Expanding product lines is an effective way to grow an e-commerce business. But this is easier said than done. The question is how you will decide which product should be added to your product range. It requires a lot of investment in time and capital. You cannot do this based on your gut feeling. A better way of adding a product that will sell is to use customer demand insights and market analysis.
6 strategies to help you expand your product range
Analyze customer data:
Just look at your sales data carefully; it will give you an idea of which products sell more. Then, do some research on different variations of the products that your store doesn’t offer, but the search volume for those products is high. Using a product discovery tool can be a good idea if you have multiple online stores. You can use the following tools:
- Jungle Scout can identify profitable products on Amazon. It can do competitive research to suggest actionable ideas.
- Terapeak can help identify trending products in e-commerce stores
Conduct product research:
Conduct research on which of the products are in demand in your area of operation.
Visit online forms, talk to customers, and garner customer feedback to understand customers’ demands and what products are trending. You can browse various product categories to identify up-and-coming products and try to spot profitable opportunities there. You can deep dive into various sub-categories of the product you can sell, refine, and narrow the list.
Use Auto Suggestion:
This is a highly effective, yet very simple. Type a search query related to your product in Google or Amazon. You will see some autosuggestions of products. It can be a good idea to add products that you don’t sell currently.
For example, let’s see the screenshot below.
Let’s understand this with a practical example. Suppose you sell a Christmas tree storage. Just type it in the Amazon search bar and you will find many auto-suggestion options like Christmas Tree storage bag, Christmas tree storage box, Christmas tree storage, and other options.
You can do further research to find out some of these products may have moderately good demand and low competition. You can think of adding them to your product offering if you don’t have them right now in your offerings.
Leverage customer feedback:
Encourage customers to leave feedback on your products and use this information to identify gaps in your product range. You can ask them what kind of products they would like to buy.
For instance, if customers consistently ask for a particular product, it might be worth adding to your inventory.
Monitor your competitors:
Keep an eye on your competitors and see what products they are offering. This will help you identify gaps in the market and give you ideas for new products to add to your inventory.
Use e-commerce platform tools:
Many e-commerce platforms have tools to help you identify popular products and trends.
For example, Amazon has a Best Seller list that you can use to identify popular products in your category. You can try out adding the products in your category.
Some of the products in the list may be in high demand, but the competition may still be low. Figuring out the competition is not difficult. It’s not difficult. If that product page has a lower number of reviews, it specifies low competition.
You may like also to read: Inventory Management Tools: Benefits And Some Important Tools.
Conclusion
Expanding product range offerings can be a great way to increase sales and revenue. However, this is not easy as you cannot just buy a lot of items and put them into inventory and hope for sales to come. That’s not the way e-commerce functions and is also a wise thing to do. So, you can expend your product range to follow these strategies.
