Monday, March 17, 2014

Competitor Price Monitoring Can Help Hotel Websites to Beat OTAs

Competitive price monitoring is very important in the hotel and travel industry. This is because the hotel industry is a highly competitive one and proper pricing is of utmost importance. Online travel agencies and hotel websites are competing for the same market segment. They are both looking for people who want to book hotels and accommodations online. Surprisingly, people are choosing online travel agencies because they can be able to compare prices before making any bookings.

In countries like Germany, consumers will consider price more than anything when looking for any service online. That is why these online travel agencies are giving hotel websites a run for their money. So what can hotels do in order to boost their sales and make sure customers are making bookings via their sites?

One of the things that hotels have to consider is the sales messages that they place on their sites. People will not read lengthy descriptions about your services and products. Keep the sales messages and promotions short and simple.

It is also important to give previous guests an opportunity to review your business online. Reviews can help your business to increase sales and market your brand online. Your previous customers can give reviews on social media channels. These reviews will be read by your potential clients and give you better business online.

Reviews on third party sites like Trip Adviser are more trusted than the ones on your own website. Many potential customers will not believe reviews on your site because there is that assumption that companies are writing their own reviews. Allowing a trusted third party site to review your business is one of the ways to increase your brand’s authority and trust.

You must ensure that all your offerings are on online travel agencies. In fact hotels should not be competing with online travel agencies because they offer them business. What hotels need to do is to ensure that once they receive the client, they offer world class service in order to turn this client into a loyal customer. This is what helps you to get better business online.

However, online travel agencies are not for everyone. There are cases where the online travel agencies may not be suitable for your business. Have well defined goals and prioritize on the channels which you will use to advertise your brand. You can manage to do your own sales, without the use of travel agencies. However, you will need to track competitor prices in order to identify the most appealing pricing strategy for your business.

Custom scraping services can help you to evaluate the price offerings of different hotels online and then make wise decisions based on these findings. You can get custom web scraping services which are tailored to suit your unique needs. Your hotel business doesn't have to remain dormant online because of OTAs. A lot can be done to make sure you receive massive bookings through your website. Website scraping is one of the services which can help you to get proper pricing policies and make your hotel the most preferred one among thousands.

Sunday, March 9, 2014

Advantages of Using Data Scraping Solutions to Monitor Competitor Prices

With so many products being offered by businesses on the Internet, customers are spoilt for choice. This is what makes the online market a very competitive one. The prices of various products and services are changed every other day. Consumers are likely to go for the product with the right pricing. As a business owner, it’s up to you to do all it takes to find the right pricing for your products and services. Data scraping solutions can help you to do just that and gain a competitive edge.

Competitor price monitoring involves examining and capturing the pricing data obtained from different retailers and using this information to get a better knowledge of the market dynamics which would help a business to decide on suitable pricing. By monitoring competitor prices, businesses can better understand certain customer behaviors and the reasons for price movements. All this information is critical for any business with an aim of maintaining a competitive edge.

Through data scraping, businesses are able to monitor the prices of similar products being offered to consumers online and decide on their pricing policies based on these findings. This process is performed using specialized software to make it fast and accurate. Web scraping applications will extract the data within a very short time. Some of these applications can even update the data at regular intervals so that you are able to monitor and analyze the price changes as they occur.

For data scraping to be of any good use for your business, it must be done right. You need to invest in web scraping solutions that offer you accurate data. If the data is faulty then retailers cannot use it to make important pricing decisions. The best web scraping solution understands how each competitor’s website works and is designed to extract data that is accurate and easy to match. Finding this kind of application shouldn’t be a problem as there are many options being offered online.

Always ensure that the web scraping services will provide complete and accurate data that matches up with what you want. The only way you can get this is by using trained technicians who have experience in online mapping solutions. Make sure the accuracy of the data you will receive after web scraping is guaranteed before seeking the services.

The best way to get accurate and valuable pricing information is by using custom scraping services. These web scraping services are personalized to meet your unique needs. You can get data in your preferred formats through custom scraping services. All you need to do is to convey your requirements to the company and all the information is delivered in an accurate and timely manner.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Website Scraping: Competitor Price Monitoring Services

Website Scraping: Competitor Price Monitoring Services: Are you in the process of identifying the most suitable pricing strategy for your business? If so, you need to invest time and resources ...

Competitor Price Monitoring Services

Competitor Price Monitoring
Are you in the process of identifying the most suitable pricing strategy for your business? If so, you need to invest time and resources on competitor price monitoring. This involves understanding your competitor’s product prices and using this information to either increase or reduce your own selling price. This knowledge can help you to come up with a pricing strategy that gives you an edge in your market.

Why is competitor price tracking important? Without having an idea of what the actual market looks like, it is impossible to offer competitive products and services. If you own a serious business, then you must look into your competitor’s prices. You are only going to make a sale if you find the right price point. You may be losing out sales to your competitors mainly because of your pricing.

Competitor price monitoring is especially crucial for eCommerce businesses. Before you even set up a business strategy, it is important to carry out a pricing analysis. Every effective business strategy is based on price. You can’t go against your competitors without knowing what they are charging and why. In case you want to come up with a very distinct pricing model, you must be able to justify this to your customers. You cannot defend your unique pricing model unless you know what other similar businesses are charging.

If your products are overpriced or under priced, your profit margins will be significantly affected. The process is done using specialized tools which compare the prizes on different web portals. You can get the prices of different retailers or manufacturers in your industry before pricing your products.

Monitoringcompetitor prices also allows you to make strategic decisions in your company. In today’s competitive e-commerce market, you cannot afford even the slightest mistake on pricing. If your products are overpriced, your profit margins will suffer tremendously. You will not be able to get the desired ROI from your business.

Monitoring competitor prices also helps you to understand your customers better. The price reports are obtained anonymously across thousands of retailers on the web. The process is not only accurate but also almost instant. You can understand what your customers want and make the right decisions based on accurate results. You can make reliable business decisions based on this information.

Automated tools are used in tracking competitor prices and this saves your organization time and resources. You don’t need to waste a lot of time doing this manually. Manual comparisons will not only affect your productivity as a business but they are prone to errors. Automated tools offer accurate results within a short time period.

Remember that, when conducting competitor price tracking, the main idea is not to identify the lowest bidder and offer the lowest price. You can cut down on the price of a few items until you establish a loyal customer base if you are still a new business. There are so many other strategies that you can come up with to give you a chance to sell your products or services in this competitive business world.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The Merits of Professional Web Scraping Services

If you are running a business, you will need to monitor how your competitor is doing. When you monitor competitor product prices, you will then be able to set prices that put you at an advantage. Web scraping, also called web data extraction, allows you to get this information. You could do the web scraping yourself, but hiring professional web scraping services has more benefits.

Different website admins employ different techniques to slow down and stop bots. These include blocking IP addresses, disabling web service APIs that the site’s system might expose, excess traffic monitoring and commercial anti-bot services. Others are using CSS sprites for the display of phone number, email address and other information, Web application firewalls, CAPCHA, using robot.txt and using honey pot and other method to identify automated crawler IP addresses. A professional will know how to go around these measures.

A professional understands the legal issues around monitoring competitor prices using web scraping. A professional will interpret the terms of use of the website you want to mine data from and this will allow you to make an informed decision. It is important that you be discrete when monitoring competitor prices and a professional will advice you on how to go about the process incognito.

Different techniques are used in web scraping and most are very complicated. Unless you have specialized skills and experience, you will need a trained and experienced professional to monitor competitor product prices. These techniques include text grepping & regular expression matching, HTTP programming where HTTP requests are posted on remote web servers using socket programming, HTML parsers, vertical aggregation platforms, semantic annotation recognizing and DOM parsing.

There are several web scraping software programs in the market. Hiring a professional for the task is important because he/she will know the best software. These software tools need customization to get exactly what you are looking for and only a trained and experienced professional will be able to do this. Custom scraping services will ensure you get the data you want whereas automatic web scraping might give you data you do not need.

A professional knows exactly what is available in different websites and where it is found. This visualization is important when using computer vision web-page analyzers for custom scraping services.


In some situations, human copy-and-paste is the most effective web scraping technique. Hiring web scraping services in such cases is important because this is a tiring and time consuming exercise that will interfere with your business. When you hire a professional, your whole team gets to concentrate on running the business. Most companies offering custom scraping services have an online presence, giving you cost benefits, anonymity and convenience. A professional will also give you tips on other methods that you could use to get the data you need.