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5 Great Web Scraping Use Cases to Gain a Competitive Advantage

5 Great Web Scraping Use Cases to Gain a Competitive Advantage

Web Scraping Use Cases

“Every company has big data in its future and every company will eventually be in the data business.” – By Thomas H. Davenport

Data is going to change the way you do your business. 

In fact, it is going to convert your business twice better and more enhanced than what it is currently. 

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Data is an asset for any type of business.

You could be a B2B business in multiple industries such as e-commerce, automobile, and more, the one factor that will help you achieve your goals and help you climb the ladder of success quicker is data.

But you see, even after understanding this that data is important to your brands as well as other brands, it is not easy to capture. 

‘’Security breaches have risen by 11% since 2018 and 69% since 2015. Additionally, cyber attacks statistics show that 43% of breach victims were small businesses.‘’

And due to the increase in such online crimes, any data that you wish to access online has been restricted.

The sources you want to capture data from too have become strict, so even if you try to make an attempt to capture the data, the result would be, your account getting blocked.

So does this mean that you need to settle for data that won’t add much value to your business?

We believe otherwise. We understand that data matters and it can help you do better for your business, which is why we have a solution that can help you capture data.

This solution will help you understand how to capture data, why should you do it, and cases where it can help you better, all covered in this article:

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WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ‘WEB SCRAPING’?

Web scraping is the process of capturing data.

Let’s understand this better with an example:

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Now you have an online business and want to set the right pricing for your prospects. You understand that it needs to be a figure where your prospects will be able to understand why such an amount has been put and get ready to invest in it as it adds great value for that amount.

So how can you do this?

The best way is to see your competitors.

So what you do here is you will scrape your competitor's pages or websites. Web scraping will scrape all that pricing information you need and then convert it into a type of data as per your choice such as a CSV file and more so that you can read it accordingly. 

Interesting Read : How to Detect Bad Bots and How it Affects Web Scraping?

The great thing about web scraping is that it is quick and getting data becomes easier.

There is no need to waste any time since the data is filtered in your format and given to you.

Let’s understand better how web scraping can benefit your brand as a whole.

BENEFITS OF USING WEB SCRAPING FOR YOUR BUSINESS

1. KEEPS YOU AHEAD OF YOUR COMPETITORS

When you have data, especially your competitors, wouldn’t you win them over? 

You would have all the facts and patterns you require to set your business straight such as the right pricing and more. This will help you cater to your prospects even better and hence you will always stay in the competitive game better. 

2. PROVIDES VALUABLE DATA

The data that will be scraped is the essential data you require to enhance your brand or your product. Hence when you scrape the data, it is the data that will help you grow better. There is multiple information available online and not all the data present is what you require so web scraping is making the process easier by helping you get the data you need. 

3. LET’S YOU CAPTURE THE RIGHT LEADS

When you have the right data in hand, capturing leads becomes easier. 

Let’s understand this with an example:

Say that your prospects are looking for a brand that is selling their solution in an affordable manner and has great value. With this data, you can enhance your pricing packages and offer more value. When you exhibit this, your prospects are bound to buy from you because this is exactly what they are looking for. 

Interesting Read : Web Scraping for Automotive Industry: How’s It Changing this Market?

4. ENHANCES YOUR BRAND'S GOALS

You have a brand and you are working to achieve the goals for this brand. 

 With web scraping, this process becomes easier to conduct. Your brand goals would be to increase the lead count. Web scraping will give you the data which will help you understand your prospects better and make you conduct actions according to their favour thus bringing you closer to achieving your goals. 

5. BUILDS A BETTER BOND WITH PROSPECTS

When you're able to get data that lets you understand everything about your prospects such as their likes, dislikes, preferences, and more, don’t you believe that this can play an impact in building better bonds with them?

Your prospects will be drawn towards you as your assistance towards them and what you’re offering them is exactly what they expect from you hence the bond you share with them becomes better and this is exactly what web scraping aims to help you in. 

There are multiple ways for you to conduct web scraping and be on top of your competitive game, we have covered the top 5 web scraping use cases for your better understanding:

WEB SCRAPING USE CASES EXAMPLES

1. STOCK MARKET RESEARCH

To invest in stocks, the traditional method of researching and collecting reports is just a time wastage. 

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just have the stock data in hand, the market trends revolving it, and the financial data that can help you understand better about the stock market?

This is exactly what web scraping aims to help you do best. 

2. BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE

To grow your business better, the best factor you need to conduct is to make the right business decisions. 

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With better business decisions, you're guiding your brand towards a path of success and growth at a faster pace. Hence when you have an ultimate solution as web scraping with you, this process becomes much easier.

3. DYNAMIC PRICING

As stated earlier, pricing matters, and when you set your prices it needs to explain the prospect of the value they receive on investment. Hence it needs to be conducted the right way.

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Web scraping ensures that this takes place well as it helps you extract data from sources or from your competitors so that you will have an idea of how to sell a better deal to your prospects. 

4. EFFICIENT LEAD GENERATION

For a successful lead generation process, there are multiple factors that need to be considered such as catering to the exact needs of the prospects, ensuring that they are being assisted during the buying process well, and more. 

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Don’t you think that if you had additional data to help you understand better about your prospects, the buying process would be much shorter since you now know how to take care of that lead?

This is exactly what web scraping helps you in. 

5. COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

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If you want to excel better than your competitors, the perfect way is to scrape the information they have so that you can align and enhance or improve your selling strategies better. With web scraping, this has become possible. 

While you understand now that web scraping has a huge impact on your brand as a whole, conducting it continuously adds on the risk of being blocked or being considered as suspicious activity.

It is important that you secure your web scraping actions and we have the right solution for that.

HOW PROXY SERVERS CAN ENHANCE YOUR WEB SCRAPING ACTIONS?

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Proxy servers are the ultimate solution required to safeguard your online actions which include web scraping as well. 

Proxy servers act as a middle person. When you want to view data or scrape data from a source that restricts you, you then use a proxy server to get that done. 

What the proxy server will do is it will change your IP address and help you get the approval to view that source.

Let’s understand this with an example:

Now you want to view data from a source and you're restricted from seeing. The only person who can view that information is those from Russia. So what happens is when you try to view that information, you will get blocked because your IP address is not matching their viewer list. 

Interesting Read : Web Scraping with Selenium: DIY or Buy?

Your IP address gives away your location so if you're not from Russia, you will get blocked or eliminated from seeing it. What a proxy server would do here is as seen in the image above, it will change your IP address and make it reflect that you're from Russia and hence when you try to access the information, you will be approved of doing so.

Now when you want to scrape information, you need to realize that scraping can slow down a website or source and that is the way you get caught. So when you use a proxy server to conduct that same action, even if you get blocked, your original IP won't get affected. 

Proxy servers offer proxies for others to see and hide your real one so that you remain anonymous always. Always ensure that you invest in a good proxy server to yield the benefits it offers.

FAQ's

The online world is growing but along with that the risk grows along. 

The online world is getting more and more secure which means your data capture stands a minimal chance of getting retrieved but luckily to web scraping and proxy servers, data capture has become better.

So tell us, what did you think of this article? Were you interested in what you’ve just read? What are your opinions on this topic? We would love to hear from you.

Also, to read more such kinds of helpful content, do watch out for Limeproxies more often.

About the author

Rachael Chapman

A Complete Gamer and a Tech Geek. Brings out all her thoughts and Love in Writing Techie Blogs.

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