How to Extract Products from Websites
Imagine if you could have access to all of the information from dozens of websites and e-commerce sites that contain information that is valuable to the products you sell. You could easily tell who the least expensive is, where the inventory is, and how others are selling those products. This enables you to change how you market your products or meet customer demands. You can do that when you learn how to extract products from a website.
To extract products from a website, you’ll engage in web scraping. This simple and straightforward process allows you to capture information from other websites, move that data to your tools, and use that information to help your business objectives.
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To scrape data from e-commerce websites, you’ll need to follow several steps. You can use one of the web scraping tools available that are designed to make this process simplistic, or you can build your own. We offer some recommendations on the best web scraping tools for beginners to help you get started. Before getting started, there are several key factors to keep in mind.
Why Do You Want to Scrape Products in the First Place?
There is incredible value in scraping data from the internet. The more information you have, the better you can make decisions. Once you learn how to extract products from a website, you will be able to put this to use for a variety of applications. Consider some of the main benefits of web scraping data like this:
- Capture massive amounts of information you can use for a variety of needs. Web scraping allows you to capture a significant amount of data, including product details, contact information, specifications, features, pricing, and much more quickly. Doing this without tools is nearly impossible because of the time it would take.
- When you scrap e-commerce data, you are not spending a lot of money on research. Web scraping costs tend to be much lower than hiring a company to handle this type of work for you or employing a team to do it. It is affordable and accessible no matter the size of your company.
- You can structure the data in a way that fits your needs. One clear example is to use e-commerce product pages to capture images, specs of products, or pricing information specifically. You can then structure the data in a way that allows you to effectively and efficiently analyze it.
- Real-time monitoring of data is possible. You can scrape e-commerce data just once, but you also have the ability to create an ongoing, real-time monitoring process. That means you can collect data throughout the day, monitor for pricing changes, or look for specific bits of information you need that could change.
- You capture data you cannot get anywhere else. Depending on the way you scrape data, you could obtain data that is not shared elsewhere. If the information you need is only stored on semi-structured web pages without structured APIs or databases, the only way to get this information is by scraping it.
There’s much more:
- Use this information to make decisions for your business, such as better product purchasing or pricing.
- Obtain virtually any type of data, including images, text, JSON, XML, and much more.
- You can handle data from just about any website, even with more complex markup, such as AJAX content and other dynamic websites.
Though you should follow some specific web scraping best practices to ensure you are not violating any legal concerns or engaging in less-than-desirable activity, web scraping products from a website allows you to capture the data you need.
Scrape e-commerce Data You Need: What Type of Data Can Be Scraped?
Crawling e-commerce sites can be one of the best ways to use web scraping today. The wealth of information on these websites enables companies to make better decisions, harness opportunities for improved understanding of customer needs, and answer other questions.
You can scrape virtually any type of data you need. Some of the most commonly sought types include:
- Product details
- Product prices
- Product images
- Descriptions
- Customer reviews
- Seller information
- Pricing strategies
As you learn how to extract products from a website, you’ll be able to tailor the process to capture the specific information you need. You can then use the information you find valuable to help you with creating a competitive analysis. This is the process of capturing data from another competitor and using it to make better decisions for your own products. This information can help you learn:
- The strengths and weaknesses
- Who your market is
- Who your competitors are
- Industry trends
- Benchmarks that can help you grow
When you scrape e-commerce data, you can use it for any specific needs you have. There are no limitations here.
How to Scrape Products from Websites
Now that you know the value of this process, learn how to scrape products from e-commerce sites that can make a big difference in the way you manage your business or make pricing decisions.
We encourage you to check out the Scraping Robot tutorial. It will give you step-by-step instructions on how to scrape data using our free tool. It is by far one of the best resources available to you when you are just getting started.
No matter what tool you decide to use, you’ll find the process involves similar steps. Here’s what you need to know to get started.
A web scraper is a tool designed to capture data quickly and accurately from a web page. There are various tools like this available, and any of them could be helpful (depending on the type of content you wish to scrape).
The web scraping process involves several steps:
- Identify the target website: First, you need to know what information you want to capture, and that often means finding the websites of your competitors or the e-commerce sites you wish to use. Depending on your goals, any e-commerce site could be accessible to you.
- Collect the URLs from the target pages. Your next step is to capture the URLs from the pages you want to scrape. That will inform your tool where to go.
- Make requests to these URLs to get the HTML page. Ultimately, the web scraping tool will use HTML from the page to capture the information you need.
- Use locators to find the information in the HTML. You’ll tell the tool what specific information it should capture. It will then work through the HTML to capture that information and look for the desired codes.
- The data is then saved. This can be saved in a JSON or CSV file, depending on what you need. You can choose other structured formats as well.
It really is that simple to do, especially when you use tools like Scraping Robot to help you.
Common Challenges You May Face When Crawling e-commerce Sites
It is important to state that you should always follow the terms and conditions of the website when it comes to web scraping. Aside from that, there could be some additional concerns and limitations you have during the process.
Dynamic pages
One of the most common causes of concern for web scraping is anti-scraping detection tools. In short, websites want to protect their information and to do so, they may block some tools from accessing the information. This is one of the reasons you will need to use specific web scraping tools for dynamic pages or pages with specific inputs to access information.
Geo-location and other limitations
To extract products from a website, you will need to have access to that website. This is a concern in some areas. For example, an e-commerce company may not allow people from specific countries or areas to access the content. This can limit your ability to capture information if the website can see that you’re in a restricted area.
To get around these problems, use a web proxy. A web proxy can be set up to allow you to block the website from seeing what your location is. For example, you can choose a residential proxy from Rayobyte that allows you to make it seem like the request for the website is coming from a home located within the allowable area. The request is because the proxy is sending that request (and will then send it back to you). Proxies can help you get around CAPTCHAs and other types of anti-bot tools on websites as well.
You Can Get Started on How to Scrape Products from e-commerce Sites Now
Now that you have learned how to extract products from a website, use Scraping Robot to help you get the job done. A fast and easy method for capturing just about any information you need, you can easily use Scraping Robot to see what your competitors are doing. Get started now with a free account, and check out our API.
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