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Ultimate Guide to E-Commerce Product Research

Starting an eCommerce has become easier than ever, but few are actually making a good profit. Success comes down to many things, but one thing almost everyone agrees on is to know your products and know your competitors.

But how? We started asking around ways most successful eCommerce merchants do it.

Product research is used to validate a product concept and determine whether it will be successful. It’s a step in the product development process that helps you figure out what customers want and whether your idea will sell. As a result, your product’s return on investment will be higher.

So what does work when it comes to eCommerce Product Research? What tools and strategies are professionals in eCommerce are using to get results?

To find out, we surveyed 41 folks who are working in the eCommerce section to get their thoughts on the strategies, plans, and thoughts on Product Research.

This is gonna be a long post, so if you’re in a rush here’s a juice of the survey we did in Shopgram:

TL;DR

  • More than 58% of the experts use Shopify as their main platform
  • 67% of the eCommerce store owners own their own shop compared to 33% that were marketers/agencies
  • Almost all of the eCommerce owners (96%) value competitor analysis
  • The most important thing to know about their competitors is to know which products they sell
  • The most important factor in choosing a product to sell is the quality of the product + Reviews

 

Our Participants

Before going into the eCommerce product research results, here’s a quick intro to who were our participants:

eCommerce Demgoraphics

65% of our participants described themselves as store owners and 47% said they are marketers or consultants to store owners. Note that some of the participants do both.
So 65% of the eCommerce store owners own their shop compared to the rest that is marketers or agencies.

Want to know some of them? Hang on till the end to meet them!

 

Our study

In the following paragraphs, you will see the questions we asked our participants and the data we gathered using their answers.

First, we asked our participants about the platform they use for running their eCommerce business. The result shows that Shopify, WordPress/Woocommerce, and Wix are the top three most popular platforms. 

Most popular eCommerce Platforms

About 70% of participants said they use Shopify. Around 29% are using WordPress or Woocommerce and 11% are using Wix. 

So Shopify with 70% seems to be loved and used by our participants the most.

It was expected as in the last research we did around Shopify stores, it was completely a Shopify game by a huge margin.

The competitors

In today’s great world of eCommerce, you need to know who you are competing with and how you should compete with them.

The question is: do store owners care about their competitors’ business? If yes, what matters to them the most, and how much does it matter to them? 

So we asked the participants a couple of these questions and here is the data we got from what they told us.

 

Is it important to know your competitors?

eCommerce Competition

According to the data we collected, knowing the competitors and having information about what they are doing is important to 100% of store owners.

After all, everybody in the business needs to stay aware of what their rivals are doing if they want to stand out and be the best.

 

Which data from the competitors is valuable to know?

eCommerce Competiton Data

The data that most store owners care to know about their competitors is about the kind of products they sell. 82% of our participants said that what products their competitors are selling is the most important to them.

 

About 53% want to know about the revenue estimation of other stores.

 

35% of the business owners also care about things such as the number of followers in each social media and the apps their competitors are using. 

 

The theme seems to be the least important thing among all the data we asked the participants about. Only 17% of them said they care about the theme their rivals are using on their online store.

 

So we realized that product is probably what matters the most while store owners analyze people in their niche.

 

Do store owners and marketers ever search to find data about their competitors?

eCommerce Competiton Importance

Almost everyone answered this question with yes. Because it seems impossible to run an online business without ever checking to see what other businesses are doing. If they are successful, what is the key? And if they’ve failed, what was the flaw?

So 95% of our participants claimed that they have searched to find data about their competitors before.

And 5% said that they have never done this; which is a surprise.

 

How often do store owners and marketers search for their competitors’ data?

eCommerce Competiton frequency

It is not like you search for your competitor’s data once and then you mind your business. The fact is your competitors are changing and getting better, so should you. As a result, analyzing your competitors should be something you constantly do. 

Among those who said they search for their competitors’ data, about 53% said they do this once a month.

35% of the participants claimed that they do the competitors’ data analysis every week. 

And about 6% claimed that they never search for their competitors’ data or they do it every day. 

 

Product research

 

We asked our participants a couple of questions to find out how they usually find the product to sell on their online store. In other words, we wanted to know about the product research strategy each business uses.

 

How do store owners and marketers find good products to sell?

eCommerce finding good products

When it comes to product research, google may be the first tool you can think of to be used for finding the ideal product. The majority of our participants are on the same page with you at this. 41% of them said that they use Google to find the right product for their store.

 

29% said that they make their products on their own so they don’t need to look for products online.

 

About 23% of store owners said that they own a physical store and they already know what to sell. After all, the kind and variety of products you can sell on an online store are different from a physical store. So the process of product research must be different too.

 

Dropshipping applications, such as Oberlo, are another place for online businesses to find the best products. Among all of our participants, 17% claimed that they use dropshipping apps to find a good product to sell on their online store.

 

About 6% of store owners told us that they have a consultant who does the product research for them. However, Hiring a consultant requires a budget that not every beginner owns. That’s why most people do the research by themselves.

 

Some of the participants said that they have a group of brands that they pursue. What they do is they contact stores that carry these brands to try and buy languishing stock.

 

Some others said they sell products that their “ideal customer” would be interested in and they get these products sourced out of the country.

 

Which one is important to store owners and marketers when selecting a product?

eCommerce Choosing Product

There are many factors that store owners must consider when they choose a product. Otherwise, they will face further problems in their business.

 

The most important factor is the quality of a product. Nobody wants the customers to return what they purchased. So you need to find a durable product that is not prone to breakage. 

What is the best way to ensure that a product is high-quality? Always trust the reviews and read them carefully. This is what the majority of store owners do as well.

Product quality and reviews matter to 82% of our participants the most. 

 

An equal percentage of participants said that they consider the profit margin and the market saturation (competition). They were about 59% of the participants. 

 

A good product should be low-competition and high-demand. However, only 6% said they care about the demand for that particular product.

 

Those who care about the shipping time make 23% of store owners.

 

Note: Keep in mind that some of the participants chose more than one option.

 

Did the store owners and marketers search for another eCommerce to get inspired by them?

ecommerce infulencers

Looking at other eCommerce businesses to get ideas and inspiration always works. You can take a look at big or small successful online stores to see what makes them different.

 

About 76% of store owners said that they do search for another eCommerce to get inspired by them.

Here’s the bright minds who helped us create this

Jessica Rose is the Chief Executive Officer at Copper H2O, a 100% female-run e-commerce social enterprise in the health and wellness space. Jessica is passionate about empowering women to live their best lives. She also believes strongly in socially conscious businesses that care about more than just the bottom line. She has been a serial entrepreneur since leaving her 9 to 5 a number of years ago, and she loves nothing more than the freedom it gives her. She loves traveling and time spent in nature.
CROSSOVER is Malaysia’s leading premium lifestyle store and local brand that was established in 2005. A wide range of authentic and exclusive International big brands such as Adidas, Vans, New Balance, and more can be found here.
Hitesh Patel, founder of RRPJewellers. RRPJewellers is a jewelry manufacturing company based in Surat, India. We provide a huge collection of various diamond studded jewelry pieces at wholesale prices.
Evan is new to the dropshipping seen but has already seen incredible results. He manages the business alongside his full-time university studies and is nearly fully financially sustained by dropshipping in Tizaki.
Hi, I am Mark. Also known as the branding geek. I founded Markd Agency to help business owners realize their dreams. There are so many great products out there that don’t get the attention they deserve. It’s my mission to help as many entrepreneurs as possible.
Jake Munday, is an inspiring, tenacious and determined entrepreneur. An award winning entrepreneurial visionary, Jake has a gift for identifying opportunities and with an unwavering determination and a focus, somehow brings them to fruition. His latest and most lucrative endeavor Custom Neon, co0founded by wife Jess Munday has become one of the worlds most trusted names in neon signs.
I’m Ryan from Worldcrutches. I’m good at promoting websites through SEO and Google Ads.
Hello, my name is Mohit Sharma, and I’m the founder of bloggerteck.com. Content writing, graphic design, and web development are some of my specialties. In digital marketing, I enjoy creating content and graphics.
 
Zach Radford Is the founder & CEO of Profitable Ads.com A media buying agency with an obsessive focus on human beings and eCommerce brands. Utilizing their proprietary media buying method the “Profitable Ads Formula.” He and his team have been able to generate over $40 million in sales for direct to consumer brands. Leveraging psychology, empathy, and data to drive increased ROAS for their clients.
 
I am working as a digital marketer for 3 years now. I am also running my own e-commerce business for 2 years. Which is doing very good. In my free time, I love to play and make games. Which put a smile on people face. Read my latest piece here.
 
Sean loves small street level stores and their impact on communities. He started Your Bra Store as a way to help small bra stores sell their old stock and strengthen their bottom lines.
 
Patrick Connelly has been involved in e-commerce for over a decade and has started numerous 7-figure online businesses. Patrick currently serves as the Co-Founder of Stellar Villa, a company based in Brooklyn, New York that specializes in custom pet portrait illustrations.
 
Mark Balliet is the founder of Mentality Designs. By focusing his efforts on ROI-driven digital marketing through the implementation of Omnipresent Marketing, he has helped many entrepreneurs and small business owners boost their web presence by earning more leads and creating passivity in their business.
 
Martin is the Head of Marketing for an SEO software platform called Morningscore.io, with eCommerce businesses being their best customer type. He works with stores of various sizes daily and particularly enjoys helping smaller companies realize their potential by getting more SEO traffic from Google. Analyzing both customers and their competitors helps him find insights and patterns, which he often shares on the Morningscore blog.
 
I’m Alex Williams, a Certified Financial Planner and the CFO of FindThisBest – a comprehensive guide for shopping retail products.
 
Lucas Nudel is an entrepreneur who founded Pride Palace, an LGBTQ+ apparel company. Lucas believes that business is not only about a product or service, but mostly about the people in the space and giving back to those around you. In addition to managing Pride Palace, he runs a real estate investment firm in North Florida. Lucas is currently finishing his BA in General Business from the University of Florida.
 
My name is Liam Mills. I spent 7 years working as a Quality Assurance Supplier for Walmart, and my current position is as a product expert and CEO of ValueHunta.
 

Conclusion:

 

If you want to have a successful business, careful and constant competitor analysis and a wise choice of product are highly important.

 

So keep track of other businesses in your niche and try to find products that lead to success. 

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