Web scraping is a process by which data from publicly available sources on the internet are gathered and stored in a database. Web scraping can be used to gather data from public websites, social media sites, or databases that have been made public for any reason. The process of web scraping involves crawling through the website and extracting specific information. Data parsing is also part of this process as it helps make sense of what has been collected during the crawl. If you’re curious to know more about data parsing check out the Smartproxy blog for more information.

There are many legitimate reasons why businesses might want to use web scraping and data parsing techniques such as gathering competitive intelligence or monitoring their brand online. In this article, we’ll focus on a few of the most popular web scraping use cases for businesses.

The advantages of web scraping for businesses

Keeping track of your competitors

In every sector and on the internet, keeping up with the competition is critical. Publicly available data plays a significant role in getting the correct data for analysis and comparison to your own strategy and position in the marketplace.

Monitoring your competitors’ success is essential to making sure you are doing the best for your own business. You can use web scraping tools and techniques to monitor how many visitors a website gets, where those visits come from and what keywords bring people there in the first place.

Web scraping enables you to get a quick overview of the information they share on social media and websites. And thanks to Google Alerts, you can easily keep track of the news that mentions your competitors by setting up email alerts with keywords related to your niche or industry.

Generating leads

A lead is the beginning of every sale. Every business should have a list of leads that might be interested in their product or service. You must keep your list of leads up to date in order to discover your ideal customer.

It’s difficult, however, to build high-quality lists. Typically only 13% of your leads will turn into customers. This is where web scraping comes in. Web scraping enables you to gather information about your potential leads so you can follow up with them and nurture your potential customers throughout the sales cycle.

Online research

Customer research is about gaining a deeper understanding of your customer population, which is an important aspect of building a client-centric business.

Market research entails gathering data in order to better understand target demographics and consumers, allowing a company to advertise itself more effectively and, ultimately, achieve success in the market. No matter how big or small the company is, market research is an essential component of any business plan.

You can use web scraping to research your competition, find influencers in your industry and get ideas for future posts on social media. This is a more efficient way to gather data about what’s relevant now rather than searching through past articles or blog posts that are no longer current.

Product Optimisation

It’s critical to collect consumer feedback, cross-examine your product, and make improvements before launching a new product.  Reviews can be a great source of information. For example, reviews can show you where your product is working and where it’s not. They can also give you insight into what your customers want in the future so that you can make the necessary changes.

There are many techniques to analyse customers’ attitudes, but those require huge amounts of data. Web scraping can automate the extraction process faster which saves tons of time and effort for such mundane work.

Pricing Optimisation

The use of mathematical analysis by a company to determine how consumers will react to various pricing scenarios for its items and services through alternative distribution channels is known as pricing optimization. In other words, the goal of price optimization is to anticipate potential consumers’ reactions to varying prices of a given good or service.

You can use web scraping to find out if there’s an ideal price range for your products and services in the market. Scrape the web looking at competitors pricing plans and find out if there’s an ideal price range you should aim for. If the prices are too low, customers may think your products or services aren’t worth it. But other times, businesses have to compete on pricing with bigger competitors so having a lower price might be necessary in order to get sales.

Conclusion

Web scraping can be a powerful tool for business owners looking to take advantage of public resources. The advantages of using web scraping for businesses are numerous: it can help you keep track of your competition, generate leads that will convert into sales (if done correctly), conduct research on products or services for a business’s product optimisation roadmap, find pricing opportunities in the market through competitor analysis, and so much more.