Need Help!! Market Research & SEO

[satheesh]

First of all, i think iam posting this thread in a wrong category.

we are planning to enter a new market.. say an ecommerce website which sells niche products (preferably Home supplies), which contains each and every household products like carpets, kitchen utensils, gardening kits etc..

The thing is where do we start..

I have googled "how to do market research for Niche products", and the results displayed are the books on online marketing to purchase.

are there any guidelines to market analysis?

Any Help will be deeply appreciated!

btw, i have also considered google trends for the keywords iam working on.

Thanks in Advance,
Satheesh

[SeoKungFu]

Hi Satheesh!
I will express only my opinion based on own experience, not even claiming to be an expert at all
So, first you should be not blindly believing that google understands the meaning that you put in the words you use in your search, no matter how relevant they strive to be.
My first suggestion is to replace the broad one "niche products" with the more specific "home supplies" in that same query and to see for yourself how it works. Maybe results will be more than hintful for your case.

[chrisJumbo]

There is so much to your question. But, you can start with Google's keyword tools for some ideas. You can type a phrase you think will be good and see how much traffic it has and whether or not people are paying for ads. That is a good start. Let's say you type "home supplies" and it says it gets 40,000 searches a month and you think you hit the jackpot. First, if you are just starting out, the chances of your site getting any free traffic for that is next to nil. Maybe in 5 to 10 years. You can pay for traffic, CPC, but you have to know what you are doing.

If there are websites you are modeling after, you can type an URL into the keyword tool and it will suggest phrases based on that.

Google's wonderwheel can give you ideas also. You need to do a lot of reading before embarking on this journey though.

Some would suggest looking at phrases that have a volume of around 3000 searches per month to start. But, you have to pick phrases that buyers are using to search for. Even if home supplies wasn't that competitive, that seems like too broad of a phrase for a good conversion rate.

You may also want multiple domains so you can focus better on each product. Again, everyone will have their own opinions.

When you find a phrase, you need to study your competition and see how difficult it will be to get in the top 10 results.

Also, for the record, I'm a DIYer. You may want to find some professional help and I would suggest reading various forum posts here and discovering who could best serve your needs if you go that route.

There is a whole section dedicated to this. I would start there.
Search Engine Optimization Forum - WebProWorld

cd :O)

[keyon]

Originally Posted by satheesh

First of all, i think iam posting this thread in a wrong category.

Actually, I think this is a very appropriate category for your question.

A discussion about SEO would hopefully assume you've already completed your initial market research and have found the keywords and products you want to promote. Unfortunately this is where people get tripped up - building websites and products first, and then going out and trying to find a market using SEO. That's backwards thinking.

One person who comes to mind who is right on target with this concept is Ed Dale. You can google him and find a pretty extensive set of how-to videos on the subject.

[douger]

Are you looking to do this yourself? Or are you looking or a consultant to help you?

[weegillis]

If you're starting from scratch, with or without consultation, it's always good to start with a basic framework of all the concepts against which you can map your progress. A book that covers all or most of the key points is always good to have. Here's one:

Link: Online*Marketing Inside*Out - SitePoint Books

[deepsand]

Aside from "book learning," it's also a good idea to take a look at your competitors, determine which are the more & less successful, identify what factor(s) distinguish the former from the latter, and then move accordingly.

In business, never learn from personal experience that which can be learned from the experiences of others.

[themezoom]

Hi,

There is really not much to your question at all.

There are simply four questions that you should be asking.

In my opinion these are the most important questions I have ever asked about any of my business ventures and I still teach these to my VOMA (vertical online market analysis) students:

1. Is your product currently positioned as a vitamin or a painkiller.

2. Is there an irrational passion around your niche theme cluster.

3. Are people actively searching for your product with theme keywords.

4. Are there few choices for them when it comes to the specific product niche you are considering>

I wrote the all out for myself in the following document and video. Trust me when I say, this is totally overlooked by most researchers, who confuse market research for keyword research. One must doboth at the same time.

http://www.theme-zoom.com/krakken12/...-questions.pdf

- Russell

[weegillis]

themezoom: You allude to the real fact, which is that market research has nothing to do with the web, or rather the web is one small diimension of market research. But it makes a good model to fashion a full scale research project upon. "Market share" comes to mind as a way to tie them together, inextricably.

Focus groups and usability testing are two facets of market research that have nothing to do with the above, and there are other factors to be sure. Yet many of us are focusing on webcentric analysis and calling it 'market research'. In our hearts we know this not to be so.

In order to do real market research one needs to understand the true size of the market, and have a definitive way of knowing what share of it one is reaching with our product. Or, at least be aware of the target size of one's market projections. Anything else is a lot of tossing leaves into the breeze.

[innominds]

As you are trying to make a site on "Home supplies", search for related information.
Just google for it and analyze your competitors.
That is what is known as Market Research.
Do SWOT analysis whether to enter that particular market or not and then prepare a notes for it.

[nickoran]

ok, firstly i dont think anybody is going to type in "home supplies" or any of these words people are throwing about on here, chances are you are going to get people wanting a fork, type in "fork" and thus your website should be structured as such...
but as regards to market research... actual market research online is actually quite hard, its very difficult to simulate what people are going to be searching for online, also it rather depends what type of information your looking to seek from this... do you know who thetarget maket will be? age groups? locations? sex?
once you have the basics you can start looking more in depth as to how many of that sector use the internet for shopping, wht sites they visit, thier social groups etc etc.

I would suggest looking into doing some focus groups personally, i like these because they get peoples ideas flowing and you hear suggestions you might not have thought of (focus group is where you sit about 10 people down and quiz them on products similar to yours and put yours amongst them - for those that didnt know)

sorry ive been short but really your question to me seems very open, a little bit of narrowing down could help lol

[BluePlanet]

Unless there is something special about your products, I don't see the point in selling what are low priced commodities online. You are also very late to the game. You are not going to have significant volume for a long time and can't compete on price. I think you have bigger problems than worrying about SEO and keywords. You will be so far down the list of search results, the search isn't going to do you any good. You will have to spend a lot on Google ads and other types of promotion and your product's profit margins probably will not support much of that. Your question, if that is what it is, is so general that you can't expect anything more.