At Experia, we’re often approached by entrepreneurs who are thinking about starting an online store business. My initial advice is always the same – start by getting a good understanding of demand.
In particular determine:
- Are people buying this type of product online right now?
- How many are buying (what is the size of the market)?
- What are their online habits? And how are you going to get your offer in front of them?
In most cases, supply (in this context, the sourcing and fulfillment of products/services to meet a market need) can be managed much more easily than demand. Generating demand for a product where little or none currently exists can be difficult and expensive.
Where possible I recommend market testing to better understand demand before investing significant amounts into an online store business.
For example, we have built prototype stores for clients to use to test their market. These are quicker and cheaper to get up and running – and can often be used as platform for a “production” quality site if the market shows promise.
There are other ways to test markets such as acting as an affiliate for other people’s products in order to test traffic volumes and conversion rates.
Market Testing, Online Business
