Your competitors may have a team of dedicated content writers creating relevant content which is helping them make more sales, get more leads or offer better information to their customers, this is especially true in eCommerce environments.

eCommerce Scraping

Scraping your competitor’s website’s for eCommerce product information is a key part to staying up to date with your competition. Some common information that is scraped for eCommerce is:

• Price
• Weight
• Availability
• Descriptions
• Color
• Images
• Tags

And many more.

For instance, assume that you sell auto parts. If your competitor has better photos or data for an Alternator  it is likely that they will get the sale rather than you. If you have the same quality photos and descriptions (and comparable designs) then you and your competitor are on a level playing field.

The next thing you might want to compare is your prices. You can compare your catalog with your competitor’s product for product to determine where you should raise or lower your prices to capture more sales and more profit on each sale.

Professional Services Website Scraping

Perhaps you’re a Lawyer who covers many areas of law. Another lawyer in another state has a website full of rich content including photos, blog posts and case law. If you scrape this information and make some sensible changes you can also have this great content for your business area.

One Medical firm we worked with was interested in scraping an institution’s website for data on Lasik Eye Surgery as well as tutorial videos on after care.

 Data and Content Scraping

Finally, your business may be data or content driven. Rather than performing hundreds of hours of research scraping particular sites for the information you need might be a better strategy.