Having a well-designed and functional website is crucial for a business. Sure, you can avail the services of an SEO agency to get it optimized, but does it end there? There are so many tasks that need to be done on the web like clicking, typing, testing, etc. Additionally, even during the website creation phase, there are so many manual tasks that it can become quite tedious and time-consuming to do all of them.
This is where web automation comes in, which aims to automate all the tasks done on the web through software bots. This helps streamline and save time for a lot of businesses. But what exactly does web automation encompass? What is there to know about it? In this article, we will discuss exactly that. Here are 4 things you need to know about web automation.
1. Web Automation allows you to test websites automatically.
Web Automation is an excellent asset for web developers as it helps them automate a lot of the repetitive testing they may have had to do manually. This allows them to locate bugs and glitches in the software faster, which helps increase efficiency and streamlines their workflow. They also provide greater test coverage, meaning a higher quality software product is released at launch.
During development, developers' deadlines tend to be very tight, and through web automation, they can achieve them earlier. Hence, they can market the product from an earlier stage. However, web automation tests cannot replace the whole testing process as some of the more critical tasks need manual checking.
2. Web Automation allows you to automate browser tasks.
Web Automation allows you to automate many of the repetitive tasks part of the browser. You can also do this for web applications. Some of these actions include:
- Filling out fields and forms
- Content scraping
- Extraction of data using an API such as ScrapingBot
- Transferring data between apps
- Clicking elements and buttons
This allows staff to save a lot of time that they would have otherwise spent filling out forms and fields. It streamlines the workflows and ensures greater efficiency. Additionally, the data from these tasks can help with the testing that we have previously discussed.
3. Web Automation can only work if you do not get blocked!
Web automation has many advantages for many use cases. But be careful to not to get blocked! Indeed, automating tasks will only work if you are not blocked by the website you are on. Many websites don't like bots to come to their website. They protect themselves by using techniques that limit or even block any robot that comes to visit their website. For example with IP rate limiting, user agents or CAPTCHAs. See our “What are the methods used against web scraping?” article for more information.
However, there are some online tools like ScrapingBot that allow you to override these restrictions and use web automation without getting blocked.
4. Web Automation has many real-life applications uses.
Now that you understand how web automation is, you may be wondering how this works in real life. For starters, web automation can help automate tasks like service desk requests and ticket creation at major corporations and utility companies. This includes energy and gas companies that get a high influx of such business requests. Through Selenium, you can automate business flows across departments within a business. This helps improve a lot of business-related tasks, especially for the customer support department, where there will likely be a lot of repetitive tasks.
To sum up
Businesses can use many services to improve their websites, including WordPress web development concerning SEO optimization. In addition, they can also use web automation techniques combined with a reliable scraping API like ScrapingBot a lot of the repetitive tasks associated with web app and browser development and testing. There are many real-life applications for web automation, which we have discussed in this article.