Data crawling goes hand in hand with a lot of business models. E-commerce is not an exception. It basically offers too much information and puts too many opportunities forward to be ignored.
If you still can’t see the correlation between data crawling and e-commerce, you have stumbled upon the right article for you. Here is what makes it so valuable for e-commerce businesses.
The global nature of e-commerce
E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing markets in the whole world. According to Statista, e-commerce revenue amounts to $2,237,481m in 2020 and is expected to show an annual growth rate of 7.6%. What does this mean in relation to data crawling?
The expansion of the e-commerce industry means that it is a lucrative business. There are hundreds and hundreds of new players every day, fighting for their piece of the cake. If you are running an e-commerce business, you are aware that staying ahead of the competition is paramount these days.
One of the ways to do it is to empower your business decisions with up-to-date and accurate data. The problem is that the e-commerce landscape is filled with copious amounts of it. The data we talk about encompasses prices, product reviews, descriptions, Q&As, blogs, guides, and different web page layouts.
Dropshipping is an e-commerce concept
Although not entirely new, dropshipping is a crucial e-commerce concept. And we must address it to be able to help you understand the importance of data crawling for e-commerce. Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method. It allows you to have the freedom to sell whatever products you want without having to handle products directly.
All you have to do is discover the market opportunity, find the third party business you want to buy a product from, and then sell it to customers. While dropshipping reliefs you from the pain of handling your own inventory, it comes with a couple of challenges. One of them is finding a supplier with prices low enough for you to make a profit.
While tackling the supplier challenge, you will also have to stay on top of managing numbers. You will have to be ready if the demand spikes and quickly discover which suppliers have excess inventory. Repricing products throughout the supply chain can also be a problem in reducing your profits.
The role of data crawling
Whether you are directly selling to customers or using dropshipping, you will need access to information to run an efficient operation. Here is where data crawling comes in.
Data crawling is used to find out information displayed on targeted websites. You can use data collection tools to target any page on e-commerce websites, for example, product pages, blogs, customer review pages, inventory pages, FAQ pages, guides, self-service help center pages, and so on.
Thanks to data crawling, you can see what your direct competitors are doing, and how they are doing it. More importantly, you can do it over and over again so you don’t miss out on changes that can boost your sales.
Managing the data
Data web crawlers pull information from other e-commerce sites. This is going to become very big over time. To efficiently use it and benefit from it, you will have to implement some data processing and management practices.
You should foresee ahead if you plan on storing data in the cloud because cloud storage comes at a price. For instance, you can use cloud storage as a processing point. Once you have all the data and web pages you want, you can download this to your servers.
Copyright infringement
Thanks to data crawling, you will have access to entire web pages of your competitors. You will be able to see the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code, see their product descriptions, product titles, and everything else that can be found on a regular e-commerce website.
You should be aware that many e-commerce businesses protect their e-commerce systems through patents, including:
• Text-based HTML code
• Website design
• Creative content (images, written material, videos, music, and graphics)
• Database
• Product name
Source code, programs, the content of databases, and algorithms can be protected by trade secret law as well.
You should only use the data you have to make business decisions and incorporate best practices. Copy-pasting any of the elements mentioned above can be considered as copyright infringement.
Conclusion
Data crawling has a lot to offer to e-commerce businesses of any size. Thanks to the information you pull from other e-commerce websites, you can make informed business decisions, stay on top of the trends, increase your website traffic, and boost conversion rates.
