The global e-commerce sector is a thriving market. Based on eMarketer data, electronic retail sales will hit $6.17 trillion by 2023, with online stores accounting for 22.3% of total retail sales. Among the top performing markets in 2021 are China, the US, the Philippines, Russia, India, and the UK.
Are you planning to establish an online business? Or do you already have a digital store but are worried about your business’ online security due to the proliferation of cyberattacks and other internet crimes? In electronic commerce (e-commerce), ensuring the security of your internet connection should be among your main priorities to protect your investments. One solution for you is to use a residential proxy. This article discusses the benefits of using this tool for businesses.
What is a residential proxy and how does it benefit businesses?
A residential proxy network contains real IP addresses linked to physical locations at a country or a city level. Your internet service provider (ISP) assigns a proxy for you to protect your actual location and identity. When you use a proxy server, web servers will not detect your IP address. Your activity or messages will be routed through an intermediary or proxy server toward its destination website and vice versa.
Hiding your IP address could benefit your business in certain situations, from avoiding anti-bot systems used by online services and search engines to gaining access to blocked content. Let’s look at the reasons why your business should use a residential proxy in detail.
To protect your brand or business
As your business gains success, other entrepreneurs may want to imitate it or deliberately use your brand name, products, and website for their personal gains. Shameless business people usually implement some form of geo-restriction on their sites. They don’t want the companies they’re stealing from to be aware of their wrongdoings. When you use proxy servers, you will be able to detect the counterfeit website and collect the essential data for the legal and technical actions against your counterfeiters.
To gain a competitive advantage by collecting real information from competition websites
Residential proxies have a significant advantage in competitive intelligence, particularly in collecting data from your competitors. Major electronic commerce firms and online services providers like Amazon, eBay, Hulu, and Netflix use tools to block requests from data center proxies to protect their businesses. When you use a residential proxy, you can send numerous requests to competing websites from different IP addresses to avoid entering a blocklist.
To aggregate data from multiple sources for on-demand data collection and evaluation
In a competitive market environment, with the proliferation of big data, you need to maintain an updated database of aggregated content to monitor things like the prices of goods in real-time. When you use your actual IP address for this activity, the anti-bot tools by the e-commerce websites you track will likely restrict your access. But with a residential proxy, you will be able to bypass the mechanisms and gather the data you need.
To access local promotions based on geographical locations and achieve savings
When using a residential proxy server, you can access promotions by hotels, airlines, and other businesses in different countries and activate them to secure potential savings. This also helps when you’re trying to source for products and suppliers display different prices based on regions. Just use a proxy server in the country where the promotions are available and start making wiser financial decisions!
To conduct website testing and performance monitoring
During your website development process, you can use residential proxies to test your site’s performance by sending requests using different residential IP addresses. You can also use the proxies to assess the features of your website.
To maximize your marketing and advertising campaigns
When launching advertising and marketing programs, you can use a residential proxy to check the visibility of your digital ads and how they perform in search results from a specific area. You can also utilize proxies to monitor the performance of your website in local search engine results.
Final thoughts
Using residential proxies can benefit your business in many ways. However, to maximize the benefits of proxies, you need to choose the best one for your specific business needs. You can compare several reputable providers to guide your decision-making. Remember, a suitable proxy will help open the right doors.