With the growing preference for online shopping, dropshipping is bound to become the top ecommerce business model—if it isn’t already.
More people will try their luck in this venture, but only a few will succeed. Don’t worry though, there’s a secret to that success.
Ask any veteran dropshipper, and they’ll quickly tell you it’s dropshipping product research.
From tips on conducting practical research to effectively choosing which available research tools are best for you, you’ll find it all in this guide.
Let’s get right to it.
What Is Dropshipping Product Research?
In the simplest sense, it’s the process of looking for products to sell on your dropshipping store and validating if they will generate profit margins or not.
With millions of product ideas for dropshipping, you must find ones that will give you a return on investment.
Doing product research may be time-consuming and taxing, but it’s essential in ensuring your business won’t go down the drain.
How to Do Dropshipping Product Research Effectively?
When it comes to product research, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. However, the dropshipping business has been around for many years, and plenty of entrepreneurs have found their perfect method.
And there’s no denying that there are best practices worth noting.
After all, a well-designed ecommerce store and marketing strategies will all be rendered useless if you don’t do thorough dropshipping product research.
Just keep in mind that while these may be effective for others, you may have to find what works best for you—that means a bit of trial and error.
Here are a few tips on product research that you can start with:
See What’s Trending
The fastest way to conduct product research is to see what’s trending on different ecommerce websites.
Trendy items already have a significant demand you can cater to. The only challenge left is how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors.
You can visit Wish, Etsy, or Amazon to find out which products are prevalent across different categories.
Estimate the Market Size
While it’s almost impossible to obtain the actual market size you might have for specific niches or products, you can still get an insight based on the number of times keywords are searched.
Using this information, you’ll see the interest in the keyword and can analyze whether the product has a significant market size or not.
Google Trends provides information on keywords searched on Google over a specific time. This tool tells you how much traction your identified keywords are getting.
A sample keywords search on “women’s leggings” is done in the images below to show what kind of data you’ll get.
This helpful tool allows you to narrow down the location, period, category, and search type. Related topics and queries also provide insight into what niche the product usually belongs to.
Know Your Competitors
It’s essential to know who you’re up against when selling certain products. If you opted to sell trending products, this portion becomes all the more necessary.
The easiest way to do this is to simply look up your established competitors and see what products they’re currently selling. Most of these websites share the number of reviews and items sold, which are values you can use to determine market size.
Looking at your competitors’ stores will help you benchmark products you can sell on your own or help you find products that can beat theirs.
Join Online Communities
Online communities like Facebook groups and Reddit subreddits are excellent sources of information for which products are needed by certain groups of people or niches.
Here, you get firsthand information about different problems people encounter and insight into what products could help them overcome them.
Just note that when you join online communities, be mindful about which country or region the members are to know your target market.
Find a Reliable Supplier
You’ll never have a successful dropshipping business if you choose unreliable suppliers.
There’s no getting away with low-quality products, much less delayed shipments. People talk, and before you know it, your website’s filled with bad reviews.
So, as part of effective product research, you need to find reliable suppliers for your chosen products. This tip also means considering delivery times and shipping costs for customers in different regions.
Platforms like AliExpress Dropshipping Center provide insights on which supplier is reliable.
NicheDropshipping also offers a Product Sourcing service that will lead you to the best suppliers for the product of your choice at a reasonable price.
Use a Dropshipping Product Research Tool
One of the most effective ways to do product research is by using tools.
You might be wondering why it’s helpful to use dropshipping product research tools. You can find the answer in the next p.
Why Should You Use Dropshipping Product Research Tools?
Product research can be done independently without using tools at all. But if you value time and convenience in product hunting, these tools can do most, if not all, tips stated above.
Dropshipping product research tools are primarily used to find winning products for any store or niche.
These tools vary in the features they have. However, in general, they analyze different products and provide data on the following information:
- Keywords used to search products
- Number of products sold
- Current prices across different platforms
- Latest and trending products in the market
- Stores that carry the product you want to sell
Apart from the apparent benefits, using tools can save you money by cutting down the lengthy process short. In addition, when you use these tools, you lessen the time to look for products that allow you to earn sooner.
If there’s one thing about dropshipping, it’s that you have to know what’s trending. With tools, you can easily see the trends for products across different niches, allowing you to join the wave.
With all that said, let’s look at the top dropshipping product research tools you can use today.
What Are the Top Dropshipping Product Research Tools?
Given that dropshipping is a popular business model, there are plenty of tools to help veterans and newbies find products to dropship.
In this p, you’ll read about each tool’s features and, if any, pricing plans to give you thorough information on which tools suit your business the best.
Here are the top five dropshipping product research tools you might be interested in.
Sell The Trend
Although it’s a relatively new tool, Sell The Trend has been gaining a lot of traction. This is because it contains many features that dropshippers will benefit from, and one of them is “The Nexus.”
This feature is one of the most valuable tools in product research because it uses artificial intelligence to show trending products across different platforms.
The algorithm also provides the following information:
- Product costs, prices, and margins
- Number of current orders
- Links and number of stores on Shopify and AliExpress that sell the product
But product research isn’t the only service this tool provides. You can improve your promotions by creating Facebook video ads and identifying suitable influencers for your brand.
You can enjoy all these features by subscribing to the tool. Prices start at $39.97 per month or $32.97 per month for an annual subscription.
Sell The Trend also offers a 7-day free trial to see if the tool is worth investing in.
Niche Scraper
Niche Scraper is one of the most popular Software as a Service (SaaS) tools for dropshippers.
The tool has four features that do wonders for product research.
Hand-Picked Products
Every day, you’ll see, at most, two products that are hand-picked by the team behind the tool. This feature lessens the time to sift through low-quality products on the website.
Competitor Analysis
You can analyze your competitors’ activity on Shopify, whether they’re generalists or specific niche stores.
Using keywords, store popularity, or product relevance, you can see traffic data, sales estimates, and trendy products to help you analyze what you’re up against.
Product Scraping
Another feature you can enjoy is finding out which products are famous in ecommerce stores like Shopify, Amazon, and eBay.
You can also narrow down your results according to dates and increase or decrease sales rates of products.
Video Ad Maker
Create unique videos using pictures, music, and texts within seconds through Niche Scraper’s video ad maker feature.
All you need is the URL of the product you want to sell and wait for the tool to get the image and create a video.
Currently, you can subscribe to this tool in three different ways:
- Free membership – limited features and 3-day delay to accessing winning products
- Pro membership – starts at $39 per month to access all features
- Annual pro membership – 60% off yearly payments to access all features
Dropship Spy
If you prefer a tool that provides a lot of information and analytics on different aspects of dropshipping, then Dropship Spy is an excellent software for you.
It has the standard features of research tools, like finding winning products across multiple social media and online stores. Still, it easily wins over others with the amount of information you can get from its analytics.
From supplier information to an Instagram influencer database, it’s a great all-in-one tool for beginners.
Below are the in-depth discussion of its features:
Advertising Information
No need to worry about creating your copy. Dropship Spy offers free copy and advertising videos that you can add to your online store.
Engagement Rating
All products found on Dropship Spy each have an engagement rating where you see its performance across different media channels. Ideally, this feature is used for viral products.
Supplier Information
Given the challenge of finding a reliable supplier, this tool has provided a shortcut to find the best one. Using feedback scores, amount sold, product ratings and prices, and shipping fees, you’ll immediately know which supplier is suitable for your store.
You can enjoy Dropship Spy’s features starting at just $20 per month.
AliExpress Dropshipping Center
Conducting product research doesn’t necessarily have to cost you anything.
AliExpress Dropshipping Center offers two features that come for free. You can access this tool in three ways:
- Signing up manually
- Receiving an invitation
- Using a support application such as DSers, Topdser, or Antdiy.
Whatever method you use to access it, you still enjoy the product search and product analysis features.
Product Search
Similar to previous tools mentioned, this feature allows you to find products under three different methods:
- Hot Selling Products
- Image Search
- Sponsored Products
All of the products you’ll see displayed in this feature will come with their respective prices, the number of orders, and current ratings, among others.
Product Analysis Feature
Each of the products you’ll be viewing on the AliExpress Dropshipping Center will come with the “Analyze” button. This button directs you to a comprehensive analysis page.
You’ll see the supplier, logistics reliability, and overview of sales volume through a line graph on this page.
You can also simply copy and paste the URL of the product you’re interested in generating the analysis page.
Thieve
Thieve is highly recommended for AliExpress dropshippers.
This tool provides a list of winning products from AliExpress, which you can also sort by category and niche. In addition, you can also filter out products depending on sales.
All the products you see were carefully chosen by different professionals, making the values credible.
It has a version called Thieve Supply that’s great for dropshippers to use.
Right now, Thieve has two versions—dropshipping and pro. The dropshipping version comes at $29 per month and gives you curated products each day.
On the other hand, the pro membership comes at $99 per month, where you get to access all basic features on top of premium product content and access to pre-release products.
How to Choose the Right Dropshipping Product Research Tool?
It’s certainly not practical to use all the tools mentioned above for your product research. But, on the other hand, some may benefit you more than others, and it’s crucial to find which one works best for you.
To help you choose the right tool for your business, here are some questions that you should answer.
What Features Are Most Useful for You?
Each tool comes with its own sets of features, pros, and cons. Just because one person recommends one tool doesn’t mean it’s the best one for you.
You’re the main person managing your business, and you know what features would make the workload lighter.
Some additional questions you can ask yourself include:
- What pieces of information do I need for my business?
- Do I currently have access to this information?
- Do I need help with other aspects of product research?
By asking and answering these questions yourself, you’ll narrow down which tools would suit your business objective the best.
Are You Willing to Invest In the Tool?
Some of the best tools mentioned above come for free, while others come at a cost. At this point, you have to decide on whether or not you have the budget to pay for your chosen tool.
Some features come with the price you pay, but it doesn’t necessarily matter if you don’t need those features.
Assess what you truly need from a tool and check your budget. Then, once you’ve laid down your needs and money, choose a device accordingly.
Conclusion
Following the best tips and choosing the right dropshipping tool are just two of the ways that you can guarantee success in your dropshipping business.
Who knows, you might even develop your method of doing research apart from these two. You can also get a dropshipping agent to help you with all the business processes, from start to finish.
Contact us today to get to know more about our services.
