There are around four million retail establishments in the United States. Total retail sales in the United States were projected to amount to 5.94 trillion U.S. dollars in 2024, up from around 5.47 trillion U.S. dollars in 2019. These numbers show the tremendous pace with which the retail industry is growing and how significant it is to the U.S. economy. There are currently 7.9 million Online Retailers in the world, with 2.1 million of them are in the United States. Most store owners are non-technical owners with less know-how of big data analytics. It puts them at a disadvantage when competing with large stores.
This growth has led to an increase in competition among stores, each looking to innovate their ways in order to grab the shopper's attention. Now, what actually makes the difference between the market leaders and other players in the market?
Data, my friend!
Data is the new differentiator. The market analysis always concludes that market leaders know the tactics to play with the current data trends and how to use them in their favor. Data is the core of market research and business strategies. This is where web scraping comes in. Web scraping assists you in extracting any data you want.
Web scraping can tremendously help non-technical eCommerce store owners – help them build strategies to improve their sales, automate some of their processes like updating product information, and ultimately grow their business.
How Non-Technical Store owners can leverage Web Scraping
1. Build a responsive supply chain.
The process of procuring the raw materials that a company needs to develop a product or service and deliver that to clients is known as supply chain management (SCM). However, being a process that includes cumbersome stages such as planning, sourcing, making, delivering, returning, and then finally enabling, it is not as simple as it seems!
Web Scraping can really be an efficient way to optimize dynamic prices, identify potential customers to keep up with stock expectations, and many other stages through big data analysis!
Tracking the news for hurricanes, tornadoes, and storms to measure the impact of these natural phenomena on corporate operations and supply chains itself is an example of web scraping. This enables firms to take preventative measures prior to the occurrence.
2. Scrape leads
This is another critical use for a sales-driven company that generates leads. Sales teams are always eager for clean contact data. You may scrape leads from directories like Yelp, Just Dial, Yellow Pages, and others using the web scraping approach and then contact them to make a commercial introduction. First, develop a complete business profile, including address, email, phone, products/services, and geocodes, among other things. Then, the information can be exported to the CRM for the sales team to use.
3. Conduct more profound market research.
Market research is the core of every business plan. But why is it so important? Well, businesses utilize these data sets to improve product design, user experience and develop a marketing strategy that generates high-quality leads and boosts conversion rates.
You obviously know how important all these can be for your business growth! But also, proper analysis of your potential market can be a great way to set up your road to cost-efficiency, effectiveness, and overcoming your competitors.
Web scraping allows you to take unstructured web data on your potential consumers and target market. Then you can convert it into a structured format that can be fed into your B.I., CRM, or Marketing Automation System for better market understanding.
4. Update Your Product and Inventory Data using web scraping
Inventory management keeps track of a product's journey from manufacturing to warehousing to the point of sale. Inventory management is critical for anyone working in the e-commerce or retail sectors. As a retail owner, you must effectively manage your inventory; otherwise, warehousing and supply-chain management will be a significant expense.
Obtaining e-commerce data, on the other hand, is not always as simple as we may think. But, web scraping is here to help you out! For example, receiving real-time inventory and sales prices necessitates the use of advanced web scraping to import the most recent data.
5. SWOT and PESTLE analysis
SWOT and PESTLE analysis are used to evaluate a new business or project in an organized and complete manner. The approach provides decision-makers with a better knowledge of potential changes and the impact these changes may have on their business.
A PESTLE analysis focuses on external issues, whereas a SWOT analysis focuses on a company's internal strengths and weaknesses. When both methodologies are combined, a thorough evaluation of a project is produced that not only helps it grow but also maintains consistency. For example one of our customers used data from twitter to predict the volatility of a stock.
Web scraping here provides eCommerce merchants with a realistic and practical perspective of where they stand in their specialty. It will assist you with a clearer picture of market conditions and insights into how you can reduce your weaknesses and build on your strengths to create a strategy that will take your business to the next level.
6. Maximize your SEO impact using web scraping
You obviously understand the importance of Search engine optimization. You need to keep your strategies up to date with new tricks and trends that your competitors haven't yet discovered to ace the Google ranking. You may fail to attract search engines and readers looking for information if you don't do so.
A web scraper is the perfect tool to employ in this situation. A web scraper can assist you in organizing and analyzing content based on specified parameters and then discovering your most engaging and shared content. Using this information, you can reduce the number of categories on your website. In addition, you can learn about keywords and best practices in your niche.
In fact, it helps you in discovering keywords that bring traffic to your website, which content categories are generating links and user engagement, and how much time and money it will take to rank your page.
Once you have this information, climbing to the summit should be a lot easier. Web scrapers are handy because they deliver this information in real-time.
7. Use scraping to extract social media data
Social media scraping is indeed the process of extracting data from social media sites (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) using a data scraping tool. So, the data you need to scrape from the vast ocean of data available on many social networking platforms is entirely based on your company's goals. Images, demo service videos, descriptive texts, comments, and contact information are just a few examples that can be used to enhance your social media insights and your user experience.
Don't assume the cause for a drop in income or a product piling up in your warehouse; instead, search for it in your customers' comments and chats on social media. Then, instead of guessing, scrape what your customers are saying about your product or service on social media and transform it into real-time data sets.
8. Scrape reviews to improve brand perception
Product reviews on the internet are essentially an extensive database full of accurate and relevant information. People frequently search the internet for reviews based on real people's experiences for honest product details before purchasing.
Customer reviews assist organizations in a variety of ways. For example, the company can figure out what customers like and dislike about their product or service. A direct response from customers aids in the discovery of a competitive advantage as well as the identification of flaws and shortcomings. As a company, you want to be informed about what's going on in the industry and who your rivals are. Using apt web scraping tools, businesses may now track not only their own products or services but also those of their competitors. And believe me, these are as interesting and beneficial as they sound!
Final thoughts
Well, all these pointers must have proved to you how important web scraping is and how efficiently it can help you grow in each aspect of your business. Web scraping is the need of the hour. It doesn't actually matter if you are a retailer, manufacturer, or marketer; you need data! And we at Datahut scrape that data for you.
In the dynamic and fast-paced era of big data, the benefits of web scraping are endless. These were just the highlights to get some insights about the expected benefits, the actual list never ends.
Never let the massive datasets lower your potential. Let Datahut take care of your web data scraping needs.
Related Reading: 1. 6 Reasons why a Retailer Must Embrace a Data-Driven Retail strategy