Price Monitoring
Tags: webscraping, json, programming, tutorial
Published: 2022-11-25 10:55:15

<p class="c1"><span class="c8">If you&rsquo;re in any way involved in the ecommerce industry, you&rsquo;ll know the pain &ndash; with retailers implementing tons of price changes daily, it&rsquo;s nearly impossible to keep up. To stay in the loop, you have to monitor prices or additional data like shipping costs or product availability. Luckily, automated web scraping solution providers like Oxylabs are here to save you by helping you gather public data on a large-scale. Yet, there are some issues you may face in the meantime &ndash; let&rsquo;s take a look at them and possible solutions. &nbsp;</span></p><ol class="c10 lst-kix_cqrsiioorznj-0 start" start="1"><li class="c3 li-bullet-0"><h2 id="h.tpdfcxvg3ypu" style="display:inline"><span class="c13 c18">Adapting to layout changes</span></h2></li></ol><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c9"></span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Website layouts highly vary from page to page. Different e-commerce sites store product pricing information in different locations, making it complicated to automatically extract prices from product pages, especially if the layouts change constantly.</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span style="overflow: hidden; display: inline-block; margin: 0.00px 0.00px; border: 0.00px solid #000000; transform: rotate(0.00rad) translateZ(0px); -webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad) translateZ(0px); width: 431.50px; height: 377.56px;"><img alt="" src="images/image1.png" style="width: 431.50px; height: 377.56px; margin-left: 0.00px; margin-top: 0.00px; transform: rotate(0.00rad) translateZ(0px); -webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad) translateZ(0px);" title=""></span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p>
![json price monitoring](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/utafizygkzwb18qdz73x.png)<p class="c1"><span class="c5">Possible risks</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Usually, a parser cannot adapt to different website layouts so may need to develop parsers for every single page they want to extract data from. And yet, websites tend to change their existing layouts so you&rsquo;ll have to take care of your parser. </span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">How can we help?</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c8">Oxylabs providers already </span><span class="c0">parsed data in JSON format. Next-Gen Residential Proxies, for example, have an adaptive parsing feature that finds product pricing information regardless of the website layout. E-Commerce Scraper API has an implemented e-commerce parser. Both solutions save companies development time and costs.</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><ol class="c10 lst-kix_cqrsiioorznj-0" start="2"><li class="c3 li-bullet-0"><h2 id="h.1i7lo9375iga" style="display:inline"><span class="c18 c13">Collecting pricing data on a large scale</span></h2></li></ol><p class="c1"><span class="c0">The e-commerce market is dynamic. During sale peak times, pricing information may change even several times a day. Gathering fresh and accurate information requires tools that can collect large scale data whenever needed. It&#39;s one of the most common price tracking challenges but advanced data collection tools can help you there.</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">Possible risks</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Depending on seasons, sales, and other factors, sometimes prices change more frequently. Then price scraping intensifies, as you need up-to-date information. </span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">How can we help?</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Oxylabs products allow changing the scale of scraping, depending on what you need at the moment. You can collect as many competitors&#39; prices as required, and be sure that your data is still relevant.</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><ol class="c10 lst-kix_cqrsiioorznj-0" start="3"><li class="c3 li-bullet-0"><h2 id="h.bkcaej6kcqdw" style="display:inline"><span class="c18 c13">Getting geo-location based prices</span></h2></li></ol><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c5"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Pricing information varies on different websites, and sometimes depends on geographic location. Even the same product might be sold for different prices depending on a country or currency. So, it goes without saying that you may find it difficult to access data that&rsquo;s only available in a particular city/country. </span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">Possible risks</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">The largest e-commerce sites usually provide information based on IP addresses&rsquo; location. This way, they make their pricing different for visitors from other countries, which means that in order to collect accurate prices, you&rsquo;ll need to use high-quality proxies.</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">How can we help?</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Oxylabs&rsquo; offers proxies in all countries with city-level targeting. So, you&rsquo;ll be able to access data regardless of your physical location. </span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><h2 class="c20" id="h.xc7u7b24x3fu"><span class="c12">Choose Next-Gen Residential Proxies or E-Commerce Scraper API for price monitoring</span></h2><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c9"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c8">You&rsquo;ve got two possible solutions for scraping publicly-available pricing data. Check out their features to decide which one works best for you.</span></p><h3 class="c21" id="h.6ge56zt3fczp"><span class="c11">Next-Gen Residential Proxies</span></h3><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Next-Gen Residential Proxies is an AI-powered solution that shortens the path between data gathering and data analysis.</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><ul class="c10 lst-kix_eioencumhbhp-0 start"><li class="c1 c4 li-bullet-0"><span class="c0">Extract public pricing data regardless of website design</span></li><li class="c1 c4 li-bullet-0"><span class="c0">Collect information without blocks or CAPTCHAs </span></li><li class="c1 c4 li-bullet-0"><span class="c0">Monitor prices around the globe</span></li></ul><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">Added benefits of Next-Gen Residential Proxies</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c5"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">Adaptive parsing</span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Receive parsed price information from any product page. </span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">Wide location coverage</span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Scrape public data from any desired region. </span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c13">Auto-retry system</span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">The system does not give up until requests are successful. </span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><h3 class="c21" id="h.i5yyiz1v8e26"><span class="c11">E-Commerce Scraper API</span></h3><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c9"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Access accurate product data from the top 50 e-commerce marketplaces or standalone shops.</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><ul class="c10 lst-kix_h2avvtapbecr-0 start"><li class="c1 c4 li-bullet-0"><span class="c0">Pay only for successfully delivered results</span></li><li class="c1 c4 li-bullet-0"><span class="c0">Get real-time highly-localized product data</span></li><li class="c1 c4 li-bullet-0"><span class="c0">Collect pricing information at large scale</span></li></ul><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">Added benefits of E-Commerce Scraper API</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">Structured results in JSON format</span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Receive ready-to-use, structured data in JSON format.</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">Zero maintenance</span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Forget IP blocks and CAPTCHAs,</span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c5">Highly scalable and customizable</span></p><p class="c1"><span class="c0">Easy to integrate, supports high volume of requests. </span></p><p class="c1 c2"><span class="c0"></span></p><h2 class="c14" id="h.1v5ixk6ugfbb"><span class="c12">All in all </span></h2><p class="c1"><span class="c8">If you found this post interesting, please give it a like &ndash; it would mean a lot to me. Also, feel free to ask any price-monitoring related questions in the comment section! </span></p></body></html>