Data scraping has become very common these days. It is now actually easier than ever to extract large volumes of public online data. Over the years, companies became increasingly creative in scraping data to gain a competitive edge. Furthermore, pricing intelligence proxies come in handy to assist anonymous scraping. With these proxies, you don’t have to worry about IP masking.
How, then, can you use pricing intelligence proxies to improve your business, minimize costs and enjoy some high returns? Before we go on this ride, we need to understand what proxies are. If this is already familiar to you, feel free to skip this section, if not – it’s time to learn something new!
What Is a Proxy Server?
A proxy is a server that will browse the internet on behalf of your device or computer. In other words, a proxy will conceal your IP address every time you browse the web. This is how it works. Each time you browse using a proxy server, the traffic flows from your computer through the proxy server, only then reaching the intended page. The response will, again, come from the targeted page, flow through the proxy server and only then – back to your device. Proxies ensure that your real IP address is not exposed to the target page and, thanks to this, anonymity is much increased.
There are different proxy types available on the market today. However, the two most common proxy types are:
- Residential Proxies
- Datacenter proxies
Datacenter proxies are proxies that are not associated with any Internet Service Provider (ISP). Mainly, secondary corporations offer these types of proxies, and they are capable of providing high anonymity levels and IP authentication.
Residential proxies, on the other hand, are IP addresses that are assigned to a homeowner by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). These proxies are IP addresses used by real internet users and associated with a physical location. Scraping requires that you use a reliable proxy server and residential proxies are less likely to get blocked.
Scraping has become so popular these days that it’s likely you’ve heard about it before opening this article. But do you know what price scraping is?
Price Intelligence Proxies: Price Scraping
Price scraping is the process of obtaining price data and any other relevant information from an e-commerce website. The e-commerce market has become very competitive these days, and you must apply the most effective strategies to make sure that you get at least a slice of this big cake.
For your brand to do well in e-commerce, you need to collect all the relevant information from different sources and re-organize yourself accordingly. One of the most commonly scraped types of information is pricing. It is the best way to shape a winning business strategy.
Typically, buyers are guided by prices – the lower the price, the more clicks and orders you will have. For your company to become price competitive, you need to collect information on what your competition is doing. By collecting the necessary information, you will always be a step ahead of them.
Some of the vital information you can collect includes:
- Promos
- Catalogs
- Special offers
- Prices
- Discounts
- Reviews
So, how do you collect all this information? By using price intelligence proxies together with the right scraper. In no time, you will direct a lot of traffic to your e-shop, and you will be smiling all the way to the bank!
Many e-commerce companies have safeguarded their sites from scrapers, primarily corporate scrapers coming from their competitors. However, since these blocks are typically issued on the basis of the company’s IP addresses, they are very easy to bypass with proxies. Proxies will mask your original IP address when your price scraper is at work. So you don’t have to worry about any suspicions or blocks from the targeted competitor sites.
Pricing Intelligence Proxies: Should You Buy or Build Your Proxies?
After getting the right scraper, the next thing is to find a reliable pricing intelligence proxy. The question is – should you buy or build? At first look, price scraping might seem easy and straightforward; however, don’t be fooled. It is actually quite complicated and nuanced.
Proxies are expensive to build and require maintenance, renovations, and periodic upgrades for optimal results and functionality. If you develop your proxies, you will need professionals to periodically work on maintenance, repair, and updates. But why build your own proxies and go through all the headache when you can already buy some from professional companies.
Perhaps, one of the most sophisticated and robust web scraping tools out there in the market is offered by the leading proxy service and web harvesting tools provider – Oxylabs. Their solution is called Real-Time Crawler, which is optimized for market research and pricing intelligence data extraction, with a 100% success rate. Read more about Oxylabs’ revolutionary Real-Time Crawler.
Conclusion
E-Commerce is all about numbers, using those numbers to your advantage and, of course, profit. In a market that so prices sensitive, you have to use the right strategy to ensure that you grab a piece of the market share. All that narrows down to how effectively you can scrape data and launch the best winning strategy. Pricing intelligence proxies will help you with price scraping and, consequently, to outsmart your competition. With the prices of your rivals at your fingertips, you will always be one step ahead.