As there is no dearth of information on how to start an online business if you just do a Google search. The information glut might as well confuse you if you are a novice in the e-commerce business. First, you have to be sure of what you are going to do with your e-commerce website. Before embarking on a money splurge on making a jazzy looking website and glossy business cards, you need to be sure of what the customer requirement is and will you be able to cater to his/her needs. Only then, there is a chance of surviving in this overcrowded online space. Here are five tips that would help you to start a successful e-commerce business.ResearchYou need to figure out how many of the leading players are actively advertising. This is very important because paid advertisers are the sure shot indicator of paying customers. So, the thumb rule is paying customers. Sans paying customers, everything is a sheer waste of time. Once you know the share of competition and the advertisers, then you can plug your e-commerce product idea into Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner. This exercise is to test waters whether your idea is in an uptrend or downtrend. The advantage with Keyword planner is that you will exactly know how much competitors are paying to get clicks from consumers, who are actively searching for it.
eBay SearchLike Google, eBay search will also help you to gauge if similar products are popular, depending on bid counts and selling at a fast pace or not, depending on the number of active auctions and listings. With this, you will be able to determine whether or not you are getting into a dead market. There are different tiers in the market such as high-end, low-end and mid-level price range. You can analyze and depending on your investment capacity, you can choose your space.Amazing AmazonAmazon is a really amazing website, where you get to see consumer insights that would corroborate or deny your assumptions. If you go through Amazon reviews, you will get first-hand information about many aspects of the products, its pain points like the product quality and most wished for features to shipping times and customer service. Once you get the hang of it all, then you can repurpose this inputs to build an awesome brand.SpyFu SurpriseOnce you look for the right information on Google, then the next logical step is trying SpyFu tool. While Google is certainly useful by showing you the consumer facing information including who the top players are in the search results and which brands are actively advertising, SpyFu will give an insight on what the top performing keywords and advertisements are. Like what you have done with the information you got from Amazon reviews, you might as well repurpose SpyFu information as well to build your brand even stronger.Ahrefs ToolAhrefs is a tool for SEO and marketing, back link research, organic traffic research, keyword research, content marketing and more. Like SpyFu, Ahrefs will help you identify top keywords and determine how much traffic they bring in and which pages they’re linked to.