How Do I Spot A New Market Trend?

[cyberkid]

Our eCommerce site is popular, yet the market we are involved with goes through transitions. I can view reports of the search terms viewers use to find us, but how do I find the search queries that are more popular so I can sell those items as well?

[dharrison]

Hi cyberkid

It would help to know what sort of thing you sell in the first place before anyone can comment further. Do you have a Website that we can look at?

HTH.

[cyberkid]

There are 3800 items listed not including their attributes as cataloged in the Department section for our Fiber Arts Shops. Catalog Departments

The basic strategy has been two-fold. First, we had to create a database for the products and that's essentially what the Catalog Department is. The site has been online for 10 years and was originally all HTML, now with the product database the pages in the HTML site are preserved and the old shopping cart scheme is replaced with a new one derived from the database. The Home page of our HTML site is linked to from the catalog page provided.

The question is, given that because there is so much web traffic to the site the web reports at times favor some areas over others and then a product is hot for a while and then its sales drop off. We've cataloged almost every supply manufactures produce. Paint, fabric dye, sewing thread, scissors.... Only, I am trying to figure out what the trends are for this hobby. I've seen market reports that show where most of the buyers are located, yet, it's the product mix that I can't always figure out. If I knew what Google knew then I could be more efficient when listing new products.

My first thought was to catalog books and that would serve as a tell tale as to what fiber artist were wanting to create, since the people writing the books are the most obvious experts on any given area of the hobby. It does have many traditional values and that's the core of our business, but it isn't always the most relevant in terms of the direction the traditional values are heading.

[cyberkid]

The strategy I am adopting now is to implement Google Analytics in order to measure traffic patterns. This is something I had not seen before and I expect such analytics as keyword suggestion will help to pinpoint or align, the market niches our ecommerce site is capable of supporting.

http://www.google.com/analytics/

[incrediblehelp]

Cyberkid have you looked at Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery?

[cyberkid]

I used a variety of keyword routines, like Wordtracker, and use Nichebot the most. However, when I constructed the product database I used Excel to input the data fields. One of the data fields was for keywords, the other fields are the short and long description, title, sku, and the image file address. That meant if a product list contained 50 products with three attributes, they would all have the same keyword structure for that given sub-group of items for that department. Although, I was careful to title the name of the product image its given product name. In total, the right search term will yield what you’re looking for at our website.

Nichebot allowed me to query a product name or department name and then generate a keyword list and be done with it. Now what I’m trying to find are the most popular products given the use of its generic keyword term. I wonder if I should have found a way to find out what products are more popular than the keyword terms. And I have tried to do so by opening an account at Amazon.com. Amazon lets me offer to sell the “same item” on their site. Surprisingly only a few items out sell all others. It is such a wide margin that if you can determine what products are in demand and those products out sell half the other products listed in your website then you would want to add just those product performers to begin with and not get bogged down in so many of the, off the market center items.

We have always had a web report program, Google Analytics is a nice interface and it allows me to measure the relevance of the items shown on the Home Page, and a level below it. That can be done by placing the tracker code on just the pages needed to program the web report. It could be that some items are irrelevant and should not appear on the home page at all. If it turns out that items linked to from the Home Page are irrelevant then I have another problem to deal with, namely sight navigation. Given that I just installed Google Analytics it will take a while longer before the result is statistically accurate. It should help to determine what products shown are developing and which are not. Then if I knew how to find the products that should be listed the sales would likely increase in those new areas.

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In terms of keyword development and the path I'm on now at Google Analytics I can see a pattern of web traffic that will need a while longer to be measured before it is conclusive. Yet, the problem becomes a function of having the product line to sell relevant to the keywords. I might have only one or two of those items listed, if it is a popular term such as a sewing table. I'd like to know which one, and if it is profitable or worth the hassle to ship it? So, a good search term attracts visitors and so far half the visitors that look at the item listed are not interested, the other half surf the sight viewing at least three more pages. The conversion rate is lower than it should be, because the prices are listed at retail. We offer discount coupons and half the time nobody ever uses them.