7 Tips For Finding Your eCommerce Niche
Here are 7 tips for finding your eCommerce niche, and what you’ll need to do to avoid becoming another generic, faceless merchant in a sea of competitors.
The world of eCommerce is growing larger by the day, with millions of entrepreneurs around the world joining major corporations in the endeavor to profit off the digital revolution. Despite the growing importance of the eCommerce industry, many aspiring merchants are struggling to break into the market and find an appropriate niche that they can master and profit off. Finding a narrow interest area that you can dominate isn’t always easy, but it’s an essential part of making a buck off eCommerce customers who are deeply interest-driven.
Here are 7 tips for finding your eCommerce niche if you’re struggling, and what you’ll need to do to avoid becoming another generic, faceless merchant in a sea of competitors.
1. You need to understand customer personality types
If you hope to become a successful eCommerce merchant, you simply must come to understand and appreciate the different customer personality types that you’ll be grappling with on your road to profitability. Not all consumers are the same, and you’ll soon discover that some are easier to market to than others. Nevertheless, behavior economics can confound even the savviest of economists, so it’s worthwhile to do your homework before trying to master customer personality type unless you want to pull an amateur move and offend your own consumers.
Once you learn how to use the power of behavioral economics to drive your eCommerce niche forward, you’ll quickly be luring in consumers at an unprecedented rate.
2. Deep introspection is needed on your part
After you’ve come to understand what customers want and why they want it, you also need to take some time for deep introspection that can reveal things about your personality and business style that you may presently be unaware of. Many aspiring eCommerce operatives make the crucial mistake of thinking their personality has little impact on their business, but as a matter of fact customers will oftentimes want to know more about you before making a final purchase, especially if you’re in a small, niche industry where everyone knows each other.
There are proper and improper ways of being introspective, however, and it’s easy to mislead yourself when doing self-analysis if you’re unfamiliar with meditative reflection and objective honesty in assessments. You should check out the wise advice of behavioral psychologists, who can teach you about the right way to be introspective in your life, whether you’re thinking about business or your personal needs.
3. You need to know what’s trending
Those who are struggling to find an eCommerce niche frequently encounter the same problem over and over again – they know what they’re interested in, but they struggle to figure out what’s buzzing amongst customers, who are really the primary drivers of the eCommerce industry via their consumer needs. By relying on the immense power of digital technology to check trending products online, you can learn more about customers than they know about themselves. Google Trends, for instance, enables you to see what’s trending in nearly any part of the world.
If you’re doubtful your eCommerce operation is going to succeed and are thus hesitant to invest your capital into it, consider doing a deep dive into Google Trends to see if customers are actually interested in what you’d be offering them.
4. For expensive products, be prepared to offer personal service
Most fledgling eCommerce operations shy away from ludicrously expensive products or services for one important reason – if a customer is expected to shell out the big bucks for your eCommerce product, they’ll likely expect costly personal service which not every eCommerce operative is ready to provide. The $100-$200 range is ideal for many eCommerce products because it enables you to turn a hefty profit without driving customers to inquire heavily about the nature of your business before buying, thereby rendering a sale less likely than normal.
If you’re looking to sell particularly expensive products, especially those above the $500 range, you’ll likely need to be prepared to offer personal service that’s unique to every customer you bring in. While some eCommerce pros are up for this, others find it to be stressful, difficult, and downright too costly to be worthwhile.
5. Understand the gravitas of handmade and artisan products
If you’re really having a tough time figuring out your eCommerce niche, ask yourself if the ones you’ve evaluated thus far have the gravitas of handmade and artisan product niches, which generate massive consumer followings thanks to their skilled production. While savvy consumers will always be on the lookout for a good deal, most people aren’t basing their decision entirely on price – sometimes, customers want an artisan product that was created or modified by a professional. Oftentimes, the difference between a successful eCommerce operation and a failed one is whether the products in question were of high-quality and produced locally or by niche-recognized experts.
6. Appreciate how imperative keyword research is
eCommerce operations that don’t utilize keyword research are effectively doomed to fail from the very moment they get up and running. This is because the digital age is dominated by the search habits of everyday users, and those eCommerce operatives who refuse to take this seriously are less likely to generate an impressive brand and digital presence for themselves. Whether you’re trying to optimize your products or webpage for search engines or are merely interested in finding out what customers are looking up, knowing how to conduct keyword research is often one of the most important elements of the job.
Finally, it’s important that you keep in mind…
7. What’s niche today will be pitched tomorrow
The tumultuous digital world is ever-changing, largely because the everyday users and shoppers who make the eCommerce industry a possibility are frequently changing their minds. What’s a hot niche item today will be pitched tomorrow for something better or more attractive, so you need to understand the importance of remaining flexible if you want your eCommerce operation to endure for more than a few months at a time. Companies which lock themselves into rigid business models fail all the time on the traditional marketplace, and so too do eCommerce operations when they fail to adjust to changing consumer demand.
Though you may be an expert in a particular niche, you shouldn’t tie yourself down to one product or idea, as this is an easy way to render yourself obsolete once the business and media cycles move on from whatever’s trending right now. As you’ll soon discover, regularly conducting research and constantly updating your business model to cater to what’s trending are the only surefire ways to profit off an eCommerce niche.