Price-aggregators vs websites: what is the best source for collecting product data?

How to effectively control prices on the Internet? Where to get information about products of interest? How to systematically collect reliable product data? Sooner or later these questions arise for manufacturers, suppliers and owners of websites who have decided to establish a price monitoring system for their products.

We can say with confidence that the most important process of tracking products on the Internet is the collection of data on price, assortment, availability in websites and promotions.

There are two sources of information:

• price-aggregators;
• websites.

Next we will consider all the advantages and disadvantages of each of these resources, as a result we will determine which one is the most effective and reliable.

What are price-aggregators?

Price-aggregator is an online advertising platform that presents the products of various websites. In fact this is an electronic catalog where all the necessary information for the buyer is located: photos, price, basic characteristics, availability in specific websites, reviews.

For consumers price platforms are convenient and easy to use, in recent years they are gaining more and more popularity around the world. And this is not surprising! It is much more convenient for the buyer to go to the Internet site and in one place to get acquainted with offers from different websites instead of switching from site to site spending a lot of time.

What principle do they work on?

It is important to understand that price platforms are not sold directly, they only collect and organize data. Then the question arises: how do they earn? Everything is very simple: due to monetization. Websites pay them for accommodation or traffic. And the greater the number of clicks the greater the number of potential customers attracted to the site. That is why in order to conduct a competitive business websites sell their products not only on them sites but also on similar trading floors.

Advantages of collecting data from price aggregators:

•  free way to monitor websites;
•  convenience and ease of use;
•  for websites this is an opportunity in one place to track the main competitors;
•  you can view the current offers of a particular website.

Disadvantages:

•  processing takes a lot of time;
•  not all websites place their products on price platforms;
•  often unreliable prices;
•  lack of benchmarking for shopping;
•  difficulties in tracking stocks as all information is “behind” in time;
•  a large amount of "manual" work.

Monitoring product prices directly from websites

Unlike collecting data from trading floors this method is the most reliable and accurate. You can analyze the data manually as well as using automatic services. It is worth pointing out that the “manual method” is time consuming, in addition you will have to use an individual employee who must carefully analyze hundreds of websites every day. On the other hand an automatic monitoring method is the most effective. It allows you to regularly receive current data in a format convenient for you.

It should be noted that the analysis of data directly from websites is practically devoid of all the shortcomings that the price sites have. Consider the advantages and disadvantages of automatic monitoring directly from websites.

Advantages:

•  high speed monitoring and data quality;
•  it is possible to track the range of products and promos;
•  the whole process of data collection occurs automatically;
•  the ability to track all websites with the necessary products;
•  elimination of errors due to the "human factor";
•  all data in a convenient format.

Disadvantages:

•  the use of automatic programs is paid;
•  in rare cases sites block automatic parsers blocking data collection, but this is an uncritical problem because modern programs have learned to circumvent such defenses.

So, to summarize

Using price aggregators to compare prices is more suitable for consumers. In order to select a specific product for a potential buyer, the information offered by trading platforms is quite enough. In addition, they are simple and intuitive to use.test

But for suppliers, distributors and websites this source for monitoring prices is not the best option. It is important to note the fact that price-aggregators are primarily advertising platforms so they do not take into account a large number of sites. Price information is rarely updated (the interval can be even 7-10 days!) therefore it is often irrelevant. As a result data from these services is completely useless. For regular and complete analysis of prices in the Internet space you need to track prices directly from the websites and the professional program for monitoring prices Z-PRICE will help you in it.