of campaigns competitors are running could make a big difference to ad budget and revenue.
Web scraping lets media companies track advertising across websites, giving them more data than the official Google or Facebook tools and providing essential data for planning campaigns.
Publishing the right content is essential for news and magazine sites.
These sites will be able to track the performance of those articles on their sites, but web scraping can let you track how articles are shared, how viral they are, and what kinds of audiences are most attracted to which articles.
How to Choose the Right Web Scraping Tools
1. Consider the Scale of Data Collection
- When selecting a web scraping tool, businesses should first assess the scale of data they plan to collect. Tools like Scrapy or Octoparse are ideal for large-scale data collection, while lighter options like WebHarvy work well for smaller projects.
2. Choose Between Code-Based or No-Code Solutions
- For businesses with technical resources, code-based tools like Scrapy offer greater flexibility. However, no-code solutions like ParseHub or Octoparse can be more user-friendly and accessible to non-technical users.
3. Ensure Legal and Ethical Compliance
- It’s essential to ensure that the web scraping tool you choose complies with legal and ethical guidelines. Tools like Import.io and Diffbot offer built-in features to help users avoid scraping restricted or protected content.
4. Evaluate Data Format and Output Options
- The ability to export data in useful formats is another critical consideration. Some tools export in simple CSV files, while others provide more complex JSON or XML outputs.
5. Consider Customer Support and Community Resources
- Finally, when choosing a web scraping tool, consider the availability of customer support or community resources. Platforms like ParseHub and Octoparse have active user communities and offer robust support to help businesses get the most out of their scraping efforts.
Case Study
1. Case Study: E-commerce Price Monitoring
- Problem: An online retail business wants to monitor competitor pricing and adjust their own prices accordingly to stay competitive.
- Solution: They use web scraping to track the prices of similar products across competitor websites in real-time.
- Results: By collecting this data, the company can make dynamic pricing decisions, offering better deals than competitors and boosting their sales by 15% over a quarter.
- Insight: Web scraping provides an automated and scalable way to collect competitive data without manually checking each website, helping the business maintain its market edge.
For instance, an e-commerce business looking to stay competitive uses web scraping to monitor competitor pricing in real-time.
By automatically gathering data from multiple sites, they can adjust their pricing strategies on the fly. As a result, the company saw a 15% sales increase over three months by staying ahead of competitors’ price changes.
2. Case Study: Social Media Sentiment Analysis
- Problem: A brand wants to understand customer sentiment around a new product launch.
- Solution: They employ web scraping to gather reviews and comments from social media platforms and forums related to their product.
- Results: With the data, the marketing team is able to detect potential issues, tweak their messaging, and improve customer satisfaction.
- Insight: Web scraping helps businesses analyze consumer feedback on a large scale, enabling swift adjustments to marketing strategies.
Another practical use case is leveraging web scraping for sentiment analysis. A brand launching a new product could scrape social media platforms and online reviews to gauge customer reactions.
This data enables businesses to tweak their marketing strategies, improve customer satisfaction, and manage potential PR issues early.
3. Use Case: Market Trend Analysis
- Problem: A business wants to predict upcoming trends in their industry to adjust their product offerings.
- Solution: They use web scraping to collect data from industry reports, blogs, and competitor websites to identify emerging trends.
- Results: The company identifies a growing demand for eco-friendly products and adjusts its product line to align with this trend, gaining early-mover advantage.
- Insight: Web scraping enables businesses to stay ahead of market changes by collecting and analyzing relevant data from various sources.
Web scraping is also invaluable for tracking market trends.
For instance, a company can scrape industry blogs, competitor sites, and social media to spot emerging trends. This helps them align product offerings with market demand, such as the rising interest in eco-friendly products, giving them an early-mover advantage.
FAQ
1. What is web scraping?
Web scraping is the process of using software to extract data from websites automatically.
2. Why might a business use web scraping to collect data?
Businesses use web scraping to gather valuable information like competitor pricing, market trends, and customer sentiment analysis.
3. Is web scraping legal?
Web scraping is legal in most cases but can violate terms of service agreements on certain websites. Always check the legalities before scraping.
4. What types of data can be collected using web scraping?
Web scraping can collect product prices, customer reviews, market data, and public records, among other forms of information.
5. What tools are best for web scraping?
Tools like Scrapy, Octoparse, and ParseHub are popular for web scraping due to their versatility and ease of use.
6. How can web scraping improve business decision-making?
Web scraping provides up-to-date data that businesses can use to refine their strategies, optimize pricing, and stay competitive.
Conclusion: Web Scraping is Here to Stay
In the past, web scrapers were only available to large corporations that could afford to hire development teams to build and run them.
But that has changed with the rise of scraping platforms like Apify, which makes it possible for you to use ready-made web scraping tools.
Whatever industry you're in, the way you do business is changing.
The shift to digital is just the beginning, with the massive amount of data made available already generating millions of dollars for those who know how to collect it.
The future of business is appropriately using the correct data, with tools like web scrapers essential for extracting and organizing data at scale.
