The online business landscape has become more competitive than ever as most businesses are shifting their presence toward the Internet. Entrepreneurs seem to have explored every sector of the market: it’s challenging to find products not sold online these days.
If you’re planning to start a new online business, you’ve probably calculated the benefits of selling online, which include low capital and broad customer reach. However, the competition in the market can make it challenging for you to understand how to find products for your ecommerce store.
In this article, you’ll learn the strategies to help you find the right product or line of products to promote on your ecommerce store. In bit, these strategies include:
- Choose a Profitable Niche
- Carry out Your Market Research
- Take Advantage of Keyword Tools
- Choose Products that Satisfy Obsession
- Factor in Your Passion and Values
Ready to roll? Let’s get into it!
1. Choose a Profitable Niche
To find products for your ecommerce store, choose a profitable niche. A niche is a specific sector of the broader market which covers the spectrum of related products or services.
Limiting your ecommerce business to a particular niche gives you a locus of focus and helps you stand out amid the market noise. Also, picking a niche helps to increase the visibility of your brand and helps you build the impression of authority in the market.
Most times, it’s counterproductive to sell products from different niches in your ecommerce store. How could you sell ice-cream and wristwatches in your store at the same time? Customers are likely to be confused, and as a result, they would bounce.
Many profitable niches in the market could interest you. Some of them include the following:
- Food and Hospitality
- Health and Fitness
- Technology
- Fashion and Accessories
- Sex and Pleasure
Within any of these niches are ranges of products that resonate with a ready and high-converting audience. You can pick any of these products for your ecommerce store.
For example, if your interest is in the fashion and accessories industry, you can choose products like jewelry, clothes, bags, shoes, and many others.
2. Carry out Your Market Research
When you’ve selected a niche of interest, your next action will be to study the market carefully. In the market research process, you will discover your customer’s physical and psychological demographics. This would help you to understand their pain point and the solution that appeals to them.
Your customers’ pain point is the problem or the challenge they wish to solve. To succeed in your ecommerce business, you must determine the product that solves this challenge and sell it to your customers. This is one of the practical strategies to build a consistent and loyal customer base.
How Do You Carry Out Market Research?
Search engines like Google, Bing, and social media channels like Facebook and Quora are great tools you can leverage to research the market. You can use these platforms to gather necessary data about your audience and niche.
To achieve this, join communities or pages that relate to your niche and be attentive to ongoing discussions. Also, pay attention to the comments and replies. What are the kind of questions the participants usually ask? What are the sort of wishes they usually express in their posts?
You can also go further to ask questions on these platforms. Record the answers, both the negative and the positive ones. All these feedbacks provide you with relevant knowledge about the market and open your eyes to the proper inventory for your ecommerce store.
3. Take Advantage of Keyword Tools
Next step to find products for your ecommerce store, take advantage of keyword tools. On search engines like Google, people are always searching for products, services, and other solutions to their needs.
The search engine takes notice of the major terms and phrases used in these searches and records them in the database as keywords. You can take advantage of these keyword tools to discover the products people are looking for over a given time.
Also, these tools help you find out the number of searches per time and the general competition for the product. For example, Google Trends can show you the growth trends of a specific product keyword over time. There are other keyword tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, and others.
Using these keyword tools in your business allows you to make data-driven decisions about the proper inventory for your ecommerce store. It also helps you discover less competitive niches in the market.
However, you need knowledge of SEO (search engine optimization) and keyword research to use this approach. As technical as it sounds, it may not be hard for you to learn.
4. Choose Products That Satisfies Obsession
When a product satisfies an obsession, people tend to develop a passion for that product and would likely spend more money to acquire or indulge in it. This can be essential when considering the products to promote on your ecommerce store.
These products mostly include food and hospitality-related products such as ice cream and other treats. Customers are willing to spend as much as possible on these products just to gratify themselves.
Building your brand around these products can be lucrative: there’s a high chance of building a loyal customer base. If the product is great and your customers get lots of value from it, they’ll keep coming back for more.
5. Factor in Your passion and Values
Next to choosing products for your ecommerce store, factor in your passion and values. As much as most of your decisions in business should center on the consumer, it doesn’t rule out the place of your passion and values.
Choosing a niche and a product you’re not passionate about will definitely affect your motivation and enthusiasm to promote such a product. Otherwise, you’d meet a disastrous end.
Also, you must choose products that align with your values. A strict vegetarian may find it hard to promote cheese and hotdogs. Promoting such products would seem like self-sabotage, affecting your customers too.
Promoting a product you’re passionate about can help you to stay motivated in business even in hard times. It can also help you come up with inspirations and ideas relevant to the growth of your business.
Conclusion
Finding products for your ecommerce store isn’t as hard as it seems. To find products you desire, choose a profitable niche, conduct, and take advantage of keyword tools.
Next, choose products that satisfies obsessions and ensure you factor in your passion and values, as they would help you stay motivated even in hard times.
