How to choose a niche for online store

In the online shopping market, niches do not exist on their own. They are created by studying demand, the consumer's desire to purchase a product. To start your own business, you need to set a goal, evaluate the possibilities for success and various options for business development. Find out how to choose the right niche for an online store , what nuances to pay attention to so that the offer becomes profitable and attractive for buyers.

Fullness of traditional niches

Today, all conditions have been created to create your own online store. Anyone with a computer can get started within minutes, even without specific skills or education.

Three things you need to start a business:

• domain name idea;
• web hosting account;
• your undivided attention for 30 minutes.

But, no matter how simple the process of creating a web resource, if you place it incorrectly, the lion's share of the profit will be lost to you. A traditional niche is a platform for starting a business, which, with the right approach, will help to quickly take a certain place on the virtual web. The main task of an entrepreneur in the early stages of development is a spectacular start, a quick and stormy start, thanks to which clients will notice that it is profitable to work with you. In this case, you need to not only deal with the sale of goods, but also build a marketing system that will help the buyer understand that a serious seller has appeared on the market.

Having received the target audience, you need to keep it. To do this, forward-thinking businessmen consider innovations, get acquainted with new sales, and are interested in the success of competitors. You must continually improve your business knowledge to keep you afloat and not lose customers.

Here are some helpful tips that will help you in the future and help you develop in the right direction:

1. Read analytics, get acquainted with expert assessments of the market. Professionals in the economic field rank an order of magnitude higher in sales knowledge.
2. Analyze your competitors' market on a regular basis. This way you don't miss the chance to continually improve your business.
3. Study the demand. There are products that are constantly in price, however, this does not mean that they may be unclaimed in the near future. A month of downtime for the store will lower it in search engines by several points, and it will be very difficult to go back up.

Popular publications are often advised for novice entrepreneurs to find their own flavor, to create a narrowly focused store, the analogue of which is quite difficult to find. True, if you go too far, you can fly with exclusive goods, having incorrectly determined the sales market.

Clothes and footwear

Online clothing and footwear trade is a huge niche in which it seems very easy to start your own business. According to the results of the statistical assessment of the demand, it ranks first among web resources. Some of the brightest representatives of the direction:

• Lamoda;
• Bonprix;
• Proskater;
• Answear;
• Amazon Fashion;

These giants of sales have long ago conquered a multi-million audience of customers and are constantly holding positions.

The main problem of this niche is huge competition, despite the fact that the opportunities for implementation are colossal: clothing and footwear for the season, children's and teenage clothes, underwear. Here you need to build the correct first serve in order to compete with large stores and establish yourself well in the market.

It is in this niche that exclusive products will make your store popular and reliable, and the company will only benefit from this. However, demand plays a huge role here, which can be studied in detail using resources such as Adwords or Wordstat.

Mobile gadgets and accessories

One of the leaders in world sales remains the sale of mobile equipment via the Internet, which is not surprising. Thanks to modern services, it is convenient for people to view the characteristics, to get acquainted with new arrivals with maximum comfort at home. The peculiarities of entering this niche imply the performance of a number of actions. To promote popularity, you should:

• gain a credit of trust from customers;
• create a favorable pricing policy;
• ensure safe delivery;
• find a good supplier of goods;
• come up with exclusive offers.

Here you can choose both wide and narrow directivity. There are stores that are exclusively engaged in the distribution of Chinese technology, for example, Citrus, or only Apple products - iStore. Previously, buyers were distrustful of this system - the products have a high cost, and you can test it in practice only after receiving the package. Thanks to the customer protection system, cash on delivery of goods, the situation is significantly improved. Such representatives as MOYO, Allo, SM.Market are very popular in this niche.

To increase demand, you can combine the sale of mobile equipment and accessories. When purchasing a product, people often select an audio system, protective glasses and covers for it. Thanks to this, you will not only expand the range of services of your store, but also get a good profit. It will not be possible to make a large mark-up here, because within this niche there is consistently high competition, and it will not be difficult to track cheap goods.

Children's products

The niche of goods for children is just a gold mine, people rarely save on their babies, trying to find great things for them. In addition, if an adult can buy clothes or shoes for several seasons, then for children you need to choose goods according to their height and age.

Clothes for children are popular, and ordering products online makes purchasing them quick and easy. Mothers often buy products on web resources, since visiting offline stores is not very comfortable for them. Sites such as Mothercare, LC Waikiki, Little Gentrys, BABADU are well versed in parenting psychology, making it easy for them to create an attractive offer that will interest the client.

In order to gain a foothold here, you will need:

• special offer;
• a business plan covering demand and financial loss opportunities;
• careful study of your product;
• knowledge of the target audience.

The peculiarity of this niche for online stores is the huge number of opportunities for building a business. Ecological handmade toys, exclusive dishes, even diapers with a special print are relevant. Adults often want to emphasize the individuality of their child, to make him unique. Using such a hint, you can draw up a good plan for the development of your business.

The most interesting way to sell in this area is to play on the feelings of parents. You need to create the emotional content of the showcase, to understand what exactly catches in this case. This example can be seen even when watching advertisements on TV. Often, it is aimed at increasing feelings of affection or tenderness, and as a result, interest in the product, in order to arouse the desire to buy.

Cosmetics and perfumery shops

The beauty products niche is gaining momentum very rapidly. There are many giant stores here, which already have an audience of millions. You need to evaluate their work and try to make your store an order of magnitude better, or at least on a par with competitors. Today girls are attracted by naturalness, natural cosmetics. If you are only engaged in it, then be prepared that the target audience will decrease, you need to win the client with your website, discounts, advertising. SEO will help very well, so learn all the nuances of Internet marketing or contact an experienced content specialist.

You should not constantly advertise your product, "pour water", convincing buyers that it is wonderful - it tires you. The description of the product should be as clear as possible, otherwise the client will lose interest in it. How should the site be filled in correctly? The field of goods for women is an excellent platform for writing instructions for use, useful tips. If, next to the product, you describe in detail how to use it, you will get an interested buyer and rise in the ranking of search engines.

Several narrowly focused departments can be distinguished here:

• skin care (hands, face, feet);
• decorative cosmetics;
• makeup tools;
• Gift Baskets;
• men's cosmetics;
• perfume and toilet water.

MAKEUP is an example of a good online store. This site is distinguished by large-scale and bright advertising. It is difficult to meet a person who has not heard about this site even in passing. Convenient delivery system, detailed description of goods - an excellent layout for creating your own store. Also an indisputable advantage is a wide assortment, convenient navigation, which helps to quickly select the desired product.

Household goods

The sphere of household goods began to develop not so long ago, which is a good prospect for a novice entrepreneur. Household goods can be divided into several points:

• chemistry;
• equipment;
• kitchen utensils;
• haberdashery;
• plumbing.

There are many ideas for realizing your marketing talent here. Correctly built advertising, quality products, affordable prices and merchandising will make the store popular. As a template for marketing promotion, you can take the sites Ozon, Digitalo, VXZone, Price.

Auto parts and auto accessories

Entering the car owner niche is arguably one of the most challenging tasks for a newbie. The main competition is large stores with colossal experience, great potential, a lot of reviews, promotions and pleasant offers.

The main nuances of the niche:

• number of clients;
• search for a reliable supplier;
• storage and cost of products;

This business can rightfully be considered one of the most expensive in terms of cost, because first you need to accumulate a large amount for the purchase of goods. If you do not have the opportunity to immediately start selling cars, it makes sense to focus on accessories: carpets, wipers, lights, vents, air fresheners. Thus, you can attract customers and gradually expand your assortment, delighting regular customers with new arrivals.

New niches are rapidly taking over the market

If none of the sales platforms are right for you, create your own business. Here you can prove yourself in all directions by studying the sales market and marketing opportunities. This does not mean that you need to come up with a new product. A new niche is a section of the market that has not yet received much development, which means that competition will be significantly lower than in the field of selling clothes or mobile phones.

It is much easier for narrowly focused niches to survive the crisis. If a person can refuse to buy clothes or cosmetics, then it will be more difficult to save money on a hobby. For example, when selling exclusive pencils for professional artists, there is no need to fear a loss. You will become a supplier to the people who receive money from using this product. Many experts in the economic assessment of business profitability rely on narrow niches of online stores.

It is important to make your store as convenient as possible. Now it is profitable to create mobile applications, since the target audience will be able to order goods without spending a lot of time. An example of a narrowly focused sphere, the development of which is profitable to start, are services for the design of sites, the sale of copyright services, design salons, companies that provide marketing services.

Finding a niche for an online store

Building your own business from scratch without borrowing someone else's ideas is much more difficult. However, just because you are a trailblazer does not mean that the market cannot be analyzed. Adequate audience assessment should always be carried out. In creating a new niche, you need to learn only one rule - the more exclusive it is, the more profitable.

In order to find your special niche, you can use a simple scheme:

• market segment (for example, cosmetics);
• category - products for skin care;
• niche - face creams;
• podnisha - moisturizing creams.

While researching the market, it is realistic to analyze and understand all the features of choosing your own products, take the right position. In this example, it should be understood that a niche is not a cosmetics, but only a part of it, a specific variety, a constituent element.

Long-term forecasts

It is very important to assess how long your proposal can stay afloat. Demand creates supply, and if a product is at its peak of popularity, this does not mean that in a year customers will also be actively storming stores. A particularly striking example is the implementation of spinners.

This toy was popular for a long time, but now the relevance has disappeared, and with it sales have decreased. This is due to the development of fashion trends, which you need to follow in order to sell goods that are losing demand in time.

Find out if it's realistic to upgrade your assortment. For example, vape stores are kept afloat by new products. The target audience of such stores is smaller compared to 2017, but demand remains high, thanks to new arrivals of goods.

There are a large number of such examples:

• organization of events;
• pillows for pregnant women;
• T-shirts with inscriptions, individual prints;
• vocal lessons;
• sale of peeled tangerines.

As you can see, a creative approach is not enough for constant sales and a large target audience. You need to put yourself in the client's shoes and familiarize yourself with the terms of implementation in this area.

Payback and profit

The main goal of an entrepreneur is money. The wrong calculation of the payback is one of the most common mistakes beginners make, who invest a lot of money, but receive little as a result, or work at a loss.

You can assess the profitability of doing business using a simple formula: RB = amount of profit / value of assets * 100%. But how to determine the opportunity to make a profit if you have just started to draw up a plan for the future store? Initially, you need to calculate the initial amount of money invested. The theoretical profit is calculated according to the formula P = theoretical demand * cost of goods - contributed assets.

Exclusive offers

When creating offers for a special group of people, you need to be prepared to study the relationship between supply and demand. Specific products can be introduced into both traditional niches and narrowly focused ones. The main thing is to come up with the right presentation.

List of niches for online stores :

• cosplay clothes;
• unique handmade jewelry;
• tailoring of clothes according to the client's sketch;
• ecological cosmetics;
• toys that have gained popularity in films, video games, comics.

Unique offers will help the client recognize your product from thousands. They will not get lost under the pressure of giant stores, because you are doing something similar, but diametrically opposite.

How to test a niche for an online store

You can evaluate a niche yourself, dealing with the main nuances, calculating the benefits. This process can be accelerated by using specialized services (wordstat, Google Search Console, Serpstat). They quickly gauge product popularity using real-time information from across the web. Thanks to these systems, you can quickly find out whether a given product is worth selling, whether there is a demand for it, and predict further development.

Competitor analysis

It is very important to become familiar with the leading stores in the market. You can emphasize their benefits, complementing your own improvements, and you will get a good web resource at the end. However, there are several nuances here. The competition for the traditional niche is quite high. Giant stores are crowding out small businesses because they have a well-built marketing campaign, a large assortment and many customers.

You can get acquainted with the opportunity to compete with other sellers thanks to the services.

1. Mention is the most popular resource. It is used by more than 500,000 companies around the world. He evaluates the positive and negative reviews left by competitors.
2. Hootsuite is a free platform that seeks store mentions exclusively on social media.
3. Ahrefs Site Explorer is a service that evaluates what content attracts target audience to competitors. It is easy to use, and thanks to paid registration, you can receive a newsletter about the activity of your opponents every week.
4. LinkPad is a simple resource to help you assess store activity in real time. It has a paid and free platform. By paying the entrance fee, you will get access to an expanded database and more detailed information.

Niche geo-dependency

Geo-dependence, relatively speaking, is the relationship between the region where the customer base is located and the demand for products. It significantly influences the conduct of business, forcing you to regularly work on such factors as:

• the cost of goods;
• demand for products;
• the possibility of expanding the business;
• attracting a wide audience.

This analysis is also important for determining the positions of competitors. Thanks to the indicator of geo-dependence, it is really possible to find out in which regions the stores have not yet had time to start selling, and to get a fresh audience.

It may happen that you have drawn up a plan, conducted an analysis, calculated the prospects, everything seems to have been done correctly, but there are no clients. This means that you, roughly speaking, have set up a pork shop in a Muslim city. In other cities, it would be profitable, but here the goods will deteriorate, and the owner of the enterprise will go bankrupt.

There are niches that are not geo-dependent as they are used by most people around the world. For example, a product such as diapers or feminine sanitary pads is in high demand, and does not depend on social groups and locations.

Let's summarize the choice of a niche for an online store

The choice of a niche is very important for start-up entrepreneurs, since the possibility of developing an enterprise and making a profit directly depends on it. You can master both traditional platforms and narrowly focused ones, create your own direction. Unique offers are popular in the market because customers strive for individuality.

For the proper development of your own store, you must:

1. Study the supply-demand ratio.
2. Draw up a work plan for the year or season ahead.
3. Get to know your target audience.
4. Find out about the activity of competitors, decide whether you will stay in the race for a buyer if you enter a niche.
5. Determine the geo-dependence of the sale of goods in a given territory.

By following simple rules, you will be able to create a promising business that will provide excellent competition and win a large client audience. Don't forget the importance of an effective entry into the sales platform that shows your benefits.