A Guide: How to Remain Competitive in the E-Commerce Industry
In boxing, there are weight divisions in place to ensure that featherweights don’t step into the ring with heavyweights. Unfortunately, these types of classifications don’t exist in the e-commerce industry. No matter what specific market your online store falls into, what goods and services you sell via it, how long it has been in existence, or how much money you make on a day-to-day basis, you’ll get pulled in e commerce market competition.
It’s never going to be easy toppling the likes of Amazon, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace. Being pitched against these online giants doesn’t, however, mean that you can’t remain competitive in the e-commerce industry.
To find out what you must do to ensure that your online store is as competitive as it can be, be sure to read on.
Consider the 3 p’s in business
Product, price, and placement—the important role that these 3 p’s of business play in the e-commerce industry can never be overstated. Quite simply, you must consider them all in equal measure if your online store is to remain competitive. Fail to do so, even if you neglect only one of them, and you won’t be able to provide the level of service that your customers are expecting from you.
When considering all the ways in which you are going to utilize this 3 p’s of business in your bid to remain competitive, it’s essential that you:
- Brand your product range to ensure that it appears to be different from everything else in its market
- Ensure that the prices you charge aren’t high enough to alienate a portion of your customer base, yet aren’t low enough to see you miss out on making a profit
- Consider the limitations of each channel that you use to place your products —certain platforms will limit your appeal due to the fact that they themselves lack it
Perform competitive market research
Performing competitive market research is essential. Taking the time for market research and competitive analysis is the only way you are going to keep tabs on what they are selling, how they are selling it, and what prices they are charging. Once you have a grasp of all of this information, you can then tweak your own business model to ensure that you are able to provide the level of service that your customer base is currently expecting.
Thanks to Oberlo’s reverse image lookup tool, it is easier than ever before to perform market research and competitive analysis in the e-commerce industry. This tool is proving so popular with store owners like yourself, simply because it allows them to retrieve digital images of their products no matter where they are found on the web. As a result, they are able to see how their products are performing and what kind of prices they are being sold for. That’s how important competitors analysis.
Rest assured, this tool may technically be described as being a ‘content-based image retrieval query technique,’ but it is incredibly easy to use. Like you would if you were using a text-based search engine, all you do is enter your query (in this case, the query is an image that you upload) and the technology powering the search will pull up all of the images that match yours.
 |
Steve Conway is a content marketing professional and inbound marketing expert. Previously, Steve worked as a marketing manager for a tech software start-up. He is passionate about discovering new software that will that will advance his already well-honed digital marketing techniques. |
Yan Anderson is the Head of Content Marketing at CS-Cart with over 10 years of experience in the eCommerce industry. He's passionate about explaining complicated things in simple terms. Yan has expertise in building, running and growing eCommerce marketplaces. He loves to educate people about best practices, new technologies, and trends in the global eCommerce industry.