Businesses are challenging enough as one has to deal with varying market conditions, customer preferences, and cultural differences. However, these challenges are peculiar to international businesses. Often, businesses seek to solve the next consumer problem or squeeze out the maximum output from their resources.
The modern solution to this endless search for value or competitive advantage is data, and many international businesses are restricted to using online data.
Unfortunately, with the growing popularity of localization of data, it is not rare for such online data to end up behind geo-restrictions. That said, web scraping with a location proxy can help to sidestep these restrictions. This article explains how and why you should execute this process.
How Do Businesses Scrape International Websites
Online data for business analytics is usually large and time-consuming to extract manually. As such, businesses rarely hire the army of people it would take to carry out the task. Rather, they employ tools, chief of which are web scraping tools with a location proxy.
A web scraper is a tool that downloads the HTML content of a website and extracts the data within. This process is usually automatic, but businesses would have to configure the scraper before extraction to collect only relevant data.
However, the large amount of data a business wishes to collect may slow the process. Another possible problem is that the website could block the IP address of the collecting computer because of too frequent scraping requests. For these reasons, web scraping on a location proxy is a better option. That said, here is a simplified procedure of how businesses scrape international websites:
- Select the target website/data source. The first step is for businesses to identify and vet the international websites they intend to scrape.
- Select or build a scraping tool. Next up is the selection of a web scraping software or application. Businesses might build web scrapers from scratch using programming languages (like Python) or commercially source it from a vendor. Either way, it must be configured to extract all relevant data in a form that retains its quality and integrity.
- Select a location proxy. The chosen proxy location must contain a wide enough pool of IP addresses permitted by international websites. Furthermore, the proxies should have low latency connection times and stable/reliable connections.
- Extract the data. Visit the relevant pages of the website and extract all the data needed for analysis.
After the data is collected, it would be cleaned before analysis. In addition, the process should not flaunt any of the terms and regulations of international websites, and the language on the website should be factored in when selecting a web scraping tool.
How Do Web Proxies and Web Scraping Help Leverage Global Business Opportunities
When used together to navigate and scrape international websites, a web scraping tool and location proxy grant businesses access to data. Businesses use this data in the following ways:
- Market research. Businesses analyze obtained data to identify market trends, potential opportunities, and potential competition within new markets.
- Personalization of products and services. Nowadays, customers prefer customized products. Businesses can turn to data to deliver personalized products and services.
- Identification of market entry opportunities and potential collaborations/mergers. Businesses can analyze and monitor the obtained data to identify potentially beneficial strategic partnerships. They can also make informed decisions on the most profitable market entry for their brand.
- Planning pricing strategies. Price comparison and price competition are an integral part of every global business. Both activities are heavily dependent on data and are needed for pricing strategies.
Why Businesses Should Choose Reliable Proxy Providers
Two major factors to consider when choosing a location proxy for an international business are the depth of the IP address pool and the reliability of their service. A web proxy provider with a variety of addresses makes IP rotation more efficient, lessens the risk of an IP block, and facilitates the scalability of data collection from geo-restricted websites.
Reliability, on the other hand, consists of speed, connection stability, and latency. Reduced latency would mean quicker connections, while the speed and connection stability ensure faster, uninterrupted browsing via the proxy. In addition, businesses also appreciate self-customization options and readily available customer support from a good proxy provider.
For example, a United States apparel company looking to expand into the French market would want a scraping tool that helps it easily scrape customer and marketing data but would further appreciate customer support that can guide it through the language barrier. In such a case, a reliable web-scraping tool that deals with different characters would represent a quality option.
Conclusion
Today, data is a goldmine for international businesses. The growing demand for data is why data privacy has become a big deal in recent years. It is why companies are ready to do whatever is necessary to obtain accurate and relevant data. Consumer data is the doorway to global opportunities, and such data is available online for those willing to leverage it for success.
One such way of obtaining this data from remote locations is via web scraping, and this would not be easy if location proxies do not pave the road to the data. The biggest businesses are leveraging these tools and the data they provide to guarantee their global success, and there is no reason why your business should not be doing the same as well.