Advantages of automated Web Crawling in Competitor Price Monitoring

In today’s connected world, shopping is done at click of a button or swipe of finger. A majority of shoppers compare prices across portals before buying any product. Therefore, it is extremely important for the online retailers to keep a track of the prices of products on their competitor sites. An automated web crawling solution, the technology powering the Google search engine, can provide online businesses with prices from competitor sites in real-time boosting efficiency and bottom line.

Top 5 reasons for automated price monitoring solution

1. Stop tedious manual data search and entry work: Deploying people to search for prices of hundreds of products on multiple websites is a daunting, time-consuming & costly process prone to errors. The high cost in monitoring of prices would add to the
   
   cost and make the entire process futile. Web crawling solutions removes the need to have a team of people do the copy-paste job and provides data within hours.

2. Get a broader analysis of the market: An automated competitor site monitoring solution, allows monitoring of unlimited number of products, giving a broader analysis of the market. One can easily and anonymously get the prices of products that competitors are selling at.

3. Never miss a price change: In fast changing online world of e-commerce, having information on time is critical and is more often than the difference between making a sale or losing it to your competitor. Automated Web crawling solutions allow monitoring of products on real-time thereby providing market intelligence on competitor prices as it happens.

4. Minimize human error: Data entry is prone to errors and requires hours of multilevel checks to get 99% accuracy. Automated web crawling solutions are not only speedy but provide the same information with 100% accuracy at a fraction of the cost.

5. Focus on business: By leveraging the power of automated web crawling solutions, business owners are able to spend their time doing what they are best at – strategizing to improve bottom line by being more responsive to market changes and taking informed decisions.

To sustain in this competitive environment, keeping track of competitor prices is become essential for online retailers. Automated price monitoring service by ITSYS Solutions, anonymously captures data from targeted websites in real-time and with 100% accuracy, at a cost that allows businesses to stay competitive.

Improve Your Business Using Web Data Extraction

Web Data Extraction Service

Today, data mining firms have developed web harvesting software which you could buy and install in your computers or you can outsource the services from a qualified company. However, outsourcing the services will help you cut on costs which come with the installation, maintenance and running of the software. All you need to do is specify the type of information you require and the web scraping company will do the searching. According to your specifications, you’ll get customized data scraping services where web crawling show up data that matches your specifications. The information collected is readable, easy to understand and transferable.

Web Data Extraction

There are different reasons why you should seek web data extraction services. May be you want to monitor your performance in the online market compared to your competitors. This may be in terms of sales and marketing strategies. You need to do a competitor price monitoring to know the products your competitors have and their rates. This will help you set the right prices for your products or services so as to attract more customers. Setting higher prices than your competitors will scare away customers. Competitor price monitoring software will also help you keep track on price changes. However you can only achieve this by getting the right data harvesting specialists. You need to work with a company that will give you value for your money.

Due to the fast growth in the eCommerce market, business trends keep on changing so you need to check what your competitors are doing in order to remain relevant in business. The web harvesting company should provide you with up to date information for the businesses you’re monitoring. Ensure you get the right data that you can use to formulate a good pricing strategy for your business. Clients will be prompted to order from businesses that offer the right prices for their products. As a business owner you need to ensure you remain ahead of your competition.

If you’re doing business online it’s mandatory to invest in web data extraction services so as to enhance business growth. Contact a reputable web data mining company and they’ll do the donkey work as you enjoy the benefits. They have a team of experts who will work closely with your company. They’ll assess your business needs and help you improve your presence in the online market.

Capture Store Locations Data Easily

Are you spending lot of time to manually capture & monitor the retail store locations of your competition? Scraping the data from the web can get the work done in a shorter time allowing you to
get a strategic view of how many stores they have nationally, regionally or in particular cities and take informed decisions for locating your new stores.

Web scraping in its simplest form is described as the process of collecting information from the web automatically. Web scraper software can quickly extract data or information from the targeted website when needed. Web scraping programs work by embedding specific known browsers such as Mozilla and/ or Internet Explorer, or implementing a smaller degree of Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Web Scraping involves browsing the web in an automated, orderly and methodical manner and save required contents in a tabular form in Microsoft word, PowerPoint, Excel, MySQL or any other database format.

We have scraped hundreds of US & Canadian retail chain websites / branches (such as Jeweler chains, Mobile stores, Autoparts /Tire shops, Gas Stations, Bank branches, Insurance company branches, ATM locations) for their store locations and captured details like Store Name, Address, City, State, Zip/Postal Code, Phone Number, Store Hours, Facilities/Amenities offered, Latitude Longitude and provided the formatted data to our clients in Microsoft Excel.

For your project, you just need to contact us specifying the retail chain website(s), the geographical areas for which data is needed (eg. selected cities or states, or all states and cities in the country) and fields of information. We will write and run the scrapers on our own servers that will with 100% accuracy, reliably, efficiently and anonymously, capture the details and provide them to you in Excel.

How Price Monitoring Can Benefit Your Online Store

Competitor price monitoring can help you react quickly to shifts in pricing and prevent losses. It can help you drive more sales to your online store since you are able to avoid overpricing products. But a few online store owners are taking advantage of price monitoring. What they don’t know is that they may be selling their products too cheaply and getting a narrower margin that their market allows. So if you just set up an online store, the first thing you need to consider is to track competitor prices. Here’s why.

Take advantage of opportunities

Some of the most successful online stores are using competitor price monitoring to spot opportunities

and take advantage of them to boost sales. When you collect the data and analyze it, you’ll be able to identify certain trends and get points across your market which you didn’t know existed. Tracking competitor prices also allows you to know exactly where your business is positioned and make measures to move a step ahead.

Take the right action to maximize margin

The process of price monitoring gives you data you can rely on to make very important decisions that influence the success of your online store. You can act knowing that you have credible data to support your decisions. In fact, it reduces the risks your business is taking because you are relying on information that is credible to try and maximize margins and expand your offers.

Monitor markets

How else would you know what’s going on in your industry if you don’t monitor your competitors? You need to be alerted on the trends as they happen. Sometimes this information is no longer useful if it is not known immediately. You’ll need a service that can monitor competitor pricing, products and perceptions online round the clock so you don’t miss out on anything.

Spend less time watching your competitors

When you have a system that tracks competitor prices all through, you don’t need to spend time watching their websites manually. It’s impossible to go through hundreds of product pages looking for promotions and discounts offered by your competitors. You can get it done within a few minutes and spend the rest of your time devising a pricing strategy that will work for your business.

Maximize profit margins

Most online stores that fail to reach the desired level of success failed to come up with a suitable pricing strategy. You need tangible information to develop a pricing model that works for your industry and brand. If you go so high, you risk becoming uncommunicative and losing out on customers who simply can’t afford your product or service. On the other hand, if you go too low to the extent that you become unprofitable, your online store can face serious losses that lead to closure. To avoid all these, monitor competitor prices round the clock and always know what’s happening in your industry. Get reports on latest price changes and trends so you know exactly what your competitor is doing and react accordingly.

David Hart, has scraped over thousands of websites providing our clients from North America and Europe with data in formats as per their requirement, providing web scraping, business intelligence information, competitive price intelligence, retail business outlet locations, product catalogs, etc.

What will Your Business Gain from Web Scraping?

Today, due to aggressiveness in the business world there is no information which should be overlooked. This applies to all businesses which have eCommerce domains. Clients will simply buy from sites that offer the most competitive rates on a regular basis. However, online businesses must ensure that their brands are not only valuable, but also competitively priced so as to attract more customers and retain them. The best way to keep your prices competitive and ensure your data is updated is through competitor price monitoring. May be you’re wondering how you can do this. You need to know how to extract data online.

There are two options of doing data scraping. You could either do it yourself (DIY) or hire a web scraping company to do the work. However, DIY option will be costly since you have to hire experienced personnel to handle the work. You will also need to install data extraction software and the right hardware to handle the task. All these requirements will cost your business a lot of money hence it’s not economical. On the other hand, outsourcing data extraction services will save you some cash. However, ensure you get the right competitor price monitoring service providers as to enjoy the benefits.

What are the benefits of web scraping? 

• Making informed decisions – Doing business is a matter of figures and facts. In a competitive world, getting the right data in real time will make a difference in your business. Web scraping service will help you get enough data from the web that you’ll use to run your business on a daily basis. You can also store that information and use it when you need it. This will enable you to move forward when making strategic decisions concerning your business. 

• Acquire accurate information – Online data is frequently updated so as to remain relevant to the search engines. However, you need to have access to the right information in your industry. Data scraping tool will help you acquire all the information about your competition. Get a list of companies which offer the same products and services as you and where they’re located. Check whether they have 

• Price monitoring – You should know what your competitors are charging and how you can price your products and services so as to remain ahead of your competitors. Through price monitoring service you’ll be able to set the right prices for your products or services. The prices should not be too low to make your target clients suspicious or too high to scare away your potential clients. 

• Competitor monitoring – A crucial aspect in any business is to monitor the activities of your competitors. Your competitors’ website has valuable information which they've made available to the world. You need to access this data so as to make a wise decision when branding your products. Doing a competitor price watch on a regular basis will ensure your brands are not only valued but also competitively priced. 

Use web scraping services to make accurate decisions and remain ahead of your competition in the industry.