In today's fast growing market, data is as precious as money. Everyone needs data to grow with right knowledge and directions. But how to get reliable data in this hub of service pages and blogs where everyone is telling a different aspect of the same thing, some are saying its good while others are saying its bad as per the product they are selling so how to get a reliable data without spending hours and hours in front of the laptop or wandering around the market places.
Well in todays digital world collecting data is one of the easiest job ever if you are right techniques and tools.
Wondering what are those tools, well in this article we will understand one of the most commonly use technique for collection of data which is know and E-Commerce Scraping Services.
While Scraping Services are widely used in the market, not many tells what it exactly is with its unbiased facts and information which don't really lean them towards their respective product. But we brought the full-fledged article with everything you should know about E-Commerce Scraping Services, so you can make a good decision according to your requirements and needs, that either you wanted to avail such services or not.
Before we talk about E-Commerce Scraping Services, lets starts from the basic introduction of Scraping and its advantages and disadvantages if you are new to this field.
What is E-Commerce Scraping
E-Commerce Scraping is the process of collection or extraction of data from different e-commerce websites like Amazon, eBay, for market analysis and guidance of other market strategies. Web Scraping is mainly of two types, Manual Scraping and Automated Scraping.
Manual Scraping : As the name suggests, this type of scraping is done manually, where someone will collect the data from different e-commerce websites. While manual scraping is possible it is a very tiring and time consuming task while it is also not scalable.
Automated Scraping : Automatic Scraping is done when you use a web-scraping toll to extract or collect data for further market analysis and creation of strategies.
While you can use both the types of scraping, it is recommended to use automated scraping for faster and error free data as it is also very easy for a beginners to se-up and automated bot for scraping.
Merits and Demerits of Scraping
After understanding about scraping, now we are going to discuss about its merits and demerits before we get further to explore more technical terms like E-Commerce Scraping Services.
Lets start with merits scraping data from e-commerce websites.
Cost Effective
If implemented correctly, scraping can be proved to be very cost effective from the perspective of time as well as money. The right type of implementation in the right type of company is very important for you have this advantage of scraping.
For example, if you are running a large company and wanted to collect data then you should be using automated scraping services as it will be a one time investment but it will provide a lot of data of analysis and study but if you are setting up a small business with minimal investment, you can implement manual scraping, while it will be a bit time consuming but if done strategically it can also do wonders.
Low Maintenance and Speedy
Once the automated scraping set up is done, now you can relax and let the scraping bot do its job while you can at the same time focus on other things. While scraping bots collect data with speed, it also have minimal to none maintenance charges if you have a bit of technical knowledge.
Data Accuracy
Having a collection of data through bot makes sure that you facts and figures are corrects and free of human errors. Because of which it increases data accuracy and can create correct predictions and analysis if used correctly.
Easy to Implement
Setting up a scraping bot is not a rocket science you can either set it up by yourself or hire someone with minimal charges to set up a scraping bot for you which can then turn your process of data collection, effortless.
As we discussed about pros of scraping, lets talk about its cons before you take a decision,
Cleaning of Data Retrieved through Scraping
After the data which has been scraped by the scraping bot, cleaning the data so it will be noise-free and ready for analysis is a big task, especially if done manually, so you need to prepare systematic data management process for cleaning and normalizing data
Difficult to Analyze
While more number of samples can help you understand the market position, it also becomes difficult to manage the data and analyze it for clear and error free outcomes. Charts for summarizing and visually representing becomes a big task in itself with huge amount of data.
After looking at every aspect of scraping we can say that scraping is neither bad or good, it totally depends on your requirements and demands that scraping will provide the result for you or not.
What is E-Commerce Scraping Services
After learning about scraping, now we can dive in the main topic, that is E-Commerce Scraping Services.
So as we discussed earlier scraping is the process of extracting huge amount of datasets for further analysis, but scraping services are one step ahead of it.
Scraping Services is the services where the respected providers scraps all the relevant data for you. And it doesn't just stops at scraping data according to your niche, but also they manage and organize the data for you, for further analysis.
If I simplify it, there are different enterprises available in the market which will not only extract data for you but also organize and analyze that data according to your requirement, for which they charges some minimal fees, while they provide their valuable services for your faster decision making.
Perks of E-Commerce Scraping Services
While you may think that you can just make your own scraping tool then giving it to some enterprise but there are many different types of benefits using scraping services, especially in todays world where market changes in a snap. Lets look through it, so you know what you are missing.
Expert Guidance
While you can be very experience about you niche or you must be working in it for decades, but scraping is something different. The quality and quantity of data a scraping tool can provide can make any field expert overwhelm.
Cleaning and organizing the scraped data, so that its ready for analysis is a skill in itself. So if you avail these services then you let that data be handled by experts while you focus on understanding in analysis and make decisions accordingly.
Accurate Data
Only scraping data doesn't make the data as, scraped data is unfiltered and noise data, so filtering and removing repetitive records so that it will be ready for analysis. If you analyze the scraped data the results could be very inaccurate or sometimes misleading.
When someone subscribes to Scraping services, the shift all the cleaning and normalizing data headache to the service providers, while they receives accurate data for further analysis.
Understands Your Targeted Market
Scraping Service enterprises mostly works with every type of businesses and enterprises, from fashion industry to electronics industry, they would have worked in every category in the market, which makes them experts in understand every market and what does customers want in that market, and you targeted market is not exceptional.
So if you let them handle your data, you will not only get accurate data effortlessly but also be privileged with their expert guidance.
Cost Effective
Getting a employee for collection of data and managing it can be difficult and expensive, either you have automated your scraping process or not, while it also limits to the numbers of employees you hired for data management.
On the other hand when you gets scraping services, there could be numbers of experienced people working on your data to make your improve data quality and accuracy, so in other words these organizations do the heavy lifting work for you in minimal cost.
Real-time data
In today's fast changing market, things can change in hours and until you organize and analyze data the opportunity will slip from your hand.
While scraping service providers provides you real-time data and sometimes notification when the market shift is predicted or happening so you can act on right time and gain profit from the market shifts.
Scalability
When you are planning to scale your organization there are many things you need to keep in mind, from your staff numbers to investments and market, and in addition studying the market and collecting data can increase your workload.
While scraping services makes it easier for you, as you just need to import your competitors and your market data will a tap away from you, making is easy for you step into different categories in the market, backed by real-time and accurate data.
What comes under E-Commerce Scraping Services
There are different types of services which comes under E-Commerce Scraping Services, its from monitoring your market competitors to their prices. Lets classify all the services for your better understanding, below is the list of scraping services offered by countless platforms.
Competitive Price Monitoring
Competitive Price Monitoring is a service of monitoring prices alteration of your competitors in a organized and visually understandable form, so you can analyze the data quickly and can plan you pricing strategies while understanding your competitors pricing strategy.
Check out our Price Comparison to avail this service.
Dynamic Pricing
Dynamic Pricing is the scraping services in which prices of your products are altered by different factors or dynamic of markets like competitors prices, stock availability, demands of customers etc. Dynamic pricing is mainly divided into two type one is Dynamic Pricing and another is Semi-Dynamic Pricing, which have different features according to the control customers wanted to have on their product's prices.
For more information, check out our page, Dynamic Repricing.
Product Automatch
Product Automatch is an AI based scraping services in which it collect the list of all the competitors who is selling products similar like yours. The list can classify the products variety like if the product is exact same, similar or variant of the product type.
Product automatch can be game changer for your business if you are dealing with industries where duplicates can be created easily, as you can be aware how many people are creating same product as yours.
Check this article if you want to know more about Product Auto-Match.
MAP Monitoring
MAP stands for Minimum Advertisement Price which is the price set by manufacturers and brands, below which no direct or indirect retailer can advertise your brand.
MAP Monitoring is a Scraping tool which makes sure all your retailers are advertising your product according to your pricing or MAP policy, so that you can keep check on the defaulters and take actions accordingly.
Future of E-Commerce Scraping Services
While we can see the advantages of using the scraping services it is important for you to know will these tools will survive in the future or not, so you can avoid the constant shifting from one tool to another in short period of time.
Below are prediction given by experts of scraping for scraping services.
AI and Machine Learning Integration
The scraping soon will be automated completely, while still it is automated in few areas but still there are need for human intervention for it to continue working. In addition to that there are also changes of integration with Machine Learning algorithms so that you can collect, clean and analyze data simultaneously.
Real Time Scraping Services
While right now also there are few platforms which claims in providing real-time data, but in reality its not scraping in real-time, the data updation time is very low, for example amazon refreshes it data in every 10 seconds but its not the real-time updation for which the experts are aims for, and soon it will possible to scrape and update data on real-time.
Hybrid Scraping Models
While scraping services alone is a very powerful and useful tool, the scraping service providers are aiming for combining it with different interfaces and feeds like API to make it more efficient on the bases of accuracy, speed as well as it will increase its features too. Its not too long when we all can avail the services of API and Scraping together for faster decision making.
DaaS (Data as a Service)
Data is becoming a necessity to survive in the market as the era when you can hit your milestone on the basis of intuition and assumptions. As everybody these days are making data based strategies and predictions to lead the market and make profit at right time.
So in future, there will be a very big demand for data because of which a new field of service known as DaaS comes into view.
Conclusion
After understanding about the basics of scraping and knowing about scraping services we can conclude that E-Commerce Scraping Services is an essential asset in todays market as now everything is working on the basis of data and strategies rather than instincts, so analyzing your market and analyzing it faster than you competitors is very important to take the first mover advantage, which is possible with E-Commerce Scraping Services.