‘Tis The Season… For Big Data: Big Data Holiday Shopping Season
The holiday shopping season is just around the corner. But for retailers, an even more important season is already here: the big data holiday shopping season.
Table of Contents
Every year, the period between Black Friday and New Year’s means big money for most retailers. Some businesses make up to 75% of their sales in the fourth quarter. With so much relying on holiday sales, retailers need every advantage they can get to make the most out of the season. That’s where holiday data comes in.
Big data can teach you about your customers before the holiday season starts, allowing you to plan for their shopping habits and needs. By using a service like Scraping Robot, you can collect and analyze the shopping data most relevant to your brand. Using that data, you can plan for the holiday season like never before, generate more revenue, and start off the new year on the right foot.
How the Holiday Season Has Changed for Shoppers in Recent Years
Holiday shopping habits have changed drastically in recent years. COVID-19 put a major wrench in many plans, with consumers spending less time outside the home during recent holiday seasons. Retailers saw fewer in-person sales and less impulse spending as shoppers avoided meandering through crowded malls.
This year, many retailers expect things to go back to the way they were before the pandemic. But with many supply chains still backlogged — and many consumers now used to the convenience of shopping online — it’s just as likely that the holiday shopping season will never feel quite the way it used to. Customers may continue shopping online more than in years past. And those customers who choose to return to shopping in person may enjoy the convenience of having items shipped directly to their doors or wrapped in-store, so they don’t have to invest in wrapping later.
Knowing exactly how customers will act year after year has become more difficult recently than ever before. The big data holiday shopping season is the smart retailer’s response to this ever-changing environment. Using big data, retailers can make estimates about the shopping habits of their target customers, which can help them create and implement the right plan for the holiday season.
How Big Data Can Help Businesses Prepare for the Holiday Shopping Season
The big data holiday shopping season only makes sense if you understand what to do with the metadata you collect. So why do many retailers look to data collection as one of their top holiday marketing strategies? How exactly does big data collection improve how retailers relate to their customers?
Use holiday sales data to decide the best holidays to focus on
One of the smartest ways businesses can use holiday retail data to improve sales is to determine which holidays they should focus on.
While Black Friday and Christmas are apt to remain two of the biggest retail holidays regardless of your industry, many retailers will find that there are other points during the year when they can increase sales numbers. By doing so, retailers can become less reliant on fourth-quarter sales. This means:
- A bigger fourth-quarter marketing budget
- Less of a “feast or famine” retail schedule
- Improved brand security year-round
- More of a cushion to lean on when unexpected things happen in your industry
Shopping metadata can show you when your target audience is spending money, which can help you plan your marketing schedule for the entire upcoming year.
For example, if your brand is focused on eco-friendly products, you might find that Earth Day is a major spending holiday for your company. On the other hand, if your brand sells products aimed at men in their 30s, Father’s Day might be a big holiday for your company.
While you may have discovered some of these shopping trends on your own over the years, holiday shopping data can help you determine:
- How much are consumers actually spending on these other holidays?
- The types of items consumers are buying at different points in the year.
- Whether there are holidays throughout the year that you hadn’t considered major for your brand but could potentially be marketing yourself toward.
Combined, this metadata allows you to stretch your holiday shopping sales throughout the year, increasing your company’s overall revenue.
Create the best sales using holiday shopping data
Customers expect companies to run good sales during the holiday shopping season. But if you discount everything in your store — including items, like toilet paper or paper towels, that customers will buy whether or not they’re discounted — you could be sending money out the door.
The key to a successful holiday shopping season is to know what to discount and when to run your sales.
Scraping big data can help you get a breakdown of how items are being priced during the holiday season and, more importantly, which items customers seem willing to purchase at full cost and which items they expect to see marked down.
Metadata can also give you insight into the types of items your customers may be prone to purchasing impulsively. This data can help you position these types of items strategically throughout your store and on your website.
Generate competitive pricing with holiday retail data
Pricing products is one of the hardest aspects of running a retail business. Set your prices too high, and you send customers directly to your competitors — but go too low, and you ruin your profit margins.
Many businesses combat this problem by pricing items similar to how other retailers price items. But during the holiday season, that strategy can be put to the test. Different businesses run different sales, and it’s impossible to anticipate — much less replicate — all of them.
Holiday shopping data can tell you what items your target customers are shopping for this holiday season. By knowing what the hottest items in your store are, you can price them competitively and drive consumers to your store and away from your competitors.
Shape holiday retail strategies with smart shopping data
Holiday retail marketing goes beyond the items you’re selling or the prices you’re setting. To make — or exceed — your quota, you have to get customers in the door. And to do that, you need to understand which marketing techniques draw your target consumers’ eyes and entice them to participate.
Data scraping can show you:
- The types of images consumers spend the most time looking at
- The adjectives that are most compelling to your customers
- The social goods that your customers want you to support
All of this information can help you devise a strategic holiday marketing strategy. You can plan:
- A great theme to use for your social media marketing, online marketing, and in-person marketing strategies
- Interesting content to create that will draw new customers to engage with your brand
- Compelling words to use when devising email headlines and social media content
- Shopping trends, including when your consumers tend to be online
How You Can Get Holiday Season Sales Data
The benefits of big data are easy to see. Unfortunately, updated security measures prevent many retailers from getting the holiday retail data they need to make the most of the holiday season.
If your competitors have a way to get big data and you don’t, you’re at an automatic disadvantage. Understanding the barriers in place — and how to get around them — is key to making the most of the big data holiday shopping season.
Barriers to collecting big data
Retail websites are equipped with security measures that are specifically there to prevent the collection of big data, including CAPTCHAs and anti-scraping updates.
Collecting big data can also be difficult for companies that don’t specialize in data collection because it requires scalability. Companies need to have proxy management systems in place, redundant servers, and server management systems to even begin to collect and explore big data.
What you get with Scraping Robot
Scraping Robot removes the headache of collecting big data for the holiday shopping season. We manage servers, scalability, CAPTCHA solving, and more, which allows your company to focus on analyzing collected metadata and using that holiday retail data to make the right marketing decisions for your business.
Scraping Robot makes using the holiday shopping data your scraper collects easy by providing structured JSON output of a parsed website’s metadata. The data is parsed for you, along with usage and stats results, to help you learn everything you can about your target audience’s behavior. Then, you can feed that information directly into your website or database. You won’t need to worry about IP blocks, CAPTCHAs, or managing proxies. Scraping Robot handles these details on your behalf. In addition, they have a reliable support system and 24/7 customer assistance! Scraping Robot also partners with Rayobyte, a reliable and ethical proxy provider, meaning you can rest easy about your proxy usage and management.
Final Words
The holiday shopping season is huge for consumers. But for retailers, the big data holiday shopping season is just as important. They say that “forewarned is forearmed,” and that’s especially true in the fast-paced retail world. By investing in collecting holiday season sales data, you give your business the edge it needs to stay competitive all season long.
You can learn how to advertise your brand, what items to discount, and where to invest your resources when you use Scraping Robot to collect metadata from your target customers. The holiday shopping data we collect will give you new insights into how your target audience interacts with brands like yours. Get in contact with us today!
The information contained within this article, including information posted by official staff, guest-submitted material, message board postings, or other third-party material is presented solely for the purposes of education and furtherance of the knowledge of the reader. All trademarks used in this publication are hereby acknowledged as the property of their respective owners.
