Welcome to Cypher Swift
February 12, 2024
Find out if your headed for a profitable venture
Deepesh Deomurari
Tech Manager
E-commerce market research is crucial to deliver services that win the confidence of your target customers. It is the process of collecting data about market trends, profitable domains to explore, and consumer preferences. You can gauge the demand for your products and create plans to market them efficiently. However, getting started with market research for a new e-commerce business is challenging. If you don't know where to begin, this post will help you. We have put together the key steps involved in this process. Follow them one by one to conduct your research and gain actionable insights.
The first step to analyzing the e-commerce market for your business is finding profitable product opportunities. This does not mean products that are trending at the moment. Rather, your aim should be to uncover items that have been historically popular with people.
One of the ways to uncover such products is using Google Trends. It shows the interest of people for the product you enter in the past years. Another way is to use paid ecommerce product research tools. They have a database of products with a history of sustainable growth from the past several years.
Identifying the trends related to your chosen products or services is the next important step. It allows you to assess the current wants and needs of consumers related to your services.
To keep yourself updated on the latest industry trends, review secondary research data. You will find it in the form of market reports. Some examples include Allied Market Research and Grand View Research reports. By reading these reports, you will gain insights about the following:
The above information will help you change your e-commerce strategy and adapt your marketing techniques to fit your customer base.
Today, social media platforms are used for more than posting photos or memes. Close monitoring of these platforms identifies trends, enables an understanding of consumer behaviour, and helps in predicting market shifts.
Features like hashtags, trending topics, and popular conversations around specific products or services gives valuable data. You can explore the sentiments of your target audience toward your industry and products. Moreover, to understand consumer preferences better, you can be a part of popular B2B or B2C conversations.
No e-commerce growth strategy can be fruitful if it disregards competition. You need to know who the top players in your industry are to be able to market your products better and get ahead of them.
Competitor analysis also enables you to detect the shortcomings in your competitor's products, pricing strategies, and marketing techniques. You can leverage their weaknesses to build a strong presence. You can find a lot about your competitors through Google searches, social media platforms, and online forums like Quora and YouTube.
Additionally, to craft a unique and credible position online, you should create a well-structured content strategy for your website and social media platforms. This can be done by first finding relevant keywords associated with your products from keyword research tools.
Find how your competitors are creating content using those keywords and using it to gain traffic. Your aim should be to create a content strategy that allows you to attract even more traffic to your online store and social platforms.
Customer surveys are essential to constantly learn about what can be improved in your existing services. Surveys give you a deeper picture of the behavior of the potential customers in your market. You also understand the factors influencing their buying decisions.
You don't need to begin with surveys on a large scale. Instead, start by creating small surveys for your e-commerce store and understanding what your existing customers feel about their experiences. For example, if you own a Shopify store, you can create a small cart abandonment survey for your customers to complete when they leave the cart page. This will let you know the common reasons people abandon the cart and do not purchase.
Another way to use surveys is to learn about your competitors. For example, if you think your customers are choosing your competitors to purchase a product, include a survey asking them which solution they chose and from which company. Analyze the responses to improve your products or pricing strategy and win back your customers.
E-commerce market research is crucial to uncover the profitability of your products and consumer sentiments. If the report is positive and you have chosen your products, you can start refining them to appeal to your target audience segments. If not, you can look into other rapidly growing markets. The research process can feel challenging but is crucial for e-commerce growth. If you need help with it, feel free to contact us.
