Amazon Product Scraper (How To Collect Easy Data)
Table of Contents
1. What is Amazon Product Data?
2. How to Scrape Amazon Products
3. Benefits of an Amazon Product Scraper
4. Scrape Amazon Product Listings With Scraping Robot
As one of the top global retailers, Amazon likely has what you’re looking for. With fast shipping and Prime benefits, it is easier for many than taking a trip to the store. Because of its ubiquity in online retail culture, Amazon is also home to tons of useful data related to all its products. Whether product descriptions or reviews, using a web scraping tool allows you access to lots of this data. For retailers, automatically extracting data from Amazon and then analyzing it yields valuable insights. With an Amazon product scraper, you’ll be able to improve your product design, utilize customer feedback, and find the perfect price. When combined with other online data (social media, other retailers, etc), your analysis will be stronger and therefore so will your future decisions as an organization.
If you know the basics of Amazon product data, then use the table of contents below to learn more about how to scrape Amazon using Scraping Robot’s Amazon module.
What is Amazon Product Data?
Amazon product data is online data related to product details of an item listed on Amazon. This data includes
- Product name
- Price
- Product description (short and full version)
- Product image URLs
- Ratings
- Sales rank
- Seller
- Reviews
- Product size, materials, color, etc
- Product instructions
- Shipping details
- Common questions and answers
In addition to the basic product data on Amazon, the site also creates price comparisons to similar products and suggestions for other items frequently bought with the item you’re looking at. While seemingly basic, product data on Amazon is extremely useful to buyers and sellers alike. For sellers, especially those who sell multiple products through Amazon, product data is informative of their performance as a seller and provides insights into what customers want. For buyers, taking advantage of Amazon product data is a great way to ensure you get the best deals and that a product meets your needs before adding it to your cart.
How to Scrape Amazon Product
While you can manually extract product data from Amazon and other online retailers, it takes lots of time, money, and energy. Web scraping, the automatic extraction of data from a web page, is an efficient and cheaper way to collect online data. For smaller organizations that can’t afford an entire data department, scraping is an essential tool for conducting market and product research on a budget. For large organizations with fully staffed data departments, scraping takes some of the work off people, therefore leaving them more space and time to analyze the data for useful insights. Therefore, using a web scraping tool is the easiest way for organizations both large and small to extract online data and move towards a data-driven future.
Amazon product scraper
HTML web scraping tools can be used with any URL, yet the scraper itself is not built to organize the data from the specific website. Scraping Robot’s Amazon scraping module is built to work specifically with Amazon data. You input either an ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) or URL and receive product data as organized output. Both generic scraping tools and Amazon specific scrapers can be used, but one built for Amazon is already capable of organizing the data making it easier to analyze once extracted.
Benefits of an Amazon Product Scraper
There are many benefits to scraping Amazon product data, including improved design, incorporated consumer feedback, and the discovery of the ideal price point.
Improve product design
Every product goes through various stages of development. After the initial product design stages, it is time for the product to go on the market. However, soon enough there are customer reviews or other issues that arise which necessitate a redesign or improvement. Scraping Amazon product data related to product design (size, material, colors, etc) makes it easier to find ways to improve your product design. For example, if you discover your product isn’t as sturdy as you thought, then looking for stronger materials is a good place to start. Or maybe the design is perfect and the color is the only thing that needs changing. Analyzing product and design details makes it easier to find the weak link or detail.
Additionally, there are constant design shifts across industries. Especially as consumers become concerned with the longevity and sustainability of products, discovering which materials can be traded in for eco-friendly alternatives creates new marketing opportunities and target audiences that can fall in love with your product.
Incorporate consumer feedback
Once you’ve scraped for basic design details and discovered what to improve, it is time to incorporate consumer feedback. While reviews are not the same as product data, consumer reviews often comment upon aspects of design or the purchasing process. It is important to consider consumer feedback when changing or updating designs. Similar to the question and answer section on Amazon product pages, reviews often highlight common sources of confusion for users.
While you can read through each review individually and try to draw conclusions, scraping reviews makes it easier to see them side by side and therefore spot patterns or common complaints. For example, if most customers enjoy the product but are having trouble with one design aspect then it is pretty clear how to move forward. Alternatively, common issues can also be a source of inspiration for better marketing or product instructions.
Find the perfect price
While materials and design are important, lots of consumers first look at the price. Especially when browsing through Amazon product search results, price is the first detail that starts to differentiate all the similar options. Scraping price data of your own product and competing ones provides you with a range of price options. Once you’ve established this range, it is easier to discover where your organization falls within it once you’ve factored in expenses such as production and shipping.
If you’re trying to reduce the price of your product, scraping price and amazon product data at the same time makes it easy to see how different materials, dimensions, and more impact price. Therefore, you might notice that similar versions with a cheaper material are more likely to be bought.
With this information, your organization can decide to use the cheaper material which will consequently lower the product price, or you can create a marketing campaign which aims to justify the higher price through explaining the specific benefits of your product in relation to the competition. Without scraping the prices of competing products, you’ll struggle to come up with creative ways to differentiate your product in an often oversaturated online market such as Amazon.
Benefits of an Amazon Product Scraper
In addition to scraping Amazon, there are other kinds of online data that can be scraped and analyzed alongside a regular Amazon product scrape. Scraping Robot’s modules are built to extract and organize the data from a specific website such as social media websites and other online retailers. Our HTML scraper can be used with any URL. Using a specific module saves you time because the data will be parsed out easily through the module that is built to work with specific APIs.
Other online retailers
While Amazon is a large part of the online retail market, there are many other retailers with websites that provide similar product data. Scraping other online retailers makes your Amazon data more accurate. Because you have a wider range of products, prices, and reviews to scrape, you’ll find your insights to be more specific.
For sellers that use multiple online retailers to sell their products, it is important to get a sense of how each site promotes your product differently or which site’s base is more suited to your product. Analyzing Amazon data in comparison to other online retailers makes it easier to decide which retailers to invest more in and which are possibly not worth your time.
Social media
Social media websites are full of consumer sentiment data that can be used to further contextualize Amazon product data. While Amazon review data is useful, product recommendations and more are often discussed on social media as well. Scraping social media profiles of your customers or users that mention your brand is a great way to understand how the public sees your organization or product. For brands that rely on a younger target audience, social media marketing and increasing your following is essential for connecting with a younger demographic.
In addition to scraping social media comments, asking your existing followers questions using polls or trending topics is a great way to get feedback outside the traditional path of product research.
Conclusion
Amazon is home to thousands of products across all industries making it a treasure trove of product data. Web scraping tools enable you to automatically extract product data. Scraping makes it easy to extract, organize, and analyze product data which yields valuable insights related to design, marketing, production process, consumers feedback, and more. Unlike traditional HTML scrapers, Scraping Robot’s Amazon product scraper is built to work with and organize Amazon data. With these insights, your organization will be able to build a better product, incorporate customer feedback, and find the ideal price point.
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