Wanna get astonishing results in a snap? Sure you do. Each eCommerce business owner has no sweat profit on their agenda. So, how do you do it? First, you need to be meticulous and become deeply familiar with the playing field you’re in. Explore the proven ways to run online market research and prepare to boost your sales.
With over 2 million online buyers worldwide, you could be achieving some jaw-dropping outputs! Get ready, get started, and let’s amplify your know-hows now!
What are the 2 main types of market research?
So, the basic insights are always a good place to start. In order to nail your tactics and drive the ultimate results in eCommerce sales, you must know where to begin. Now, there are two essential types of market research one must conduct. To define them in simple terms – businesses can run primary and secondary searches. The primary one relies on data collecting. Once you have gathered the information you need, you’ll proceed processing it and analyzing it further. Secondary search focuses on proven guidance, statistics, and figures provided by someone else. eCommerce businesses often rely on dependable sources of info, and collect their clues and cues from the government or industry statistics resources like Statista.
Combine these two online market research methods to get the best outcomes.
Regardless of whether you’re just starting an eCommerce business or looking for ways to boost your results, fact-finding and thorough analysis are unavoidable. In fact, your customers are most likely doing the same thing. Did you know that more than 80% of online buyers run a check on their potential provider? They do a lot of comparing before they hit the button that seals the deal. And what’s more fascinating, more than one-third of brick-and-mortar shoppers are checking out prices in other stores on their phones.
So, you’ve got the picture. Research is paramount – for both parties. First, let’s grasp a few super easy ways to run a primary search:
- Create focus groups and make sure to get your hands on their insights and opinions,
- Use online market research surveys,
- Perform in-person chit-chats with your customers and measure their experience.
As you must have heard, superb customer service is a competitive advantage. So, interviewing your buyers should be a basic part of showing genuine interest in their notions, attitude toward your product and service, and overall satisfaction with your brand.
Then, strengthen your tactics by getting hold of overviews and reports posted by trustworthy organizations.
What are the advantages of online market research for eCommerce?
Before taking a deep dive into the online market research for eCommerce, know your aims. What are the precise objectives of these searches? Focus on the online market research benefits to have a clearer idea of your goals:
- Understanding your target audience and knowing their precise needs,
- Adjusting to the different types of customers and creating efficient approaches for each of them,
- Improving conversion rates by learning about the customer behavior,
- Increasing customer lifetime value,
- Finding new business opportunities and expanding your reach to multiple regions and markets.
The end game is always improved strategies and augmented profits. Reach them step by step. Start by defining your customer persona and fine-tuning your techniques to entice and retain them.
The basic steps you must take: How do you do online market research?
Doing through and through market research for online business is the key element of success. The main points to keep in mind include learning about the target demographics, knowing the market conditions, and staying ahead of the competition. So, the easy steps that turbocharge your sales efforts include:
- Minding the content you post and having it well thought out by relying on the keywords,
- Using keywords and other effective strategies to find more users on social media,
- Keeping up with the hot, new market trends and tendencies,
- Exploring the methods your competitors use,
- Collecting customer feedback and insights through various sources.
These simple steps represent a proven formula for triumph. Stay fresh, reliable, and unique. Make sure to keep pace with the market and remain one step ahead of other eCommerce businesses.
Get extra traffic by generating the right keywords
Conducting keyword research will help you work out if there’s a need for the product or service you plan to sell online. Here’s a disclaimer: high search volumes don’t necessarily mean the product is undeniably profitable. However, they do show genuine interest among buyers. More importantly, keyword research is practical when working on inbound marketing tactics. It helps you get a fix on possibilities for driving organic traffic with SEO. Some online market research tools like Google keyword planner can truly help you with your future efforts and strategies.
Start by generating some ideas. Then, analyze the top-ranked results on Google. Finally, cross-check the difficulty to rank for the specific keywords or phrases with the topic relevance. It does sound a bit complex at first. But it’s actually quite manageable – and it can bring sensational results in record time!
Use social media and create engaging online strategies to monetize
Social media is part of nearly everyone’s daily routines. And not to mention its massive impact on the business success. But what’s your main deal with it? It can be a treasure chest packed with valuable consumer insights if you know how and where to look. People love to post their criticisms online. Still, most of them speak out about their wishes, likings, and goals publically as well. Now, the bad news is that you can get tangled in those reviews, comments, and posts quickly. But don’t worry. There’s a remedy for avoiding Facebook conspiracy theorists and veteran trolls. Keep your business research focused:
- Follow influencers in your industry and analyze their opinions and partnerships with brands.
- Identify relevant hashtags on Instagram and Twitter, and monitor them regularly.
- Keep your eyes wide open to learn what people post about your competitors and figure out their strengths and weaknesses.
While lurking and spotting other businesses and their behaviors and ranks, be sure to come up with tactics that will place you high above other similar brands. Keep it simple and, above all, honest. But don’t be too humble – let the audience find your products and services captivating!
Learn about the new trends and stay ahead of the game
When doing online market research for eCommerce, you should always look into the freshest buyer trends. You can use Google Trends to reveal them and plan accordingly.
Now, before embracing each and any new tendency, you must be clear about what you offer. These are the two key topics you should cover to improve your product research:
- Learn whether the interest in a specific product or service is declining, growing, or stable.
- Know if the interest in the product or service is seasonal or remains the same throughout the whole year.
Even when a particular trend sovereignly rules the online world, it doesn’t mean that its impact will be permanent. In fact, many ultra popular and wild phenomena are transitory. Don’t turn into the MC Hammer of eCommerce. You can’t touch this long-term success if you conform to current inclinations alone without seeing the big picture.
Research and unlock the secrets to your competitors’ success
You can get how the market works and where the gaps are by analyzing the competition. Make sure to figure out who your principal competitors are and watch them closely. Here’s a word to the wise: even though you are researching the market for eCommerce, look beyond these businesses when digging into the successful companies. So, what should you focus on? These should be the key points to oversee:
- The eCommerce business model they have chosen (if they’re within your field),
- The methods they use to boost their sales funnel and attract returning customers,
- The way their website looks and how responsible, user-friendly, and searchable it is.
When you look carefully into these crucial factors, you’ll easily understand what can work well for you. Also, you’ll determine what won’t work – and that’s probably even more significant in the long run.
Conduct a case study or find another proven way to collect customers’ feedback
As we said, collecting customer data is inescapable. That is – if you want to do everything correctly. Aside from case studies, surveys, and questionnaires, you can reach out to a larger group at once. Or simply monitor what they say. But being a wallflower doesn’t have as many perks when you’re running a business. So yes, engagement is the key and forums are a great way to learn about your customers’ preferences! And here is a fail-proof strategy to canvass them rightly:
- Catch on the forums that are the most famous in your domain,
- Join them and check them out frequently,
- Engage in the discussions to make an impression, find out more, and enhance your trustworthiness,
- Ask questions and strive to understand the consumers in the group.
Explore multiple ways to get to know your current and potential buyers. Focus on their needs and see where they take you. One-on-ones are priceless. Surveys and studies are useful. And group chats are ultraprecise and wise to use!
Bonus tip: Boost your eCommerce through outsourcing
According to the studies, 300.000 positions are outsourced every year. Countless companies across the globe enjoy the numerous benefits of outsourcing. Regardless of their size and niche, they strive to find the best BPO companies or skilled freelancers and pair up to drive brilliant results in a cinch.
If you want to save a lot of time and money, enhance your productivity, and reach sales targets effortlessly, you might consider this business practice. Roles you can outsource for eCommerce include:
- Social media and marketing,
- eCommerce web development and maintenance,
- Website design and graphic design
- Customer support and call center services
- Accounting
- Sales services and management
Now, to find the most suitable third-party partner, you will need to explore the market once again. Read the reviews and do the math before signing a contract and hiring an external team to help you out.
Run your search and don’t skip any of these key steps
Understand your target audience better and give them what they actually need. Now, that’s what running successful online market research is about. And you should learn all about it because your ultimate target is to shoot up, right? Follow the steps from this guide, and watch how your eCommerce sales accelerate.
And if you still run into a stumbling block, no worries – we can help you out!
