Why Should You Scrape Customer Reviews?

Just like a vehicle tire leaves an imprint in the mud which can be washed away only by a great storm or rainfall, an impression leaves an impact on a product which then becomes the formatting foundation of an opinion that can not be altered easily. For this simple reason, creating an interesting, positive, and captivating impression on your customers will go a long way for your business's success and overall reputation.

Thanks to the internet - customer reviews, which are basically the text format of different impressions and opinions about a product, almost every business can monitor their reputation, develop various analyses, and build trust upon them. Keeping up with what your customers are saying does not only harvest the previously mentioned benefits but also by making it visible to the customers that they are heard and acknowledged, builds loyalty which can last even in the lowest phases of a business.

Customer reviews also work as filters. Since almost everyone seeks out opinions, recommendations, testimonials, and reviews before choosing or committing to a product; therefore, either approving or disapproving their own impressions or gaining a completely brand new look on a specific product. It is a way for potential customers to filter out businesses that have a terrible reputation, even cases of fraud when a certain business misleads the public for personal gain. In many cases, it can be seen regarding sustainability claims.

As we have established, customer reviews are important - extremely important. However, they are only as valuable as their practical implications in business processes. The usage spectrum of customer reviews is quite large, and time after time businesses find new ways of gaining extra momentum, a more astonishing way of absorbing every positive aspect of their customer opinions. The most popular and practical implications are:

• Analyses;
• Monitoring;
• Development;
• Social profiling.

Analyses.

Simple read-through, or text-based sentiment analysis to understand the overall attitude of the customers to a specific product is a primitive must. However, that is not all that can be analyzed through customer reviews. In fact, market research can be maximized with the usage of customer reviews. One of the aspects of market research includes the changing attitudes of a specific industry; therefore, collecting “potential competitor” customer reviews, an over-period customer analysis can give a great insight into whether the market is in its rise or fall period. Also, customer reviews, of course, are an enormous part of marketing analysis. When, for example, creating a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis, customer reviews alone can provide essential insights into businesses' strengths and weaknesses.

Monitoring.

When it comes to opinions and impressions, sometimes it is important and quite insightful to acknowledge what people are saying about, not only your own products but also about competitors' products. In many cases by comparing the two positions, many businesses are able to pinpoint their unique selling point/-s (USP) which then play an enormous role in further development and growth. Apart from customer reviews helping to recognize unique selling point/-s and other useful information, as mentioned previously, it is important to keep monitoring the customer reviews for the purpose of keeping up with the opinions. And also, together with development - create trust and loyalty within.

Development.

Resonating with analyses and monitoring, major developments are mostly acknowledged and done on the basis of customer reviews and opinions. It is fair to say that most companies have created their product to serve a need for something, for people - potential customer markets; therefore, customers are the first to suggest any changes, discuss improvements, and also, are not shy to speak about inconsistencies or aspects that the product is not fulfilling. Criticism is only bad if not acknowledged; therefore, even the negative comments can have a certain positive output.

Social profiling.

Fitting in the sphere of marketing - customer reviews are important for building your social profile. For a reason, numerous companies have dedicated a section of their, for example, landing page to display various customer reviews. It all resonates back to building trust and social profile that the business is looking to be perceived as, and thanks to customer reviews, this perception can be strengthened, and loyalty built. Social proof itself is a psychological and social phenomenon that describes the process of people's instinct to follow the actions of others, considering that it builds trust and credibility.

However, when dealing with opinions and reviews, one or two, are not enough to even briefly judge a product or a whole concept. Therefore, being able to collect as many customer reviews as possible will ensure that the sample size for any business research or analysis is not too small. This is where scraping comes in handy. One should hire an entire “customer reviews gathering” team to manually collect enough data; however, with web scraping it takes only one person, and potentially only a few minutes to collect enough data to yield more accurate insights.

In conclusion, customer reviews can help to gain great advantages and advancements, and applying web scraping technologies one should never worry about too small of sample size or the process taking ages. A great way to enhance, advance, and keep efficient at the same time.

Happy scraping!