Product Scraping

Product scraping could be killing your conversions

What is product scraping and should you be worried?

Product scraping is a modern phenomenon that takes place millions of times a day by millions of people across the globe but very few people talk about it and even fewer know if there is anything that can be done to reduce it.

It generally takes place on a website that offers products for sale, primarily used by visitors of retail websites, but travel, finance and others are not immune. It’s used by visitors to copy the text of a product and paste it back into another tab of their browser to compare pricing or delivery times / costs from other potential vendors.

How does product scraping impact your business?

The problem with product scraping is if it’s done on your site, you are potentially losing not only possible revenue, but you’re also likely to be incurring costs for SEO, PPC and other marketing initiatives to bring people to your site in the first place.

You could then potentially lose these visitors to other businesses right at the point at which their looking to buy. In this sense it is very similar to the techniques the Amazon Assistant has automated to leverage your traffic.

This could also be a possible reason why you may often see visitors looking at your products but never entering the buying funnel or abandoning their shopping basket.

What can you do?

Understanding how often your website is subject to product scraping is the key to identifying what can be done to reduce it.

Just like exit intent functionality we monitor the underlying behaviour and mouse movements to track when products are highlighted and then you can trigger actions to stimulate further engagement, such as discount codes, free delivery, scarcity or urgency messaging.

See how easy it is with this short video.

Using Webtrends Optimize to help with product scraping

With Webtrends Optimize not only can you report on products that are highlighted but also there are many tactics available to deploy that will help reduce it, keep your visitors on your site and increase conversions.

As all of Webtrends Optimize’ functionality is available to all users you can build your own personal strategy to allow you to find the best way to counter product scraping on your site, safe in the knowledge you have the toolkit available to do so. And if you need some help or support with this doing so there are several options we can provide.

Whether AB testing various messages and solutions, personalising those messages to the specific user, or trying out different features such as social proof or product recommendations to engage and prevent the product scraping user from leaving your site, you can find the combination that works best for you and your website.

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Get in touch

If you have more questions or want to know a little more about product scraping, send us a message or call us on 0333 444 5502.

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