Product research is one of the most exciting aspects of ecommerce for any entrepreneur. Looking for products that show demand, but still haven’t encountered excess competition, can send you down the most interesting rabbit trails. Discovering that thousands of people are searching for things you never even knew existed opens the doors to success for those willing to do the work.
But you don't need to go down these rabbit trails blindly.
If you’re already selling on Amazon, you might be under the impression that Alibaba.com is just the final step in a process that began with extensive product research. Ecommerce sellers are familiar with how this works. Using software such as Helium 10, prospective sellers find product opportunities on Amazon, then head straight to Alibaba.com to source their product.
However, were you aware that you can actually START your product research journey on Alibaba.com itself? In this blog post, we will focus on a new tool that can help anyone using Alibaba.com research product opportunities on Amazon.
Starting Your Product Research on Alibaba.com
How are you using Alibaba.com?
If you’re not selling on Amazon, but instead, using Alibaba.com simply to buy products for your business or website, why not consider selling on Amazon?
Let’s say you’ve already done your homework and found a great seller for bulk products from Alibaba.com. If that’s the case, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table by not selling it on America’s largest online shopping platform.
Whether or not you’re selling on Amazon right now, here’s a simple, free process you can use in order to gauge demand and get insights into a product’s viability on Amazon.
Helium 10 Chrome Extension
Step 1: Go to helium10.com/extension. That takes you to the Google Chrome store.
Step 2: Once you’ve navigated to the Google Chrome store, click the “Add to Chrome” button, and it will take you to a page where you can sign up for a free Helium 10 account.
Step 3: Once you are logged into Helium 10 on your free account, go to Alibaba.com. Let’s say you aren’t yet an Amazon seller, but you are interested in sourcing coffin shelves for your gothic decor Shopify website.
Step 4: Type in “coffin shelf” on Alibaba.com.
Before you begin digging deeper to find the right seller for your product, a good starting point would be to determine the amount of demand on Amazon for coffin shelves.
Now you can do that without ever leaving this chrome tab!
Step 5: Click on the Helium 10 Extension you just installed. Then hit the Demand Analyzer button.
Once you do that, a new window will appear which gives you a treasure trove of insights into this particular product’s demand on Amazon!
Let's break down what you see here.
The Alibaba.com Demand Analyzer
At the top of the page, you will see “Search volume” followed by a number. This number represents the estimated number of times this particular keyword was searched for on Amazon in the last 30 days.
Yes, you are reading that correctly. There were over 8,000 people last month who felt that the one thing their house was missing was a shelf shaped like a coffin!
Here’s a pro tip: sometimes keywords have abnormally high or low search volume due to seasonality. For example, you might think that searches for “coffin shelf” would be highest during Halloween. Or, that a search for “beach ball” in January, would result in a fraction of the results of that same search during the summer months.
In order to check the seasonality of the demand, click the graph next to the search volume, and you will be able to see the week by week search volume going back one year or more!
Underneath the search volume, there are three metrics: total revenue, average revenue, and average price. In this example, the tool is looking at the products that have that seed keyword (coffin shelf) in the title, and aggregating their estimated revenue and price for you. If the overall revenue is very low, it could indicate that there are a smaller number of products available.
Diving deeper into the data
If you wanted to dive deeper into that data to see the products that are driving these numbers, you just need to hit the “See all metrics” button to the right of those figures. This will take you to the Helium 10 Black Box tool so that you can see all of the products that these numbers are pulled from.
Below the sales data, you will see a section titled “Top matching keywords containing...”
This will show you a list of the most searched keywords that contain the seed keyword you’ve pulled from Alibaba.com. You can also see its corresponding search volume, as well as how many products show up on Amazon for each of those keywords.
If you want to broaden the keyword search related to coffin shelf, you can click “See the full keyword list.” This will take you to a Helium 10 Magnet search page. Here you’ll be able to look closer at thousands of related keywords.
On the right hand side, you will see thumbnails of the Top Products that have “coffin shelf” in the title. If you scroll your mouse over them, you’ll see the full title of the product as it appears on Amazon. As soon as you click on the thumbnail, you will be redirected to the listing on Amazon.
Find a successful Amazon product in minutes
In a matter of minutes, you went from finding a seller for your Shopify (or other ecommerce) marketplace, to getting TONS of valuable intel regarding a specific product’s potential on Amazon.
What if you’re already an Amazon seller? You might be one of the more than 500,000 Amazon sellers already using Helium 10, but just don’t understand how you could use Alibaba.com for product research. Instead, you’ve always just used Helium 10’s Black Box and X-Ray tools.
A new Alibaba.com product research strategy
If that’s the case, here’s a product research tip for you that you have probably never considered. Let's say you found this coffin shelf opportunity using Helium 10, then went looking for a seller, as in the scenario above.
Instead of ending your Alibaba.com session by requesting a quote on your coffin shelf, take a look at the rest of their catalog. There might be unique products you had not considered pursuing yourself. To offer an example, here is the landing page for one of the coffin shelf sellers.
A moon shelf? A pentagram shelf? Does this mean that there is significant demand on Amazon for these products? The next step is looking at the kind of prices (and opportunities) that other Alibaba.com sellers offer.
Simply run a search for “moon shelf” on Alibaba.com, and use the Helium 10 Demand Analyzer to go through that same process we did in the above example!
Product research is where it all starts
It’s tough to be successful selling products on Amazon that do not have demand. Make sure and use the new Helium 10 Demand Analyzer on your next Alibaba.com search so that you can shine some light on your product research journey.
This week's #B2BTuesday Tip:
Do your product research before choosing a product to sell. Make sure the product shows demand but still remains a low-competition profitable niche.