Case Study
External Product Scraper
Need
A large retailer with both brick-and-morter stores and an e-commerce platform has a WordPress blog, on which they frequently link out to their existing products and services. The blog editors would like to be able to easily link out from their blog site to their e-commerce site to link readers with purchasing options, without having to copy and paste titles, copy and paste images, copy and paste descriptions every time.
Solution
I created a custom plugin that scraped HTML from the e-commerce site when given just the URL of a product that editors wanted to link to. Within WordPress, a custom database of products was built up that could be quickly referenced for display within blog posts. Twice a day, the plugin checked the e-commerce site to update prices and stock information.
On the back-end, all the editor had to do was enter in the URL of the product or products they wanted to reference, and everything else was filled in, and updated, automatically.
Results
Connections between the blog and e-commerce site increased dramatically, and editors were no longer required to waste time hunting for product details and copy and pasting. Plus, blog visitors appreciated the accurate, up-to-date information displayed on all pages linking out to products.
