Are you looking for profitable products to sell online? If you’re a dropshipper or any type of a new business owner, choosing that right product is going to be instrumental to your success.
From branding to marketing, to pricing and shipping, it’s really going to shape your entire business.
However, coming up with a great and demanding product idea is a little bit tricky and aimlessly searching on Google is only really going to get you so far. But once you have selected your niche and product, it’s time to put them under the microscope to further evaluate and explore.
If you think without evaluating and exploring your ideas properly, you’re going to make billions, then my friend, you’re wrong!
To get a much better sense of your niche and product idea, you need to put it through a test. This evaluation will give you a better insight of your product and you’ll be able to identify it’s core weaknesses and strengths.
Just bear in mind, it’s nearly impossible to find a niche market or product that fits the evaluation criteria. But still it’s a great idea to evaluate your findings against the list we have given below to understand your chosen niche/product, to avoid pitfalls, and to improve your chances of your success.
Since product research is based on two criterias of evaluation – market-based and product-based. We decided to shed light on each of them separately to make it easier for you to understand.
In this post, we’ll be discussing market-based product research criteria in detail. So without any further ado, let’s get started.
An overview : Product research
Product research is basically the process of validating a product idea to determine if the product will be successful in the market or not when launched. This is a core element of the product development process as it helps to identify consumer needs and if your product idea can fulfill market demand.
By conducting product research, you can find answers of the following questions:
- Will the chosen product be a success in the market?
- Which products are similar to yours in the market?
- What’s the most profound way to develop and sell your product in the market?
Businesses that perform product research regularly are able to stay ahead in the competition. Product researching helps to develop high-value, innovative products because you’ll always know what’s trending in the market and if choosing the latest eCommerce business trends will be a great choice or not.
How to conduct product research
Let’s take a brief look at the entire list of criteria we’ll be discussing before we discuss each of the in detail:
Market-based criteria
- What is the size of the prospective market?
- How would you characterise the competitive landscape?
- Is it a fad or a trend, a stagnant or expanding market?
- Who are your prospective customers?
- Is your product readily available locally?
Now it’s time to take a closer look at each of them.
Evaluate your prospective market size
To determine the market size is challenging but with some right information you can have a clear idea. For instance, a product aimed towards pregnant females between the ages of 22 and 35 years old is likely to have a sizable market. However, a product aimed at pregnant ladies between the ages of 22 and 35 who enjoy classical music is likely to be too niche.
Example: Luxury toothpicks are Daneson’s speciality. And you know only a dapper and pretty discerning man will purchase superlative toothpicks.
This product probably has a limited market size. This business’s market size restricts the revenue possibilities. For instance, given the markets, a limited market can be easier to market to, allowing Daneson to enter the market and capture it more cost effectively.
Generally, it is hard to determine market quantities precisely, although there are techniques to make approximations. Google Trends is an excellent place to start—not to measure market size, but to assess demand.
Next, see where your unique product concept is being offered and the amount and quality of customer reviews. How many reviews do you see?
Using judgement, you may come up with a decent estimate of the market size for your product concept.
Analyze your competitors in the industry
What competitive landscape does your selected niche and product occupy? Is the market already saturated with companies selling the same product or target audience?
You’ll want to conduct a lot of market research to verify that there really is a market interested in your products.It means that the market has been tested. But, in order to succeed, you must first find a way to set yourself apart from the competition.
Tools like Ahrefs can give you a rough estimate of the total search volume for your keywords.It will also inform you how competitive they are (the other businesses/individuals competing for those keywords).
Determine your product category
Fad riding is risky. Trends are profitable. A market that is increasing is good. Success or failure hinges heavily on understanding where your product and specialty sit.
To further grasp the distinctions among these, let’s look at growth curves, then instances from the actual world.
- Fad
A fad is anything that rapidly develops in popularity and then rapidly declines. Entries and exits in the market do not occur at the same moment, making trends harder to forecast.
A Geiger counter is a portable electrical gadget that detects the level of radiation around you. People rushed to purchase Geiger counters following the 2011 TĹŤhoku earthquake. Google Trends chart below shows that interest peaked as quickly as it went away.
- Stable
An unfluctuating market is one that typically remains steady. This concept holds long-term, yet either grows or declines with time.
A kitchen sink is a good example of a product with a steady and flat market for decades. Kitchen sinks are not likely to experience significant fluctuations in interest and purchases.
- Trend
A trend is a direction in which the market for a product appears to be headed over a longer period of time.
In general, it doesn’t diminish nearly as rapidly as a fad. Products that trend often evolve into long-term markets, although this can be difficult to anticipate.
Gluten-free food items have seen rising popularity over the previous decade. A steady increase may be seen in the graph, although it would likely be termed a trend, because the nutrition industry is always altering and changing.
- Growing
A long-term or permanent market change is evident in a rising market.
Yoga has been around for many years, but in the last decade or so it has grown in popularity due to its benefits for health and fitness. Yoga’s proven advantages make this industry a fast-growing market.
Using Google Trends, you will get a general overview of the many market conditions to assist you determine if something is a fad, trend, rising, or stable market. Check to see whether anything unusual has happened, and if so, look for further information to discover what caused it.
Determine your prospective customers
You should know, but it’s not necessary, at this stage, to fully define your client persona in order to market to them.
Many adolescents lack credit cards, which makes it critical to keep in mind that your product is meant for this demographic. Since older baby boomers tend to be your target population, your target market is more likely to be less technologically advanced and prefer to shop offline.
The Google Analytics account can tell you more about who your target consumers are. For product research, Shane Pollard, CTO of Be Media, advises you to review these specific Google Analytics reports:
- Demographic – Age, gender, and how appealing your target audience finds your product is are critical to identifying the target audience, these demographic statistics are important.
- Geo-location – Knowledge of where the audience is located can provide you valuable information. Also, many apartment dwellers in Melbourne don’t require lawn mowers since Melbourne has a bigger percentage of apartment dwellers than Perth, as apartment dwellers in Perth have a greater proportion of the city’s population in the suburban areas.
- Top pages – Most popular sites provide an idea of how many people are browsing for something. The reports Shane has seen have said that the best product was outperforming every other product by 10x, and when he went to look at the top pages, he found out that this was only true when there were hundreds of visitors. The data phrasing led the listener to believe that it was more of a performer than it was in scale.
Product availability
A product that is easily accessible locally eliminates one motivation for buyers to look for your goods online. However, a distinctive or difficult-to-find product that isn’t accessible locally enhances the likelihood of someone searching for it online and then acquiring it.
For instance, Ellusionist sells artist collaborations in the form of high-end decks of cards aimed at both magicians and card players. Sure you can go purchase a deck of cards anywhere, but these are not just cards—they’re pieces of art and trick decks, and if you want one, it’s only available online.
One of the simplest methods to determine whether a product is available locally is to conduct a Google search for the product + the name of your city, or if you do not reside in a large city, substitute the name of the closest major city. For instance, you might type “magician deck of cards + new york” into a search engine.
Start your market-based product ideas research today!
Choosing the right niche and product is instrumental to the success of your business. Once you’ve chosen your niche and product, use the above market-based criteria as a evaluating guideline to determine if your chosen product will be successful in the market or not.
This post was all about market-based criteria product research. In the next post we’ll be discussing product-based criteria product ideas research, make sure to check it out.
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