Public Web Data: A Brief Introduction and Key Benefits

This is part of Solutions Review’s Premium Content Series, a collection of contributed columns written by industry experts in maturing software categories. In this submission, Bright Data CEO Or Lenchner offers a brief introduction of public web data and a quick look at some of the key benefits.

When running a business, no matter its size, multiple questions must be addressed. What should you price your products or services? How can you optimize them in real time? Your answers to these and other questions can make all the difference between hitting your target revenues or missing them slightly – or altogether. Any detour may end up costing you.

For example, let’s say you’re planning to release a product that has different capabilities from the products on the market. On the one hand, you don’t want to price it too high and have your target customers turn to other market offers. On the other hand, you don’t want to price it too low and miss your entire target audience or product roadmap.

Benefits of Public Web Data Research

To make sure you price your product just right for your market, you need to utilize web data research. A vast amount of insights can be found on the great, all-knowing resource: the public web. This includes:

• The historical pricing journey of similar products
• The reasons for that pricing strategy
• Consumer or customer reviews regarding the products and their pricing changes
• Sentiments at peak points that indicate the likelihood of your product doing well in a certain market

To get the most out of the web, you only need to be aware of the questions you want to be answered. The data points will then tell you the right story as frequently as you need it and ensure you’re on the right path.

How to Keep Up with Today’s Fast-Paced Market

Since the web matches and exceeds the speed of today’s market, it is very reliable in addressing a volatile market. It reflects other global markets’ changes in real-time that impact your market and can predict similar moves and the way to address them.

For example, the travel industry was heavily impacted by the pandemic. Once several countries started returning to normal, travelers began booking their much-needed vacations – but with one major difference. Since restrictions were still in place and they weren’t the same across all countries, many travelers decided to take short trips, often within their own countries, to avoid complex situations.

What did that mean for the travel industry? Travel websites started focusing on local luxury vacations, offering all-inclusive options and the ability to customize each with special vehicles and meals. They collected public web data on their offerings, local destinations, car rentals, and much more. As a result, these travel sites were able to be agile and flexible in the early wake-up period post-pandemic. They could ensure they appropriately planned their manpower needs and profit margins, at the time when everyone started coming out of the deep freeze.

Knowing Which Questions to Ask First

This invaluable resource – the public web – is always available. However, like any other massive resource, you must know how to utilize it. This means knowing which questions to ask first. These are the ones that will really make a difference in your decision-making.

Let’s look at another example of using public web data. A venture capital firm wanted to invest in a cleaning products company that seemed to be experiencing hyper-growth but first needed to ensure that alongside that growth, there would be significant profitability. Taking a creative data approach, they looked at one of the company’s products which is most commonly used in households: bleach. They reviewed the price of bleach over a certain period, examined the changes made in comparison to the company’s competitors selling the same product, and analyzed the numbers and the product’s popularity. Once they witnessed that consumer demand and the price of bleach kept increasing, they got their answers.

Web data can make strategy-building that much easier, as long as you ask the right questions before building your data points journey alongside it. Yes, the web has all the answers, but navigating through a million data points can be very time-consuming. First, ask yourself the necessary questions that must be answered. Then, think of the data that can guide you through the process.

Basing critical decisions on limited data resources would be a risky maneuver. To get a golden, comprehensive market picture, companies must turn to the web for both real-time and historical data.

The Web Data Revolution

The business world is currently in a web data revolution. Companies across a wide range of sectors – including retail, e-commerce, travel, ESG, and more – are realizing the vastness of public web data that’s available today, and the new world of possibilities it opens up once you collect, index, and analyze it. Organizations are now able to answer questions that were formerly unknowable and receive a full overview of their market unlike ever before.

However, the massive amounts of public web data created daily can be overwhelming, and this should not deter you from your plans. You should make the revolution work for you to ensure you receive critical, time-sensitive answers fast. The know-it-all web is not only there to support you – it is there to ensure that you succeed.