As an entrepreneur, wanting success for your business is as natural as breathing air. Successful business owners already know that starting any business is risky. So, it only makes sense that building your own dropshipping business from scratch takes hard work.
According to the print-on-demand experts, Printify, only 10-20% of dropshipping companies are successful. With this success rate, most people would just cut their losses, but the problem isn't with dropshipping. These business owners fail because they have the wrong idea about dropshipping.
Many people believe dropshipping is a get-rich-quick type of business, even when there is no evidence to support it. Anyone can have a profitable business, but being a successful dropshipper means learning everything you can about the industry. Truly understanding dropshipping comes from time and thorough research.
If you’re setting up your new ecommerce store, you need to become comfortable with product research. So, mastering how to do product research should be the first step on your list. Keep reading to learn how to find winning products from reliable suppliers, interpret market trends, and use the best research tools.
Key Takeaways
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Thorough market research is necessary to avoid product saturation and to understand what your customers want. Dropshipping product research tools can guide your decisions on selection, pricing, and target audiences.
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Utilizing product research tools like Sell The Trend and AliExpress Dropshipping Center significantly enhances the ability to identify winning products and analyze market trends.
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Conducting competitor analysis and leveraging social media will provide valuable insights when trying to discover winning products and engaging effectively with potential customers.
Understanding Market Trends for Dropshipping
Let’s go back to the Printify statistic, the low success rate doesn't mean you won't succeed. All it really means is that business owners need to properly prepare for what’s ahead. Quite a few people start selling without understanding their dropshipping niche and finding in-demand products.
To understand dropshipping, anyone interested in running their own store needs the passion and grit to succeed. The best way to prepare begins with honing your skills in market analysis and product research. If you want to enhance your product search skills and outpace your competitors, start by identifying profitable products in markets related to your business.
Dropshippers should strive to be more in tune with product movements in the marketplace and position themselves better. Product research is an invaluable currency in dropshipping. Why is product research valuable?
It’s because it offers rich insights that will influence critical decisions about product selection, ideal pricing models, and finding your perfect customer base. Product research has value because it involves more than simply choosing items that look nice or seem interesting. Successful dropshippers put themselves in the minds of the consumer, to understand how they think, by tapping into the decision-making journey.
They will take their time finding a dropshipping product research tool that breaks down the psychology of buyer behavior. A powerful product research tool helps users find their target market. Yet, they do more than that by revealing current patterns in the sales data.
There are three important insights these research tools could provide:
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address pain points
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gathering customer feedback.
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understanding the trends of this niche.
By study carefully these insights, you will find your winning product and lowering your shipping expenses at the same time. let’s discuss how to use product research tools.
Using Dropshipping Product Research Tools
If you're a successful dropshipper, then you already know that finding a high-quality dropshipping product research tool is only one of the steps on the road to success. Some product research tools have been around for a while, and they have solidified their importance over the years.
In 2024, there are many such tools, but developers create each one with specific criteria in mind. So, you could say that finding an all-in-one solution to identify products is quite the challenge. But that doesn't mean locating the best product research tool for your business is impossible.
It simply means you may have to get creative to get the results you want. If you're just starting your dropshipping enterprise, a free product research tool could help simplify the decision-making process. Free tools typically offer a paid trial, which allows you to test their capabilities before making any financial commitment.
They provide valuable data that you will need for spotting trending products, performing competitor analysis, and monitoring the ongoing performance of your products. Let's highlight three of the best dropshipping product research tools, starting with "Sell The Trend."
Finding a Dropshipping Product Research Tool For Your Business
Sell The Trend
One popular product research tool, Sell The Trend, is a comprehensive dropshipping platform that uses artificial intelligence to help users locate winning products. When using this product research tool, dropshippers can sift through more than 7 million items within 83 ecommerce niches.
Rather than running a painstaking search process, users can uncover trending products all from one online dashboard. Sell The Trend delivers limitless potential when you need a product with high demand, low competition, and high-profit margins. As a product research tool that comes with several marketing tools, Sell The Trend will also simplify your product promotion efforts.
Did you know that the average business spends about 10-15% of its revenue on marketing-related costs? Since dropshippers need a marketing strategy to grow, having a versatile tool that helps them drive down one of their highest operating costs is a benefit they shouldn’t pass up. The platform has a capable video ads generator and a Facebook audience builder to make advertising these items more user-friendly.
There are other resources, including store intelligence reports, that analyze successful stores and their activities. Sellers can also use the tool’s engagement rate calculator to see how well their ads are doing. The tools collect information about the ad’s social engagement factors (likes, comments, shares) to gauge customer interest and put it in perspective.
Yet, the benefits don't stop there. Using Sell The Trend's NEXUS Product Explorer, entrepreneurs can trace emerging trends, evaluate product selections, and scrutinize their competitors' activities. The NEXUS offers even more value than just making competitor research easier for dropshippers. The tool uses an advanced AI that helps sellers find high-quality suppliers with ease.
Using 26 points of interest, NEXUS examines and grades each competing store and the products they use. Successful dropshippers do many things that others don't. Building a holistic strategy is one of these habits.
AliExpress Dropshipping Center
If it's trending products you're after, the Dropshipping Center on AliExpress can help you find reliable suppliers. Businesses can also use the Center’s product analysis section, which operates like a product database. It provide useful insights including the number of orders, pricing strategies, vendor ratings, and customer feedback.
The information helps users access an in-depth perspective of a product's sales history, seller evaluations, shipping from, and different variations to sell to customers. Dropshippers need this data to predict how well a product might perform in the marketplace. Sellers can tweak search filters in the "Find Products to Sell" feature if they want to focus more on performance metrics.
When sellers use this feature, they can access a heatmap that reveals the product purchasing patterns from other dropshippers across other regions. Sellers can use these patterns to find the best emerging market opportunities, that grant them a sought-after advantage. The best part - there's no additional cost for this service.
The feature is readily available for dropshippers at any level, allowing them to reach milestones in their entrepreneurial journey.
Niche Scraper - Product Research Tool
Niche Scraper is another powerful dropshipping research tool that sellers shouldn't ignore. It’s an excellent product research tool that examines best-selling products and tracks how the competition performs when selling them. Its main benefit comes from its insights around "hand-picked products."
With this information, your store can stock winning products that are already generating high sales. Rather than wasting time finding top-selling products, your store can sell winning product with proven records directly. These hand-picked products also come with comprehensive narratives, image collections, and critical information on conversion rates and popularity.
Niche scraper, also offers dropshippers useful reports on specific market niches. Niche Scraper proves itself as an indispensable resource to novice and seasoned dropshippers because it accelerates the product research phase. If you’re trying to get detailed information without spending potentially weeks or months learning the ins and outs of your niche, then Niche Scraper is for you.
Analyzing Competitor Stores
Grasping the concepts of winning dropshipping products and the best dropshipping product research tools is necessary, it's only one piece of the puzzle. Analyzing competitor stores allows sellers to uncover opportunities in their niche and learn from their competition's strengths and weaknesses. While SWOT analyses are not exclusive to dropshipping, they are a framework for improving a company's competitive position and strategies.
AliExpress is useful for SWOTs and analyzing competitors because the tool offers wisdom into order volume, supplier ratings, and customer reviews. Users can directly investigate a product's sales history and seller ratings, to form their own comprehensive view of their performance. Niche Scraper's tools let sellers see what makes other successful dropshipping stores tick by examining the details that reveal the whole picture.
Understanding what habits make these stores successful allows you to adopt similar strategies and find the market gaps. When dropshippers see market gaps, they can structure their operations to fill that gap naturally. Studying a competitor's behavior also helps your company avoid making the same costly mistakes.
Leveraging Social Media Platforms
Dropshippers aren't that different from other online businesses when it comes to their goals. It’s no secret that every business wants to expand its reach and find customers online. Brands are engaging more with their audience in the digital world, so, naturally, they turn to social media platforms.
Social media networks provide opportunities for dropshippers to test new ways of engagement in the name of product research. Think about the last time you were on TikTok. The "clock app's" influence on consumer spending is evident.
About 58.2% of the app's users claim that TikTok influences their buying decisions. TikTok and Instagram support powerful visual connections and provide a stage where dropshippers can present their products in a relatable way. These platforms also have unique opportunities for instantaneous product data scraping to find trending dropshipping items, for example, by study carefully on the #TiktokMadeMeBuyIt hash tag, you could find some trending products that's have opportunities to go viral.
Many brands also "Go Live," host interactive live Q&A sessions, or do polls to improve customer engagement and build brand loyalty. Having more engagement with your marketing content raises product awareness but also builds traffic to your content. When you create high-quality content that serves your audience, it noticeably increases the probability that they will buy your products.
Savvy dropshippers see the value in social media and understand that it can make the buying process simpler and act as a gateway directly to their ecommerce stores.
Exploring Amazon Best Sellers and Google Trends
Successful dropshippers are always thorough in their product research process. Have you ever heard the phrase, "Different strokes for different folks," or how about, "Whatever floats your boat?" Essentially, dropshippers should do whatever seems necessary to help their business be successful.
They use dropshipping research tools when discovering winning products, but even the best product research tools provide a narrow view. As far as finding a winning dropshipping product goes, dropshippers should investigate the Amazon Best Sellers list and Google Trends. Each digital platform has important features that gauge customer interest through search behavior and keywords that reveal the highest-performing product niches.
The Amazon Best Sellers list focuses on products with the highest sales from specific categories. Dropshippers can view which products are currently popular and selling well to build out their store’s catalog. Dropshippers often use Google Trends to find trending items and confirm whether the demand for them on Amazon is legitimate or just hype.
Pinterest Trends is similar to Amazon and Google Trends and helps sellers locate emerging products. When dropshippers seek more opportunities to break into profitable markets, they look for emerging products. Pinterest is unique because it provides users in the "research and buying phase" with visual inspiration and shopping ideas.
Dropshippers can gauge user engagement with certain items based on how many users take the “digital pins” and place them on their boards. When more users take pins about a specific item, the product is going “viral”. Companies can take pins and build a board that resembles their catalog.
Pinterest is also an amazing platform for marketing and social engagement. Pinterest has over 522 million active monthly users, and nearly 90% of them say the app influences their buying decisions. The developers also built in many helpful business features, but Rich Pins could be one of their best features.
Rich Pins include a lot more detailed information, which dropshippers can use to understand why these products are popular or engage with other users to build a stronger relationship.
Conducting Keyword Research
Keyword research is another way dropshipping companies can improve their efforts when selling high-demand products online. Instead of looking at the sales performance of a product or scrolling through a database for a winning product, dropshippers can use Search Engine Optimization. Dropshippers need to identify specific keywords or phrases that customers use to find products they want.
Online businesses always want to generate fresh leads, but any lead isn't going to cut it. You need organic leads from visitors who want to be on your site. Anyone who found your store online through a search engine will be a well-qualified lead.
Leads earned through SEO have a 14.6% close rate versus the 1.7% of conventional marketing. Dropshipping SEO can be overwhelming but will pay dividends if done correctly. Using keywords effectively will help dropshippers build their brand, rank higher in search engines, and increase sales.
Most importantly, using SEO helps businesses stand out and turns them into a trusted authority in their niche. There are many keyword research tools for dropshippers, but not all are equal. If you're looking for a free account, Backlinko's keyword research tool is a solid option.
Other tools like Ubersuggest, Surfer SEO, and Semrush are invaluable for identifying search volume and analyzing competition for specific keywords. The key isn't to only target words with high search volume. It may seem counterproductive, but these words will be too competitive and will make ranking on search engines extremely difficult.
Rather than trying to out-rank larger corporate businesses, dropshippers should use long-tail keywords. The idea is that rather than using short keywords to rank, long-tail keywords allow your business to rank for specific niches. You target buyer intent by ranking with more specific search terms and should see higher conversion rates.
Instead of worrying about planning for seasonal product trends, you can ensure more sustainable sales with targeted searches.
Evaluating Product Quality and Supplier Reliability
Every dropshipper wants their business to be sustainable, but they need to realize that staying in business hinges on continuously evaluating supplier dependability and product excellence. Your dropshipping company needs to provide high-quality items to your customers and deliver them on time. Dropshippers have many ways to locate dependable suppliers, but it's common to use databases loaded with a roster of trustworthy suppliers.
Much like they would search for reliable dropshipping products, dropshipping companies should examine supplier reviews or recent endorsements about their reputation. Your company depends on reliable suppliers to create a positive experience and build its success. High-quality suppliers provide goods that adhere to quality and safety benchmarks.
In this industry, dropshippers need to acquire physical samples to inspect them before making any commitments. When inspecting physical samples, pay attention to:
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Material quality
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Product craftsmanship
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Product presentation (branding, designs, etc.)
How do the product's physical characteristics strike you? Buying and selling a high-quality product isn't enough to make your business successful. Suppliers must also support customer satisfaction through their policies.
Suppliers need to know how to communicate and be responsive to customer and business questions. It may seem like a no-brainer, but they should have an uncomplicated return strategy that accounts for those unplanned delivery issues and product defects. Fast issue resolution is also necessary when creating long-lasting partnerships between a dropshipping business and its vendors.
Dropshipping companies should leverage multiple vendors to enrich their inventory and provide more product variation. Working with multiple suppliers can also limit out-of-stocks or product shipping delays, as these issues happen sometimes.
Testing and Validating Product Ideas
Before devoting their time and resources to specific product concepts, dropshippers should test and validate their ideas. Overall, thorough testing and validation of potential products will save money, keep customer expectations high, and fuel business success. Some dropshippers have found that interacting with potential customers at trade shows or events is one of the best ways to gauge instant reactions and predict a product's profitability.
You aren't limited to meeting with potential customers at trade shows or events, as there are other ways to test and validate new ideas. Other ideas may be:
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Monitoring store analytics
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Launching crowdfunding campaigns
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Conduct or hire an agency for market research
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Accepting preorders
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Gather responses from interviews, surveys, and focus groups
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Creating Minimum Viable Products to gauge interest
The actual sale of test products will serve as an indicator for validation, confirming that consumers see value in your new products. Nothing in life is guaranteed, and market research isn't a crystal ball. Still, investing in business ideas backed by up-to-date market research means that you’re buying products that demonstrate market appeal.
Building a Profitable Dropshipping Store
Building a successful dropshipping store requires passion, deliberate actions informed by market data, and creative planning. Many successful business owners have realized that SEO and social media will boost organic traffic to your store and elevate its online presence. Aside from becoming an authority in your niche, you need to surround yourself with suppliers that use competitive pricing so you can maintain profitable margins.
Your ideal suppliers should have sensible policies to keep customer relations positive and multiple partners whose activities support your business model. Offering customers product variety from reliable suppliers will make your business more accessible to a larger audience. With platforms like Shoplazza, establishing your online store and deal with suppliers becomes more intuitive in just a few clicks.
When you don't have to stress about these critical dropshipping elements, you can concentrate on other business operations that support your success.
Summary
Marketing is inherent to running a business, but does that mean you need to be a marketing expert - of course not. You do need to grasp basic marketing trends, and engaging in some form of marketing activity is the best way to attract customers. Running a premier dropshipping business also means doing diligent product research, examining rival stores, and giving social media an honest effort.
These factors act as puzzle pieces integral to the whole picture of forging a prosperous dropshipping enterprise. The methods and research tools outlined in this article offer distinct benefits that assist in identifying winning products for your online store. Being a successful dropshipper means fully committing to these strategies and tweaking your tactics concerning market insights.
If you want to position your business at an advantage within this dynamic marketplace, you need to keep that passion for entrepreneurship alive. You must be ready to tackle the many challenges ahead and find ways to provide value to your customers. You are not building customer loyalty if all you do is accept orders and forward them to a supplier.
Don't waste all your effort on finding the best products or searching for other product research tools to give you an edge. Use product research to become an expert in your niche who provides quality advice to their customers. Curate more products based on your customer needs.
Then, insert more value into the customer relationship with personalized support. Only then will you know how to achieve dropshipping success. The key is to stop acting like the other 90% and learn how to become one of the 10%.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the top product research tools for dropshipping in 2024?
Finding the top product research tools for dropshipping in 2024 depends on what you want from them. We've mentioned good examples like Sell The Trend, AliExpress Dropshipping Center, and Niche Scraper. These tools will enhance how you select products to sell and fuel the fires of success for your online business.
When trying a new tool, using its free trial period makes sense to assess its value to your brand.
How can I identify winning products for my store?
To identify winning products for your store, you have to arm yourself with product research tools like Sell The Trend to study market trends and find meaning in the sales data. Through these insights, you will be confident enough to make informed decisions. You can also meet with potential customers at events and test MVPs to narrow down winning products for your catalog.
Why is it important to analyze competitor stores?
Studying your competition provides valuable insight into mistakes to avoid and successful products you may have missed. You will also find ways to improve your strategies and give your brand a significant advantage.
How can social media assist in product research?
TikTok and Instagram have become a hub for user-generated content where users discuss high-quality products and great experiences. The social aspect of these platforms has created a haven for engagement and presented opportunities for more direct product research. These networks also offer clever ways where direct interaction with customers is intuitive and gathering their feedback feels natural rather than invasive.
What should I consider when evaluating product quality and supplier reliability?
When evaluating product quality and supplier reliability, dropshippers should pay attention to several factors. They should prioritize customer reviews of product inventory and reviews about the suppliers. Business owners should also request product samples while carefully studying the material quality of each item.
Supplier shipping times must be reasonable, and return policies shouldn't be confusing, exhaustive, or time-consuming. Sellers should also engage with multiple suppliers to provide their customers with product variety. When collaborating with vendors, dropshippers should confirm product availability and be ready to act accordingly when there are delays or defective products.
