It doesn’t even matter if you’ve become a participant of any affiliate program of a renowned retailer, or decided to build your own independent webstore from scratch – these steps are a must for any online store owner. So let’s get started!
Your road to a profitable online store: making the right product choice
The question of deciding what to upload on your store website in order to attract as many customers as possible was already discussed in this blog. To keep it short, you need to find not an especially narrow niche that, as you have figured out after a thorough analysis and meticulous research, has the highest potential for generating enough sales.
One of the most convenient ways to evaluate whether the product category you’ve chosen is the right one is to analyze search queries. This will give you an overall idea on the keywords your target audience is most likely to be looking for.
Your road to a profitable online store: understanding your customers
Understanding your target audience is rightfully considered to be the key to your commercial success as it gives you:
- A correct idea about your customers’ needs and wants;
- An opportunity to create a unique store in terms of branding and selling proposition that makes you stand out in case of operating in a highly competitive niche;
- A chance to take a special place in your clients’ minds;
- A prospect of building true customers’ loyalty to your brand through thoughtful interaction and stimulating the clients to become more involved in the purchasing process.
Your road to a profitable online store: evaluating and analyzing the competition
Your analysis of the current market competition starts right after you already have:
- Selected the type of products you’re going to be placing on your website;
- Ensured the niche you’ve chosen has the right potential in terms of profitability and further growth;
- Found solid proof to the fact that the niche you’ve decided to specialize on is in great demand.
Even if you’re going to offer your customers some ground-breaking products which seem to be increasingly sought after, you still need to be aware of the current level of competition in the chosen field.
First of all, you need to find out
who else offers online customers the same goods as your own webstore. It can easily be done through online search for this specific product idea. Don’t forget to use the same search queries and keywords that you expect your target audience to use!
After you’ve got an overall idea of your direct competitors who rank the highest in search systems for the determined keywords, it’s time to gather some
additional data to understand how successful their business is. The questions you need to answer are:
- How long are your competitors running this business? The longer they are doing this, the more likely they have already gained some proficiency in terms of understanding market dynamics and interacting with their customers. Maybe you can learn something useful from them?
- How successful is their social interaction and media presence? Take a look at their stores, and also don’t forget to check out their social network accounts (if any). Pay special attention to the way your competitors’ clients are communicating with this seller, and vice versa.
