How To Conduct E-commerce Market Research Like A Pro

With a CAGR of 14.7%, eCommerce is one of the fastest-growing industries in today’s internet era. Everyone wants to make the most of this growth opportunity with e-stores and selling items online. But only a handful of them succeed. Do you know why this happens? It is proper market research that can make or break your dream of becoming an eCommerce giant. 

Whether you are looking to introduce a new line of products or you are starting from scratch, eCommerce market research is the most important step for an ever-growing business. 

How to Conduct E-commerce Market Research Like a Pro

eCommerce market research is the process of understanding the market size, trends, and other vital information for product development strategy. If you are doing something this important, it is better to do it right. Hence, we have come up with a quick guide on how to conduct eCommerce market research like a pro. So let’s start right away.

1. Formulate a Strong Research Problem

The first stage in any marketing research strategy is to appropriately identify and characterize the core issue that you are attempting to address. You begin by defining the problem to be solved. 

It is reasonable to begin generating genuine research questions related to your service or product that you would like to get answers to comprehend the situation better. At this step, the purpose is to create a list of broad, fundamental questions that will serve as the framework for your research inquiry.

You can work around your problem to find out questions about your eCommerce business idea. It can be about when you should launch your product, how you can make things better for your store, or how you can launch the product with minimum investment yet gain maximum returns. 

This stage is quite important, and what you do here will dictate your market research process and reach your business to new heights.

2. Find Industry Leaders and Trends

The best way to learn about your idea’s viability is to study existing players in the industry. You can find the top players in your category online and study them. 

You should first try to understand their business model and how they are filling up their inventories. Then you should observe how they deliver the goods, whether they have their own logistics system or they rely on third-party service providers, their pricing strategy, and customer relationships. 

After you have understood the pricing and logistics of industry leaders, it is time to understand how they attract customers and generate sales. This is the most critical part while researching. If industry leaders are fighting to get customers, the product may not have demand or is a niche category with lesser awareness. 

You can formulate your strategies by analyzing industry leaders and understanding what worked for them and what did not work for them. This way, you can ensure that you make fewer mistakes and even get a competitive advantage by solving problems faced by other brands. 

3. Research Keywords Extensively

Keyword research is a good place to begin getting a basic understanding of your audience. Multiple keyword research and planning tools can help you here. The simplest way is to search on Google for your business-related keywords and understand the results.

Moreover, by using keyword research tools, you can understand how different versions of a keyword are used by the audience. You can choose to dive deeper by selecting newer keywords and building your relevant keyword list. Through such analysis, you can even get an outline of your audience. 

Suppose a keyword with near me in the search query is used often; you can understand that people are looking for local businesses more than the ones that are away. Through this insight, you can run local ads inside a geofence for your business to generate better leads.

4. Create a Customer Profile through Surveys and by Understanding their Behaviors

Now, it is time to build a target customer profile for your business. Online surveys and panel-based research are good starting points. Building a customer profile based on client behavior helps you define the type of audience for your campaigns. Thus, your marketing efforts will become more concentrated and personalized leading to higher conversions.

If you already have an eCommerce store, online surveys can be effortless. You can create a pop-up in your store with some simple questions regarding your market research objective to learn about their customer experience. The more responses you get, the easier it will be for you to create a customer profile.  

While creating a survey for customer profiling, you need to formulate and ask the right questions; otherwise, the data will not be helpful.

5. Tap into Social Media and Analytics

Listening to people’s opinions about anything over social media platforms is one of the best ways to research. If you are going to sell an item, search for similar items on social media, and see how people interact with those things. If the interactions are positive and welcoming, it can be concluded that there is a good demand for the product, and you can launch it.

On the other hand, if the product has very low awareness on social media platforms, you might have to work hard to get it through and make space for your product. 

Analyze social media conversations and derive insights that can help you shape your marketing strategy. You can analyze social media conversations with NLP techniques, and understand in what ways people refer to your brand and the services that you are going to introduce. It is best to plan the introduction of your products/services quickly. These ways you can use social media to promote eCommerce business.

Key Takeaways: 

If you are launching an eCommerce market research, you must include the points that we have discussed here. They form a strong basis for market research and get better results for your decisions on what actions to take and plan your eCommerce platform. So, identify your market research problem and get started today.

Author’s Bio : 

Jigar Agrawal is a Digital Marketing Manager at eSparkBiz Technologies. He is passionate about anything related to Digital Marketing and Trending Technologies. Wants to unlock the world of technology and Social Media where every day there is a chance of new possibility as well as innovation.