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The power of data can’t be overestimated. From the instant messaging platform you use to the picture-sharing app you use; they are all seemingly innocuous and free. But are they really? The real cost of using any of these digital platforms is your personal data. Likewise, with the continuing rise of the e-commerce industry, the data trail a consumer leaves is absolute gold. This data (otherwise known as eCommerce data mining) can easily be scraped and be translated into insights and therefore profits. eCommerce data scraping is possible on any e-commerce website by using parsing services. Now that we have established why we need to scrape this data and the fact that eCommerce data scraping this data is not difficult, let us look at what kind of data resources we should scrape.
The Most Relevant for all Search Platforms: Keywords
What separates Google from other search engines was its search functionality. Likewise, what separates a good e-commerce platform from a great one is the advanced search functionality. Therefore, keywords and ranking. Matching the consumer’s search intent is a big win for all these platforms in terms of revenue generation. So, what is it that you should actually scrape here?
You should ideally scrape two key data resources here: keywords for relevant products and their rankings. With this goldmine of information, you could analyze the ranking algorithm. You could start figuring out meta tags and meta descriptions. This could help you help businesses rank highly by understanding what product ranks for what keywords and which keywords get maximum traffic in all categories and products.
The Most Underrated eCommerce Data: Product IDs
By tracking keywords and rankings, you can keep track of all listings in all categories and what they rank for. By tracking id, you can keep track of all changes that happen in listing and the change in its consequential ranking. Mapping all changes applicable to a product would help keep track of the changes in which keyword is gaining what traffic and change in perceived consumer demand. This is just as important to crack the search algorithms of all e-commerce platforms. Indexing and mapping all products would help you help businesses develop precise SEO strategies to garner maximum clicks on their products.
The Most Used Case of eCommerce Data Scraping: Best Sellers
This one is the big one. E-commerce giants like Amazon intrinsically work and review and ratings. Also, they link each product you view with complementary products. Data on category performance and what it takes to feature as a best-seller can really propel businesses. Data about changes, category performance, and pricing thereof can provide lofty sales opportunities. Historical and current data gives valuable insights on changing consumer sentiments and gives you a whole 360 on what the audience is seeking.
Therefore, ecommerce data scraping on all the aforementioned for the bestselling category can reveal varied reasons as to why they are top performing. Competitors can then adapt and emulate the same to improve their chances to get featured. There are two sides to what makes a product best-selling in any category: the product itself and its marketing. While we have spoken about the marketing end of it, ecommerce data scraping tools will also give us a better understanding of what the USPs of the bestselling products are. What separates them from the rest in the same category: pricing, discounts, seller, delivery options, options. The list is endless. Parsing this data is absolutely invaluable.
The two vectors needed for consideration, hence, are the products itself and how it is marketed in terms of meta descriptions, tags, keywords.
The Most Required to Tackle Unpredictability: The Future
Data is only worth extracting if it can be mapped to regression models to predict the future. Predicting the future is the only way to capture consumer demand and be prepared for all unforeseeable circumstances, favourable or unfavourable. With enough data harvested from the e-commerce platforms, these future data points can be progressively accurate. Products that are garnering more search and clicks, the fluctuations in pricing depending on future supply and demand, stocking inventory; all of these require a solid understanding of how the market will pan out in the future. How is that possible you ask? Well, the power of data is unparalleled. There are a lot of e-commerce platforms that provide future best sellers. The ones that are deemed to be in most demand in the near future. This helps you tap into ever-growing business opportunities.
The Most Complicated: Manufacturers and Suppliers
This is where the real goldmine is. It is a little convoluted, but with a little effort this can bring unprecedented business opportunities. The start is easy. Most e-commerce websites maintain a list of suppliers on the product page. But these are restricted to only names. Other data (mostly contact information and the seller’s history would be needed) has to be parsed from other sources.
This rich database would have an unbelievable impact on your business prospects. Finding a steady chain of decent suppliers and product distribution chains can open up a whole new avenue of opportunities. The only catch is that superior web crawling services have to be employed to procure this. But it will be absolutely worth it if it is an ecommerce data scraping service provider. This could well be your niche.
The Need of the Hour (Now and Forever): Reviews and Ratings
We cannot ever over emphasise the need for crawling consumer sentiments by extracting data from the review and rating section. It is the easiest, yet the most under-utilised. This will tell you all you need to know about how the consumer chooses to interact with your product: strengths, chinks, pricing, product development areas, shift in demand, competitor analysis. Honestly, we are only limited by our imagination as to what the complex human emotion can reveal about the product it chooses to buy (or not!). The challenge, however, is that customers are not limited to a singular forum to drop in reviews. They have multiple platforms, some exclusively for just reviews, to vent their feelings. Regularly parsing data from multiple websites will give you the marketing and product development upper hand you seek.
How many times have you just been browsing through Amazon and stumbled upon a bestseller with rave reviews? Lots. How many times have you added those products to the cart even though you had no immediate (or future, to be honest) requirement? A very high percentage of the ‘lots’ mentioned above. Yes, that is the power of reviews.
The power of data cannot be overestimated, we reiterate. These are only a handful of resources (albeit the more important ones) that can be scraped. Now that you are on board as well, it’s time to get cracking on procuring data from e-commerce platforms? Check out Promptcloud’s eCommerce data scraping services quickly!
