Thanks to groundbreaking inventions of modern Information Technologies (IT), companies in the last two decades have transitioned the majority of business processes into cyberspace. The internet is also full of valuable educational material for using new-age software, and its mastery determines who performs the best in a highly competitive business environment.
Back in the day, researching customer trends, competitor insights, and advertisement opportunities required an entirely different approach. The biggest companies used to succeed largely thanks to a massive initial capital and lack of competitors in the respective market. When one party dominated a specific region, the gatekeeping of information caused a bottleneck in progress. Instead of finding new ways to drive the industry towards growth and improvement, one big party would overwhelm competitors with more money for ads and research, leaving no room for competitors and little desire to improve the product or service.
Fast forward to 2024, cyberspace creates a ton of new opportunities for up-and-coming companies to start developing their business model, utilize marketing opportunities, and learn technical skills to gain market insights without investing a ton of resources. Making informed decisions depends on accurate and comprehensive data, and the web creates opportunities for competitor research and development of technical proficiency to outperform other parties, even if they have more research.
This article covers the best digital solutions for optimizing data collection to gain business insights. Here we will discuss the modern data collection processes with automated tools and the use of proxy servers for reaching peak efficiency during continuous aggregation processes. To succeed in a modern business environment, one must know that all top companies utilize algorithmic automation, and collecting data from targeted websites may prove harder than it looks. For more information on the use of proxy servers, click here. Let’s dive into the basics of digital market research that will help you make accurate decisions in real-time.
Why Businesses need Data Collection
An efficient system for data collection ensures that your company is always deriving insights from sensitive and constantly changing data on competitor websites and social media platforms. For example, by continuously tracking a retailer’s price for a specific product or service, all information can be transformed into a data set and analyzed with updated graphs that help determine market dynamics and understand the behavior of customers and competitors.
If websites provide different information depending on your region, or the site is not available in your country, proxy servers let you choose a different web access point to always have access to various online sources, no matter the localization.
While prices of specific services or monthly subscriptions do not change that often, if your company sells clothing, electronics, travel tickets, and other similar goods, you will encounter extremely competitive retailers with a mastery of price intelligence. Product pricing and quantities are the most common metrics tracked by data collection tools, which lets the company react to changes and adapt their prices to remain the better option in the eyes of a potential client, usually discovered with the help of a search engine.
Best Tools for Data Collection
When we talk about the best tools to gain business insights, there is no better option than Web Scraping. This process automates information extraction by downloading the visited page and transforming its data into a readable format or a data set for further analysis and automation of the next steps.
While the whole ordeal may seem like a simple enough thing with no need for automation, data scrapers have a parser that eliminates the syntax of the HTML code and lets you filter specific parts of the page instead of working with the same document that was rendered on your browser.
This way, with just a few button clicks, data analysts can transform a page into columns of relevant numbers, which help to determine the best adjustments for your product prices, quantities, and even the introduction of new goods and services.
If you want to learn data scraping tools, there is no better stepping stone than Python – the world’s biggest programming language. Even without prior coding experience, you can leverage parsing libraries like Beautiful Soup for the previously mentioned control of HTML (and XML) documents and Scrapy for an effective web crawling framework.
If coding is not your thing, or you want a quick implementation of tools without learning technical skills, Octoparse is another good alternative that lets you extract chosen data while the tool does the rest.
Why Use Proxy Servers?
Proxy servers provide an intermediary connection that separates your company connections, delivered under the main IP address, from the rest of the internet. By including this additional station, businesses can send web scraper connection requests from the same source, but the recipient will only see the information coming from proxy servers.
Data scrapers and proxies go hand-in-hand thanks to their ability to unlock access to any public site with ease. At the same time, by utilizing connections from other geolocations, proxies let you see the localized versions of the internet that would otherwise be unavailable or different.
Ever noticed how search results and recommendations change once you are in a different country? Proxy servers allow data scrapers to change location to see all versions of the internet, unlocking access to all business insights.
Data scrapers send many HTTP connection requests, which can be identified by visited websites and banned. Even if you lose access to a specific site, you can always regain access by connecting to the site with a different proxy IP address.
Conclusion
For an effective collection of business insights, there is no better combination than data scrapers and proxy servers. With unrestricted access to all of the internet’s public corners, data analysts can use hundreds of scrapers to schedule information collection and retrieve insights in real-time. Try learning web scraping today to see instant benefits in your business operations and even your personal life.
