The Octoparse Team

What's in
this ebook:
03 INTRODUCTION

04 WHAT IS ECOMMERCE DATA?

05 WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON USE CASES?

07 HOW TO GET ECOMMERCE DATA

08 WHAT WEB SCRAPING CAN HELP?

09 CASE STUDY - ECOMMERCE WEB SCRAPING

10 ECOMMERCE WEB SCRAPING CHALLENGES

13 THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE CHOOSING A

WEB SCRAPING SERVICE

16 OCTOPARSE DATA SOLUTION

Introduction
The digital future is here to stay.
Credit and debit card data revealed a nearly 20 percent increase in online
spending since January 2020, and this pandemic-induced surge in
eCommerce was no hiccup. Some 92 percent of consumers who tried
online shopping in 2019 became converts, cementing an emergency
response into an indispensable habit. (From Mckinsey Report)

Putting businesses on a growth All of this comes down to one thing:

trajectory in the digital era requires
refined operation and many
businesses are now looking for ways
to stay ahead of the competition.
But think about the following
questions:
How can you expect to achieve
results if you don’t know what
your customers are thinking
about?
How can you surpass your
competitor without knowing
what they’re doing?
How can you make sales if you’re
simply taking a stab in the dark
whenever you try a new
eCommerce technique?
eCommerce data.
The hidden truth of your e-
commerce business is just behind
the data scattered on the web
pages.
If you own an online business and
want to make profits consistently,
harnessing the immutable power of
web data extraction and unveiling
the truth behind the data is very
important.
In this whitepaper, we will be
looking at what eCommerce data
can boost your business and how
web extraction can help.

03
What is
eCommerce data?

eCommerce data provides information

collected from the eCommerce industry (online
retail sites) about products, pricing, sales
performance, and customers .

Companies with an online retail presence use

the data to gain insights into customer
behavior and improve their experience.

Online businesses and eCommerce retailers

leverage eCommerce data to understand how
their business performs, carry out competitor
analysis, and drive higher online sales.

Read more:
9 ways eCommerce data can fuel your online
business

04
What are the most
common use cases?

The typical use cases for eCommerce data include MAP Compliance Monitoring,
inventory tracking, competitor monitoring, customer sentiment monitoring, etc.

When analyzing from a different angle, the same set of data can render different
values. Below are some examples of the most common use case of eCommerce data.

Price Data
1 MAP COMPLIANCE 3. DISCOUNT TRACKING

To avoid price war and unhealthy Holiday marketing is a sprint

competition among retailers and
distributors, brands have to set a
Minimum Advertised Price so that all
parties agree not to sell or advertise
above this price.
competition for e-commerce runners.
Marketers always rack their brains to
find an effective and compelling
marketing strategy to harvest the most
e-commerce buyers.

By scraping from e-commerce web By scraping prices on eCommerce

pages, brands can get real-time prices
of their retailers and distributors across
multiple e-commerce platforms. By
getting fresh new price data, they get
an instant alarm when the MAP is
violated. That’s how brands monitor the
MAP and protect their brand
reputation.
websites, you can track your
competitor's pricing strategy - how
much discount they are giving to their
consumers during the holiday
marketing season.

2. MARKET COMPETITIVENESS
In most cases, the price can sway
consumers’ decisions - to buy one
product instead of another. In order to
maintain their price competitiveness in
the competing market, brands have to
invest in price monitoring. If the same
product on your shelf is sold at a much
lower price on others, you should be
alert and look into it.
05
What are the most
common use cases?
Stock Data
1.STOCK LEVEL AND
POPULARITY
Sometimes, stock data can tell you how
the product sells. You can track the
sales number by monitoring the stock
number and hence gain sight of how
popular it is on the market. Scraping
stock data on a regular basis, that is to
use scheduled web scraping, can give
you fresh data at whatever interval you
want. How the stock changes over time
will be easily spotted by just comparing
sets of data.
Customer Data
Due to accessibility or cost of time, not
every business gets opportunities to
talk to their customers. If you can’t talk
to them, listen to them. To win back
disappointed customers is way more
difficult than to keep them when they
are still interested.
1.E-COMMERCE REVIEWS
REVEAL
Reviews are the most direct way to get
your customers’ feedback and you
should never turn a deaf ear on them.
Their complaints somewhat shed light
on how you should improve your
products and services and their
compliments put a finger on what is
your strength, which you should
definitely cling to.
2. REGIONAL AVAILABILITY
For physical retailers, using web
scraping to scrape eCommerce data
based on geographic location can be a
tricky way to know the product
availability for the neighborhood. Many
physical brands and retailers are also
offering direct-to-consumer online
platforms so if you can see their stock
data for a specific location on web
pages, you can scrape it. Offer what is
not available from your competitors,
this gives consumers a reason to come
to you.
2. CONVERSATION ON SOCIAL
MEDIA
People share and talk to each other on
social media. That is where you can see
their genuine attitude towards different
brands and products. Not only the
eCommerce industry but many
investors and professionals in other
fields also get social media data to
carry out sentiment analysis.
Conversation on social media gives
clues to how the crowd would act. By
looking into reviews in your store, you
get ideas about how to maintain your
strength and make improvements;
while looking into conversations on
social media, you can keep track of
where the trend is going.
06
How to get
eCommerce data

THE MOST COMMON WAYS

TO GET ECOMMERCE DATA
ARE LISTED BELOW:

API connection: Integrate with a third-

party platform through an API request and
get updated data automatically. The
limitation of this option is that your data is
controlled by the owner.

Data service: Finding a data provider is an

efficient way for one-time requests of a set
of data. The downside to this option is that
data that requires frequent updating can
become costly.

Web scraping: Most e-commerce data is

public since e-commerce platforms
display their product data and transaction
data to customers, and can be scraped
using web scrapers. Web scraping is
flexible and effective, making it an ideal
way in which to source the data needed.

Every method has its pros and cons. Here we

would like to introduce web scraping to you.

07
What Web Scraping
Can Help?

Web Scraping (or data scraping, screen scraping, web harvesting, or web
data extraction) is the process of extracting data from websites into usable
formats or local databases for later analysis or retrieval.

By downloading and cleaning the data from different web pages, web
scraping can turn the unorganized data into a structured format, which
helps you to reveal insight into statistics and empower decision-making.

Know more about: Web Scraping

Web Scraping does-it-for-you:

Get all kinds of data: Data visible on web pages

can all be scraped by web scraping, including
tables, lists, articles, images, and more.

Get data cleaned automatically with the

RegEx tool: Once you add steps through RegEx,
some web scraping tools such as Octoparse will
automatically clean the data. (RedEx is a tool
that helps you trim/replace/edit data in the way
you want.)

Get data from all sources: Web scraping tool,

Octoparse is a console for you to build scrapers,
run scrapers, and get data from them. In
addition, you can get data you scraped directly to
your database through an API connection.

Schedule scraping for automatic updates: By

scheduling, the scraper will run regularly, getting
fresh data at the frequency required.

08
Case Study
How Can Web Extraction Benefits eCommerce Businesses

WEB SCRAPING MANAGES

INVENTORY TRACKING FOR RETAIL BUSINESS

Blind Rivet Supply engages in an online business of hardware retailing. With

experience in the industry over four decades, the company further equipped
itself with the smart solution of web scraping, turning inventory management
a headache to a business facilitator.

COMPANY THE CHALLENGE

BLIND RIVET SUPPLY

Blind Rivet Supply holds around 30,000 products
on its online retail platform. An order should only
INDUSTRY be placed when there are goods in stock from the
RETAIL supplier.
The update of suppliers' inventory data of an
LOCATION appalling amount of 30,000 products on a daily
UNITED STATES basis has been the biggest challenge for the
company.

THE SOLUTION

Going out to grab 30,000 products every day and

updating the inventory data on the web pages is
ridiculous.

As the data is all visible on suppliers' websites, this

is where web scraping comes in. Blind Rivet now is
scraping relevant data online and with data
exported into CSV files, automated update of their
product listings becomes reality.

Read more: Ecommerce Web Scraping Stories

09
 Many eCommerce businesses know

eCommerce about web scraping and its

benefits. However, due to certain

Web Scraping
drawbacks, many are unable to
scrape the web.

Challenges
Here, we will look at some of the
pain points of web scraping for
eCommerce businesses and likely
solutions.

Data Timeliness
Data on web pages are changing constantly and outdated data may lose
its value. How frequently should you update your data? This depends on
what data you are using and for what purpose.

If you are scraping from eCommerce websites to monitor the stock

number of certain products, you may want daily updates to see how the
product sells each day. When it comes to data scraping for MAP
monitoring purposes, frequent updates are required in order to guarantee
effectiveness.

In many different scenarios, you have to get timely data to make value out
of it. The problem is, if you are scraping from dozens of different sites,
without a functional scraping tool, you have to manually start your
crawlers repeatedly, which can be a time-consuming chore and drag
down your working efficiency. Fortunately, to avoid these repetitive jobs,
you don't need to be a master in coding now. Web scraping tools such as
Octoparse offer automated scheduled scraping that can free you from
such trouble.

10
eCommerce
Web Scraping
Challenges

Data Cleaning
Many eCommerce business owners use web scraping tools to get data
and guide their decision-making.

However, scraped data does not equal business insights.

You can only dig the value out of your data when it is well organized
and thoroughly analyzed. In most cases, raw data presented on
eCommerce pages are not well prepared for analysis.

For example, if you are calculating the average ratings of a series of

products, you would expect all data presented in numbers only.
However, raw data scraped from web pages may not be that
satisfactory - the number could be wrapped in a bunch of words. Read
along and you will learn how a web scraping tool helps organize your
data as you wish.

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eCommerce
Web Scraping
Challenges

Voluminous Scraping

Most of our eCommerce clients scrape data on a large scale due to a

large number of online marketplaces and the diversity of products in
each store.

Just take one single eCommerce marketplace, Amazon, as an

example. There are 20,000 results for “earphones” and 30,000 records
for “couches”. The number may be cut down when you enter a more
narrow-down query. While if you are scraping the information of a
bunch of products on multiple eCommerce platforms, the volume still
would be considerable.

The challenge of voluminous scraping is that your tasks would take a

long time to complete and frequent visits to a site can trigger its anti-
scraping mechanism, causing prolonged waiting, heavy system
workload, and IP bans.

Read more about eCommerce Web Scraping Challenges:

Challenges to extract data from eCommerce websites

3 challenges web scraping faces in getting eCommerce data

12
Things to Consider
before choosing a web scraping service

If you decide to go for a web scraping service, here

are some tips for you. To bring things into a better
perspective, we have decided to group these things
into three classes: the quality of data, service
provided, and product offered .

Data Quality
Quality of the data scraped should be a major
criterion when choosing a web scraping service. The
data scraped should be very accurate. You don’t want
to gather false data that would end up being useless
to your eCommerce business.

A good web scraping service should also guarantee

you quick delivery of data. They should be timely in
their delivery. Also, when your website expands, your
data becomes bigger. So, you need a web scraping
service provider that scrapes data at high speed. They
should have the right technology that can keep up
with your increasing data.

Read about: Researcher Gets Livestreaming Data for

Academic Research

13
Things to consider
before choosing a web scraping service

Product
Make sure you are choosing a web scraping service that is excellent in what
they do. Web scraping could be challenging in some cases, and they must know
how to handle problems such as anti-scraping systems. Many eCommerce
websites have anti-scraping systems that could make web scraping difficult.

Scalability is also another feature that must be considered in a web scraping

service. Their web scraping product should make you rest assured that your
website is safe from future lags. That is, as your data gets bigger, they shouldn’t
decrease in their performance. They should have enough resources to cater to
all your future data. In other words, a web scraping service must be scalable.

Read about: eBay Seller Getting Millions of Data with Web Scraping

In choosing a web scraping service, you should also consider the format in
which they deliver data. The web scraping service should be able to deliver your
data in the format you want. If you want your data in CSV, then go for a web
scraping that can deliver in CSV. Or better still, go for a web scraping service
that can deliver in many formats. So, in case you want your data in another
format, they would be able to deliver it.

14
Things to consider
before choosing a web scraping service

Service
Having considered the web scraping service product’s offering, you should also
check the quality of their service.

Transparency is key, and you should only consider a web scraping service that is
transparent with its price. The pricing should be easy for anyone to understand.
Ideally, a good web scraping service would have a pricing plan that predicts
your future cost accurately without any hidden costs. Ultimately, you should
avoid a web scraping service with a complex pricing plan.

Additionally, the customer service of web scraping must be a top factor to

consider. You would likely have questions when handling your scraped data.
Hence, you should only consider a web scraping service with working customer
service. With this, you don’t have to waste time trying to figure out things
yourself.

Read about: Octoparse customer support

13
Octoparse Data Service
We get it. You want the data, not the headache.
Have peace of mind with the Octoparse data
extraction service.
Quick, hassle-free
Flexible, and scalable
With the Octoparse web
scraping service, we do
all the work to make sure
accurate data is delivered
to your team. You don't
have to build or maintain.
Get data within days - not
weeks or months.
Reliable, high quality data
We have the experience
and expertise to
understand your
requirements, solve any
scraping issues and
deliver exactly just that.
No more data gaps and
messy datasets.
Quick, hassle-free
The Octoparse data
solution is ideal for
projects of all sizes - one-
time or recurring, from
thousands of records to
millions of records each
day. Scale as you grow.
Usable, formatted data
Ready-to-use data in
Excel or CSV, or integrate
with your database.
Directly download via
REST API. No more data
gaps and messy datasets.
16
Octoparse
Web Scraping Solutions
DELIVER THE DATA OR SCRAPER BOT
ALL THE FEATURES YOU WANT, NONE OF THE HASSLE

Once-Off Service

Sit back and relax. We offer a one-

stop solution ranging from data
extraction, data wrangling to data
integration. Tell us your
requirement and we will deliver
the data the way you want it.

Customization

We help you to set and maintain

customized scrapers. You can store
and manage the data more
efficiently with your team together
directly through one platform.

17
Octoparse
Data Service

Every Day Octoparse Data Service

Converts Millions of e-Commerce
Sites Into Actionable Insights to
Yield More Sales!

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