Building Price Scraping Tools: Picking the Best Proxies

Building a price scraper

Just like with anything in life, the more you practice, and the more know-how is gathered, the easier it becomes to be successful at it. At first glance, price scrapers might seem like straightforward and simple tools. Of course, it can be, with the necessary knowledge and resources.

However, businesses have to be cautious that every investment needs to be maintained. The reality is that web scraping mechanism will have to updated, renovated, and adjusted to perform as expected. Hence the initial setup costs could differ from what was anticipated. Additionally, expenses might differ wildly based on the intended targets.

Online stores that have been around for a while understand the value of data extremely well, therefore they will often create roadblocks for price scrapers. These roadblocks will include bot detection algorithms, IP blocks or other tools that can prevent price scraping. Additionally, they will eventually update their bot detection algorithms which adds to the development costs of any price scraper tool.

On the subject of maintenance, a business will need dedicated and experienced professionals to oversee the whole operation. It is another cost that should always be included in the bottom line of this option.

What’s more, creating a process to extract prices from websites might mean that a business needs to monitor thousands of pricing intelligence data points. Some of them will be more challenging to target while some of them might leave the front door wide open. Either way, to collect all the necessary data, bring it under one roof in structured datasets, and to do it effectively business might need senior developers to use price scrapers successfully.

Of course, it is only the costs side. What about the time-consuming tasks on the price scraper, and lack of real-time data when a business needs to react promptly to dynamic pricing changes? Admittedly, this could result in lost revenue.

On the contrary, building an in-house data gathering solution means that a business can set it up as desired. It might take time, and sunk costs at first could be daunting. But as mentioned earlier, with the growing know-how, human capital, and most importantly, essential resources, it is more than achievable, and in a long-term could be a much more viable option.

Hopefully, essential resources caught your attention, as in this case, it is related to proxies. Our Account Manager’s Jonas wise words paint a picture quite accurately.

Choosing proxy providers

The critical point is that it is vital to choose the right proxy provider. Recently, Proxyway published an in-depth market research paper on global proxy service providers, and the report’s performance evaluation section emphasized that it is essential to check proxies for every data source, especially the widely popular ones – no matter whether they offer premium or cheap proxies.

If a business chooses not suitable nor reliable proxies to work with, it will more often than not result in the in-house data retrieval mechanism working unsatisfactorily. In other words, make sure that you fuel business’ data mechanisms engines with the right resources.

Buying the correct tools for web scraping

By now, you should have a decent understanding that price scraping requires immediate, real-time data to adjust pricing tactics and strategies accordingly.

If a company or business that already is practicing web scraping decides to buy a price scraper tool, there is no need to manage the infrastructure in-house. Consequently, this would allow to grab the desired data promptly and focus on the insights instantly.

However, the first hiccup that might scare away the business decision makers is that the price for these tools isn’t on a shy side. Proxy service providers continually invest in these tools, as well as have to cover on-going maintaining costs.

With that being said, the convenience of getting the data that is needed in a hassle-free manner might justify it. Might, because businesses should still be aware that they need to choose a product that provides exact data that they are after. In some cases, it might be impossible to adjust these tools to work as per business’ needs and wants. Hence, companies should look into flexible options, and most importantly think about the next step – in what format the data will be provided, and how effectively the data can be interpreted?

Here at Oxylabs, we have both options covered. In this instance, we would offer E-Commerce Scraper API (part of Web Scraper API).

Our Web Scraper API is an excellent price tracking tool to meet even the most diverse business requirements. The beauty of the API is that it allows to concentrate on pricing data in a required format immediately and take actionable steps to capture consumers’ attention online instead of using business’ resources on scraping prices from websites. One of the significant features is that our Web Scraper API is specifically adapted to extract data from the major markets in the field. For example, visit this guide to scraping Best Buy to see a code sample.

Here’s what our Account Manager Jonas had to add:

Wrapping it all up!

Every experienced e-commerce player will tell you that numbers have a pivotal role to play in their trade. Needless to say, that in order to stay competitive with the ever-growing consumer pricing sensitivity, a business will have to identify those numbers and use them correctly to claim a piece of market share. Using a price scraper is the easiest way to access this share.

However, it all boils down to having the necessary know-how and a robust solution that will allow a business to price scrape efficiently and cost-effectively, which consequently would enable companies to outsmart their competition. Want to know more about how to build a price scraper? Read our Python web scraping tutorial. Lastly, if you are interested in large-scale web scraping tasks, make sure to try our web scraper for free.