As the need to store and access big data increases, web scraping and web crawling technologies are becoming more and more useful. Today, companies use web scraping technology for myriad reasons. Read on to find the uses of cloud-based web scraping for big data apps.
By Octoparse
Have you ever wondered how companies started to maintain and store big data? Well, flash drives were only prevalent at the start of the millennium. But with the advancement of the internet and technology, the big data analytics industry is projected to reach $103 billion by 2027, according to Statista.
As the need to store big data and access instantly increases at an alarming rate, web scraping and web crawling technologies are becoming more and more useful. Today, companies mainly use web scraping technology to regulate price, calculate the consumer satisfaction index, and assess its intelligence. Read on to find the uses of cloud-based web scraping for big data apps.
Table of Contents
- What Is Web Scraping
- How Web Scraping Benefits An Organization
- Keep track of your competitors
- Reach more potential customers
- Set the best price to sell
- Improve your product as your customers would like
- Conclusions
What is Web Scraping?
Merely put, web scraping, also known as web data extraction, is an automated procedure of extracting raw data from the web. Ideally, companies and people who use web scraping want to utilize big web data to make smarter decisions.
Web Scraping Data for Business Analysis, Source: Pixabay.com
How Cloud-Based Web Scraping Benefits an Organization?
01 Keep track of your competitors
Over the last decade, online shopping has tremendously grown. Still, the trend will continue to rise as people embrace digital services and change buying behaviors. While the eCommerce market makes it easy for customers to make their purchases, the competition amongst the businesses is challenging. It leaves little room for the new entrants to make good progress.
So, for any business to survive in the online industry, assessing how competitors work is inevitable. Remember that if you know what your competitors are doing, you will be better positioned than them. Here is where web scraping kicks in as it helps you get your competitor’s recent changes.
Read story: Japanese eBay Seller Gains an Edge over Local Competition
“Some data is cleaned periodically, like sales records on eBay. Months later, they vanish. I use Octoparse to collect them though I am not in need of them right away. Because what I am doing, I got millions of data for analysis and learned more about the trade card business.”
02 Reach more potential customers
Most individuals never like the process of getting additional leads. Yes, it’s easy to buy plenty of lists but remember they are not of the best quality. You perhaps utilise the lead generation technique that lets you search for emails. Despite the accuracy concerns, it’s worth noting they are relatively costly.
As you can see, it is not a practical and cost-friendly option to get quality leads. However, the good thing is that you can get lead’s contact info for free within a short period from millions of websites on the internet, thanks to cloud-based web scraping.
Read story: Online Service Provider Turns Web Data into Sales Leads
“We did collect contact information … manually copy and paste each number and call it. Now we have this data structured in Excel spreadsheets. We distribute it to each member and they will make efficient phone calls periodically.”
03 Set the best price to sell
If you encounter challenges setting up a price, you can consider using web scraping services. The main issue with price optimization is that it’s quite tricky to balance the point where you have to maintain the clients and increase the profit at the same time.
Remember that clients are always ready to pay high prices for products and services provided they get an incredible value. Regarding the retail companies, they have to enhance their services in areas where their competitors are missing. In such a case, it would be wise to utilize the web scraping technique.
Read story: MS Builds a Price Comparison Service with Web Scraping
04 Improve your product as your customer would like
Social Media Data for Sentiment Analysis, Source: Pixabay.com
It is widespread for buyers to search for product reviews on the web before making the ultimate purchase decision. Reviews can significantly impact consumers’ buying decisions. Thus, companies need to analyze customers’ expectations in order to meet their demands.
For example, if your company plans to introduce a new product into the market, you need to collect the consumers’ feedback to assess your product and make the necessary enhancements. Since the analysis entails big data assessment, you can achieve the desired results fast using web scraping.
In the end, you can achieve a lot of things in your business with web scraping. Above all, it is all about what you can attain with the big data collected and how you can make it much more useful.
Read story: “I Scraped Youtube comments and Twitter for Sentiment Analysis”
Conclusions
Collecting data, integrating and analyzing it may be a daunting work for people who have never tasted the real benefits it can bring about. What is out of question is that, this is the right path to take. Just get started and the rewards will tell.