The importance of extracting information from the web is becoming increasingly loud and clear. Every few weeks, I realize myself in a situation where we need to extract information from the web to create a machine learning model. We have to pull or extract a large amount of information from websites and we would like to do it as quickly as possible. How would we do it without manually going to every web site and getting the data? Web Scraping simply makes this job easier and faster.

Why is web scraping needed?

Web scraping is used to collect large information from websites. But why does someone have to collect such large data from websites? Let’s look at the applications of web scraping: 

1. Price Comparison: Services such as ParseHub use web scraping to collect data from online shopping websites and use it to compare the prices of products.
2. Social Media Scraping: Web scraping is used to collect data from Social Media websites such as Twitter to find out what’s trending.
3. Email address gathering: Many companies that use email as a medium for marketing, use web scraping to collect email ID and then send bulk emails.
4. Research and Development: Web scraping is used to collect a large set of data (Statistics, General Information, Temperature, etc.) from websites, which are analyzed and used to carry out Surveys or for R&D.
5. Job listings: Details regarding job openings, interviews are collected from different websites and then listed in one place so that it is easily accessible to the user.

Web scraping is an automated method used to extract large amounts of data from websites. The data on the websites are unstructured. Web scraping helps collect these unstructured data and store it in a structured form. There are different ways to scrape websites such as online Services, APIs or writing your own code.

Why Python is best for Web Scraping

Features of Python which makes it more suitable for web scraping:

1. Ease of Use: Python is simple to code. You do not have to add semi-colons “;” or curly-braces “{}” anywhere. This makes it less messy and easy to use.
2. Large Collection of Libraries: Python has a huge collection of libraries such as Numpy, Matlplotlib, Pandas etc., which provides methods and services for various purposes. Hence, it is suitable for web scraping and for further manipulation of extracted data.
3. Dynamically typed: In Python, you don’t have to define datatypes for variables, you can directly use the variables wherever required. This saves time and makes your job faster.
4. Easily Understandable Syntax: Python syntax is easily understandable mainly because reading a Python code is very similar to reading a statement in English. It is expressive and easily readable, and the indentation used in Python also helps the user to differentiate between different scope/blocks in the code.
5. Small code, large task: Web scraping is used to save time. But what’s the use if you spend more time writing the code? Well, you don’t have to. In Python, you can write small codes to do large tasks. Hence, you save time even while writing the code.
6. Community: What if you get stuck while writing the code? You don’t have to worry. Python community has one of the biggest and most active communities, where you can seek help from.

How does web scraping work

To extract data using web scraping with python, you need to follow these basic steps:

1. Find the URL that you want to scrape
2. Inspecting the Page
3. Find the data you want to extract
4. Write the code
5. Run the code and extract the data
6. Store the data in the required format

Example: Scraping a website to get product details

Pre-requisite:

• Python 2.x or Python 3.x
• Selenium Library
• BeautifulSoup Library
• Pandas Library

1. We are going scrape online shopping website to extract the Price, Name, and rating of products, go to products URL
2. The data is usually nested in tags. So, we inspect the page to examine, under which tag the information we would like to scrape is nested. To inspect the page, just right click on the element and click on “Inspect”. When you click on the “Inspect” tab, you will see a “Browser Inspector Box” open.
3. Let’s extract the Price, Name, and Rating which is nested in the “div” tag respectively.
4. Write code:

#Let us import all the necessary libraries

from selenium import webdriver

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulSoup

import pandas as pd

driver = webdriver.Chrome("/usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromedriver")

products=[] #List to store name of the product

prices=[] #List to store price of the product

ratings=[] #List to store rating of the product

driver.get("Product_URL")

content = driver.page_source

soup = BeautifulSoup(content)

for a in soup.findAll('a',href=True, attrs={'class':'.…'}):

name=a.find('div', attrs={'class': '….'})

price=a.find('div', attrs={'class':'….'})

rating=a.find('div', attrs={'class':'….'})

products.append(name.text)

ratings.append(rating.text)

df = pd.DataFrame({'Product Name':products,'Price':prices,'Rating':ratings})

df.to_csv('products.csv', index=False, encoding='utf-8')

To run the code, a file name “products.csv” is created and this file contains the extracted data.

Something about Website Design

Every satisfied customer on every website starts in the hands of a experienced web designer. This professional has the ability to capture the client’s vision, bring the design elements to life, and ultimately create a website that appeals to consumers. This is not easy task since it involves both creative and technical abilities, so a top web designer is experienced in many different disciplines. 

Likewise, an in-demand website designer will also have insights into the business and marketing worlds to understand how a website can meet a client’s needs, convey their brand, and help embrace new customers online. This knowledge is used to maximize things like lead generation and overall engagement levels.

Web Design vs. Web Development In A Nutshell

In essence, web design refers to both the aesthetic portion of the website and it’s usability. Web designers use various design programs such as Adobe Photoshop to create the layout and other visual elements of the website. Web Developers on the other hand, take a website design and actually make a functioning website from it. Web developers use HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and other programming languages to bring to life the design files. 

Web Design – A Closer Look

Web designers must always begin by considering a client’s website objectives and then move on to an Information Architecture (IA) to set a website’s information hierarchy and help guide the design process. Next, web designers can start creating wireframes and finally move to the design stage. Web designers may use several basic design principles to achieve an aesthetically pleasing layout which also offers excellent user experience.

Design Principles

Balance – It’s important for web designers to create a balanced layout. In web design we refer to heavy (large and dark colors) and light (small and lighter colors) elements. Using the correct proportion of each is critical to achieving a balanced website design.

Contrast– In color theory, contrasting colors are ones placed opposite one another on the color wheel (see also complementary colors). Web design offers a few other areas where contrast is applicable. Designers look at contrasting sizes, textures and shapes to define and draw attention to certain sections of the website.

Emphasis– We touched on this a bit when discussing contrast. Emphasis is a design principles founded in the intentional “highlighting” of certain important elements of the website layout. It’s important to note that if you emphasize everything on the page you end up emphasizing nothing. Imagine a page in a book where 80% of the content is highlighted in yellow…does anything really stand out? This is the time to take a look at that Information Architecture for direction.

Consistency – Also called repetition or rhythm, consistency is a critical web design principle. For example, clean and consistent navigation provides the best user experience for your website visitors.

Unity – Unity is the relationship between the various parts of the website layout and the composition as a whole. Based in the Gestalt theory, unity deals with how the human brain visually organizes information by grouping elements into categories.

Web Development – A Closer Look

Web developers, sometimes called programmers, take the design created and build a fully functioning website. To put it (very) simply, think of the design as a non-interactive “picture” of a website. Developers take that design and break it up into it’s components. They then either use just HTML or a more dynamic approach incorporating programming languages such as PHP to develop the various website pages. More advanced web developers may choose to utilize a Content Management System (CMS) like WordPress or Joomla in order to streamline development and allow clients an easy way to maintain and update their website.

Web developers may convert a static layout into a dynamic website by using image and content sliders, active states for links and buttons, and other interactive elements.

Defining your project and writing a perfect job description

It pays to do a little bit of homework before hiring a web designer since it can have a drastic effect on the overall price and the quality received. For example, a simple website without any large customizations can be launched with a pre-made theme at a minimal cost. This may not be suitable for websites anticipating lots of custom layouts and/or extensive traffic, so it’s good to know up front what type of designer will be required or if you’ll also need a developer.

Web Design Job Post Template

Take a look at an example web design project description. Keep in mind that many people use the term “job description,” but a full job description is only needed for employees. When attracting a freelancer as an independent contractor, you typically just need a requirement of work, job post, or any other document that describes the work to be done.

<Project Title>

Project Overview

ABC Company is looking for a web designer to create a custom theme for our e-commerce store. This project will be to create a responsive, mobile-friendly design.

Deliverables include:

Mock-ups for each page of e-commerce site (approximately 20 pages)

Custom navigation and HTML elements

Graphics integrated into two homepage carousels (12 images total)

Setup of online shopping basket

Deadline for deliverables:

All tasks must be completed by <date>.

This project requires the following skills:

Expertise working with <design software>, <mobile/responsive framework>, <Adobe Photoshop>, or <CMS template builder>

E-commerce experience is a plus

Understands responsive design

The work will also require a great view for detail and preliminary retail experience, preferably in the electronics/automation industry. We would like to begin this project no later than <date>, so we plan on hiring a candidate by the end of the week.

Analyzing Web Designer Profiles & Portfolios and Hiring Freelancer

After posting a detailed, well-thought-out project description that defines what you’ll need from your web designer, it’s time to start analyzing proposals. How do you select the top talented designer for your project?

Experience, Smartness & Work

When it comes to finding the top talented web designer, start by reviewing for portfolio samples that match your requirement. Be sure to ask freelancers about their experience with other facets of design as well, and consider the overall goal for the website being built. 

Finally, it’s important to verify that a web designer understands the brand in question and its overall goals online. A qualified professional will be able to give a list of any expected obstacles, plus estimate the amount of time the project will take and the total cost. Since complex website projects could require months to complete, a good working relationship is essential.

With the right freelance web designer, you can end up with a finished product that brings your vision to life. Just take the time to create a detailed project description, review each freelancer’s proposal and portfolio, and ask them a few web design interview questions to determine if they’re the right fit for the project.

Kind words are worth much and cost little. This creates opportunity: when you can’t out-spend the competition, the solution is to out-support them.

Here are 14 tips from the support documentation of world leaders in providing best customer service. I hope these will help you in improving your customer service.

1. Practice sympathy, Patience, and Consistency: Some of your customers will be full of queries, some just chatty, and others plain mad. You must be ready to handle all of them and provide the same level of service every time.
2. Good customer Service may be a Continuous Learning process: Every customer is unique and each support situation is totally different. In order to handle surprises, sense a customer’s mood, address new challenges consequently, you've got to be willing to stay learning. Strive to have a deep understanding of your customer’s challenges and still search for better ways to deal with them.
3. Train customer service agent for understanding product detail: The training and development program must cover all aspects of how to deal with issues, talk to customers, and resolve problems.  Apart from that, your team should believe in and understand your product before they are sent out with the task of pacifying a customer. If your team does not know the product or the service well enough, then they will not have enough knowledge to tackle an issue.
4. Solving a problem as soon as possible: When customers complain, your team must acknowledge the issue quickly and try to resolve it timely.
5. Use technology to assist them: Customer support can only be performed accurately if we mix the technology with the humanistic approach.
6. Add live chat to your website: Live chat can help your customer support team to interact with the customer in depth so that the customer can get resolved his queries easily.
7. Use customer service templates: It’s important to keep your standards high and your response times low. Don’t waste keyboard strokes for every basic and common question. Build professional templates so you can respond to customer with ease and professionalism.
8. Maintain a positive attitude: It is very important that your team keep a positive and bright attitude when managing your customers. If you maintain an accommodating and inviting attitude, then you will easily avoid conflicts.
9. Apologize for any inconvenience: Whatever the issue, and whatever role your company played in the issue, you need to apologize to the customer. If the consumer’s credit card did not work, tell them you’re sorry for their inconvenience or that it happened.
10. Listen to your customer: One of the simplest ways in which to serve your customer is by listening to them from the beginning. Most customers contact or reach bent on your support team to when they want to convey a message or a problem. Therefore, the first and most important thing you can do is to hear them out completely.
11. Never say “I don’t know”: When your team represents your business, they need to speak as if the business itself is speaking. So, once an executive says “no”, Customer instantly diminishes the value of your business. “No” isn't an answer. If a customer is facing a difficulty, then your team should try and resolve it, one way or another.
12. Admit your mistakes: If you mess up, admit it, even if you discover your mistakes before your customers do. Admitting you messed up builds trust and restores your customer’s confidence in your service. It also allows you to control the situation, re-focus the customer’s attention, and fix the problem.
13. Follow up after a problem is solved: Follow up with your customers to ensure their issues were resolved properly and that they were satisfied with the service. Give them a call, send them an email etc.
14. Always close conversations correctly: Every conversation you close with a customer should end with you saying “Is there anything else I can do for you today? I’m happy to help!”

Everyone should be feeling the customer’s pain points. When your whole company is encouraged to be involved in customer service, knowledge of problems, bugs, and features becomes illuminated for the entire team. There’s no faster way to make improvements that drive your business forward.