To know whether your prices are competitive, someone has to keep opening other stores’ websites and copying numbers into a spreadsheet. With a dozen products that’s bearable. With hundreds, checking by hand takes days and still lags behind reality. This work can be handed to a program — and that’s called parsing.
What parsing is
Parsing (also called scraping) means automatically collecting information from web pages. A program opens the pages you need, finds the product name, price, availability or other data and puts it all into a convenient table. In essence, it does what a person with a browser does — only fast, without mistakes and on a schedule.
What you can track
- Competitor prices for the same or similar products — and how they change over time.
- Range: what’s new and what has been taken off sale.
- Availability: who has run out — exactly when your offer is most relevant.
- Promotions and discounts that competitors launch on their websites.
- Supplier catalogues: current prices and stock, so you don’t update them by hand.
How it works in practice
- List of sources. You decide which websites and products matter and how to match them with your catalogue.
- Scheduled collection. The parser runs automatically — for example, every morning or several times a day.
- Result. Data is exported to Excel or Google Sheets, or straight into your CRM. If you like, you can get a notification when a competitor’s price changes.
The most important stage is the first one: matching products correctly. A competitor may list the same kettle under a different name or with a different SKU (product code). So at the start we set up matching rules together with you, so the table compares truly identical items, not just ones with similar names.
What to do with the data
Numbers on their own change nothing — what matters is the decisions you make based on them. You can adjust prices on key items in time, see where you’re more expensive for no reason and where you have room. You can notice that a competitor has dropped a product and push your ads for exactly that one. The point is that you’re looking at the current picture, not a week-old spreadsheet.
Responsible use
Parsing should be fair. We collect only public data — what any visitor sees on a website without logging in. We respect websites’ rules and don’t overload them with frequent requests. And we don’t collect personal data: people’s names, phone numbers and emails are not what such a project is about.
What it costs
The price depends on the number of websites, how complex their structure is and where the results should go. Simple collection from a few sources into a spreadsheet is the quickest option. CRM integration or change alerts add a bit of work.
Data parsing with ORBITA starts from 5,000 ₴ and takes 2–5 days: collecting prices and products, scheduled updates, export to Excel or a CRM. The price is fixed in the contract, and the parser’s code belongs to you. Tell us who and what you want to keep an eye on — at a free audit we’ll suggest the simplest solution.
