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derek.b.lotts
Aug 23

How to Grow a Successful E-commerce Business in a Niche Industry

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Niche e-commerce business is not a new idea. Many entrepreneurs have leveraged the strength of niche audiences and built companies with great sales cycles. However, the competition in the e-commerce space isn’t meek, and budding businessmen find it difficult to attract new customers. The reason for this is simple – people are informed more than ever before. Customers now research and compare the product before they purchase it.

 

As a new e-commerce retailer, you continuously search for new methods to generate sales but more often than not you end up empty-handed. But the good thing is, you can be competitive in a hyper-competitive environment if you know the power of tactics of niche product optimization.

 

The power of free shipping

The free shipping model is one of the easiest ways to foster healthy relationships with your consumers. The e-commerce world is full of online shops that offer free shipping on particular products or over a certain amount spent. Whatever your company policy may be, free shipping will gently push your customers to go through with the buying. 9 out of 10 customers state that free shipping is the number one incentive to buy online more.

 

In addition, free shipping reduces the number of abandoned shopping carts in your shop. In numerous situations, customers will end up in the checkout phase only to abandon the purchase in the end because of additional shipping charges. Moreover, free shipping can transform a casual client into a permanent one.

 

The power of feedback

The one thing that will never go out of fashion is acquiring customer feedback. The opinions of your consumers are the reflection of the state of your company. The power lies in discovering what they need and want. Most e-commerce platforms have the option that allows you to collect and showcase customer reviews. If your platform doesn’t have such features, there are online apps that can help integrate customer testimonials in your website pages.

 

Positive customer feedback is a golden opportunity for shaping your brand and marketing efforts. Do customers have additional questions after they visit your site? What do people think about your ads? Where is the bottleneck in the sales funnel? Only adequate feedback has the power to help you adjust and implement changes in a way that’s a win-win for both you and your clients.

 

Know your competition

Researching and intimately knowing your competition is fundamental for an e-commerce business. Basically, you want to identify and analyze the domains (competitors) who rank for the same target niche. Only this will let you know how much time, cash and effort you require to beat them and find the exact points where you can have a competitive edge. Every action your e-commerce business takes needs to be developed on the premise of competition analysis, particularly in very narrow industries.

 

For example, the oil manufacture industry is rather small, and if you were to make a difference, you would have to use the best keywords for different products such as durable tubulars, valves and motors. These specific keywords relevant to your industry are the only way to defeat the competition and rank first in the search results.

 

 

Know your customers

This is the most vital element of niche product optimization. To begin, you will need to view things from the perspective of your consumer and find what challenges they face. For instance, websites like Quora are excellent sources of questions relevant to your niche that your audience asks, like “How do I tie shoelaces?” If you were to sell shoes online then this can be a great idea to create a video tutorial that shows interesting ways to tie shoelaces. Afterward, you would put it on your website via YouTube.

 

This can help you rank better under featured snippets whenever such a question is involved. The method works because one of the goals of search engines is to help the customer. This, in turn, will generate more relevant traffic to your website.

 

Know the trends

Those that struggle with e-commerce niche business regularly experience the same issue over and over again. They know what they’re interested in but have a hard time figuring out what is trending among consumers - who are the actual drivers of the e-commerce industry.

 

Use the power of digital technology to monitor trending products online in order to know more about your customers than they know about themselves. Google trends, for example, allow you to view what’s trending in nearly any part of the planet. Before any decision that involves a lot of capital, be sure to check Google Trends and other places to see what the customers are actually interested in.

 

Niche product optimization is important for e-commerce business success especially if your company is small and tries to compete with larger brands. The e-commerce world is highly competitive and when you dominate in smaller niches you will control your sales.

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