Deciding to start an online business is an exciting concept, but it’s also a new terrain that can be hard and intimidating to navigate. One of the biggest challenges you can face during the process is figuring out what to sell online – your choices being a single product or multiple products that cover a niche in a market.
Coming up with product ideas is tough and can often feel like everything else have already been done, not to mention the hordes of competition online these days. Online giants like Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, and Zappos are a just a click away. Plus, it’s so hard to outrank them in search engines too.
Of course, there’s always golden opportunities out there and new, successful products are launched all the time.
Here’s how you can get into the action.
Build a unique and interesting brand. This is about creating a superior product through thoughtful consideration of your customers’ needs. It’s fashioning a unique brand and carving out an exceptional place in your customer’s mind. A brand building approach can be especially effective at setting you apart if margins are slim or competition is aggressive.
A big part of creating a successful brand is picking a product that you can position in a unique or new way.
Assess a chosen client’s pain points. Understanding and focusing on a customer’s pain point has always been one of the best ways to get sales. For instance, Tylenol wouldn’t be in business if headaches didn’t hurt. A potential client’s pain doesn’t always have to be physical though, frustrating or poor experiences account as well.
Find client’s passions. Almost as good, perhaps even better than solving you client’s pain point is understanding and tending to a client’s passion. When clients are passionate about something, they’ll often spend more money for it. For example, golfers are known to spend thousands of follows just to lower their score by even one stroke. Additional benefits can include more interaction and loyalty with your brand as passionate customers usually become more involved in the industry as well as the buying process.
Locate an opportunity gap. Locating an opportunity gap includes looking for a specific product, industry, or niche, and identifying a deficiency or problem that you can take advantage of. What can you do differently or better from what your competitors are currently doing? An opportunity gap always occurs in the form of a product feature, an uncharted market by your competitors, or even in your marketing ability.
Take advantage of trends. Taking advantage of a trend early can give massive benefits for a new business. It lets you carve out a place in your consumers’ minds and establish yourself as an industry leader before your competitors have a chance to. Capitalising on a trend early can also provide a big impact on your SEO, allowing you to climb to the top of search rankings easier and faster.
One such trend is e-commerce websites. If you don’t have an online presence, your business is bound to either lose profit or get pummeled by your competition in no time. Once you’ve established your brand’s website, you need an SSL certificate from hosting sites to provide it with the highest level of industry standard security to conduct safe and secure ecommerce transactions, protect passwords and credit card numbers and most importantly, to secure your customer’s information.
Note that because of heavy competition in the most common product categories, picking the right niche is vital to your success. Making use of the tips above should get the gears turning and help you find your business’ first product or niche.
Barbara Ratliff