With sensational innovations in Information Technologies (IT) over the last 3 decades, e-commerce has become the focal point of all business activities. With billions of potential clients reachable over the Internet, we have a lot more diverse, but fiercely competitive business landscape.
There is no denying that IT and E-commerce have changed business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-client (B2C) interactions for the better, as the exponential growth of numerous industries has never been seen before in history. For example, thanks to Google and other powerful search engines, internet users can find any desired information with just a few clicks, which is perfect for clients searching for the best provider of desired goods and services. This gives companies a way to compete against giants in the marketing department with investments into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – a strategy that helps increase the visibility of a page in the results pages.
If competing against established brands in SEO is too difficult, search engines also display different results based on the user’s location, so there are still ways to reach potential customers in local markets. If that does not yield results, social media and influencer marketing have been incredibly effective ways for up-and-coming businesses to not only put their name on the map but also build long-lasting B2C relationships with more interactions with the desired demographic.
The point is, no matter how competitive a company has to be to achieve E-commerce success in 2024, the environment itself drives progress. Those that work smart and hard are more likely to succeed. With that in mind, we can observe a trend of modern businesses utilizing residential proxy servers – versatile privacy tools that offer significant benefits to various e-commerce operations.
In this article, we will cover the use of residential proxy servers and their indispensable role in achieving e-commerce success. Keep reading to learn more about the diverse advantages of intermediary connections in online business interactions.
Safety comes first
When e-commerce businesses start attracting real user traffic to their online platforms, the increase in popularity also attracts trouble. Companies, especially those whose products and services have nothing to do with IT, often leave security vulnerabilities which get exploited by cybercriminals.
Residential proxy servers can protect the employees and the platform itself with different configurations. On e-commerce platforms, a reverse proxy setup accepts the incoming traffic through the remote server instead. This way, the connection can be directed to an appropriate back server, while suspicious connections get blocked without excessive load on the platform. Meanwhile, workers on data-sensitive tasks with residential proxy servers hide the company IP address from malicious third parties.
Analyzing Market Intelligence
Knowing your opponent is the key to making the best possible moves ahead of time, and this motto is especially true in a digital business environment. Thanks to easy access to public data, the value of information collection has never been higher, hence requiring continuous and unrestricted extraction of competitor insights.
Data scraping is the main method of capturing market insights, not just from competitors, but also from various social platforms, forums, review sites – any pages of interest. Scrapers are automated software tools that extract information from desired pages and organize them into a readable and understandable format. This includes the real-time following of competitor pricing strategies and the sensitivity of their changes, the appearance of discount deals, the frequency of posts on social platforms, and collaborations with influencers.
Unfortunately, web scraping is a very resource-intensive process that sends too many connection requests to a target of your choice. Recipients can distinguish a real user connection from a web scraper based on two things:
- User-agent: A block of information in the HTTP request which shows the sender’s browser version and the Operating System
- Rate-limiting: A protection technique that limits the amount of connection requests originating from the same IP address.
While the user-agent issue is easy to fix, and a user-agent switcher is often built into data scraping tools, automated data collection flares up the rate-limiting algorithm, which can even lead to your IP address getting blocked on the platform.
Thankfully, the demand for residential proxy services often revolves around troubles encountered during web scraping. The best proxy providers have millions of residential IP addresses at their disposal, allowing web scrapers to continue their work without interruptions.
Most suppliers offer various kinds of rotation options which circumvent the issue of rate-limiting. The user can pick a specific time interval or several connections before one proxy IP is swapped with another. This way, businesses use multiple data scrapers at the same time without getting blocked, and there is always a possibility to scale up even more.
With key issues eliminated, web scrapers can get all relevant information on competitors, and even set up alerts when a competitor is changing prices on specific products or services.
Multi-Accounting
E-commerce companies dedicate a lot of their success to smart investments in growing their presence on social media platforms and other relevant pages with control of multiple accounts. While social media marketing still depends on paid ads for exposure, multi-accounting helps to grow pages and engage with customers to imitate a vibrant community. With automated tools, the control over multiple accounts keeps up the engagement with the brand and its resources, resulting in more visibility to other users and a consistent presence around desired demographics.
Residential proxy servers are crucial tools for multi-accounting, as most social platforms restrict accounts originating from the same public IP address. By routing these connections to intermediary servers, with digital identities of real residential users, e-commerce specialists create the most believable disguises that blend into the community and the targeted customer base.
Summary
While there is no denying that IT solutions have revolutionized the business environment and its interactions, modern companies still need to work hard and use digital resources well to keep up with industry giants. That being said, competition is good, as it bridged the gap between rich companies and talented newcomers, allowing real e-commerce experts to leave their mark on the world.