How To Find Your Online Shop Niche

When you’ve your online shop’s mission, you should focus on finding the right niche for your business.  If you find your niche, you’ll be able to optimize your products, sales, and marketing to target the needs and wishes of that specific group. In this post, we’ll help you find your shop’s niche by discussing the two most important pillars: your customer and your product.

Finding Your Online Shop Niche

You shouldn’t overthink the research process, but you need to be strategic in your choice. If you don’t strike a healthy balance, you’ll either rush into an unprofitable business that will eat away at your precious resources, or you’ll take too long to get into a business that could have started making you money a long time ago. Worse, a competitor may beat you to the punch.

B2C x B2B: To Find Your Online Shop Niche

Are you (mainly) selling to end-users or other businesses? Now you might have expected this question under ‘Who is your customer?”, but I beg to differ. When you start your business, you unconsciously think about selling B2C (business to consumer) or B2B (business to business). I think that in most cases the decision for B2C or B2B isn’t made in a business plan. Your business probably grew in a certain direction because of other choices you’ve made, such as: What is my main product? What other products related to that? Do all these products fit a certain product group/assortment? Finally, does it pay off to invest in the option to sell more related products?

Customer Interest

If you do nothing else, make sure to gauge customer interest. You will never build a profitable business without getting into a product niche that takes into account buyer intent.

You could set up shop and wait for the customers to come pouring in, but that may never happen if your online store is lined with products nobody wants or will buy. So, instead, educate yourself: Use your favorite keyword tool — such as Google Keyword Planner — to find keywords with good search volume. If there isn’t enough search volume, you won’t be able to make any money in that niche. Conversely, if there’s too much search volume, you’ll obviously have an opportunity to make money, but standing out against the competition may prove a challenge. More on that in a moment.

How Can You Add Value?

To really break into a niche you need to be able to add value within it. The thing is, there will be hundreds of other stores selling the same products within the same niche. You need to ask yourself whether your store is able to solve problems or provide for the needs of your potential shoppers in that niche and whether you can provide value – or offer a unique spin – to make your store stand out.

Being an expert in your niche allows you to provide informative content and position yourself as the go-to expert within that niche, making your store, your products, and your brand more trustworthy, knowledgeable, and helpful and ultimately more profitable. If you can add such value, you’re providing more than just a product, but a service. This will also allow you to charge premium rates as people are more inclined to pay more for better service from people they see as ‘experts’. As a result, a great method to find your online shop niche.

Research your niche market

It used to be that small businesses had no way to compete with big companies. Things have changed, and with the right amount of SEO (search engine optimization) and dedication, you can make your way into your biggest competitor’s space.

Before launching or scaling your store, find out what’s already going on in the market. You might be unaware of a competitor your potential customers are already interested in. Or you may discover the market you’re looking to enter is much more saturated than you expected.

Some competition is OK because it validates that there’s money to be made in this niche for you as well. Your competitors will keep you on your toes. Which in turn will help you improve the quality of your products or services?

Final Words To Find Your Online Shop Niche

To keep up with (and, eventually, get ahead of) the established brands in your niche. You need to figure out your competitive advantage. The thing that makes your product stand out from the rest. What problems can you solve better than your competitors? What’s unique about your approach?