No orders? You should take a look at this product development idea

About the author : An executive of a cross-border e-commerce company listed on the New Third Board. He has extensive industry experience, and his work experience includes product development, supply chain management , integrated operations, and corporate strategy .

"Original Record"

First of all, for those who clicked in, do you think the title is very attractive? If so, congratulations, you have been "marketed".

Whether we are writing articles or making products, the first factor is the "selling point". Good wine needs no bush. Except for those amazing products, we still have to honestly attract the attention of consumers.

Let's insert a little story here. In the era of MP3, SONY was the dominant player in the MP3 market at that time. In order to break SONY's monopoly, Apple specially designed the IPOD product in white, and the earphones were also white. In the end, the original white data cable triggered the trend in the United States, and it made a great comeback and made billions of dollars. I guess everyone has thought about it here, when did white earphones come into being? Many people born in the 1980s and my generation should have a sense of surrogacy. At that time, white earphones were really cool.

Without further ado, let’s first take a look at a mind map. Then we’ll use the mind map and case studies to demonstrate how to actually do product development work.

1. Market Research

When we develop products, we must first look at the market. A good market research is equal to half the success of the product, how important it is.

Let me show you some fool-proof content, please click https://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/.

You can see that this is the real-time ranking of each category based on Amazon's transaction volume. The amazing thing is that there are also the hottest new products, the fastest rising products, etc., which makes it convenient for you to learn (copy) others. At this time, it is really better than using any software or asking your account manager to give you data. Take a look every day and pay attention to it all the time. One day you will succeed, hehe.

According to the Amazon manager himself, basically the sales volume of products is in the TOP100, of which the first three pages account for more than 90%, and the homepage accounts for 80% of the market. Therefore, it is very important for Li Siting to be on the homepage. For small categories, you can add the product to the shopping cart and pay attention to the sales, which can also be used to test the market capacity.

2. Positioning categories and markets

Well, after you have learned (copied) from others and investigated the market capacity and general trends, it is time to position your product. First, you need to position the type you want to make, whether it is experience-oriented or practical, electronic or non-electronic. In principle, practical products have fewer customer complaints and returns, while experience-oriented products have higher abnormalities. After all, everyone has their own advantages. Experience-oriented products are easy to cause trends, while practical products are stable, have a long life cycle, and are highly competitive.

Now, what should we do if we are optimistic about the market capacity of a certain type of product? Let's take a product as an example, such as cleaning products. The cleaning category is very large, so how can we find your target in this case? At this time, we add a keyword, steam cleaning or vacuum cleaning. This will make it easier for us to locate. You can even extend the steam cleaning category to clothes ironing, and the vacuum category to car cleaning, and so on.

3. Position the actual product and judge the competitors

As the saying goes, knowing yourself and your enemy ensures victory in a hundred battles. If you want to compete with others, you must dig out their true colors. Let's take the steam cleaning category above as an example. Let's look at our competitors' products. Have you found a characteristic? Are the appearance and specifications quite homogeneous? But the key is that this type of product is easy to sell.

Since this category is practical, the most important thing for us is to define the specifications. At this time, you should compile a specification sheet for this product based on your competitors, and then investigate the actual customer complaints of this part of the product to form a pain point and specification sheet for your product. In this way, your product definition will come out. Pay special attention here. When defining the product, you must define the region and the main audience. In addition, there are differences in ID and price. The price difference of similar appearance is about 10 dollars. In fact, the procurement cost here will never exceed 1-2 US dollars. The importance of good appearance can be imagined.

Here are some websites for inspiration:

1. www.engadget.com

2. Google Analytics

3. www.kickstarter.com

4. www.pinterest.com

You see, your competitors have such specifications, so are the specifications simple? There is a core issue here, that is, your product must be innovative or improved. Here, the user pain points you collected are useful. How should we analyze it at this time? First of all, the most common complaint among users is that the steam duration is not enough, and the second is that it is easy to break. So how do you improve it in the specifications (steam duration or size, the first related thing is definitely power and conversion rate, at this time, you must make focused improvements, for example, you can ask for such a sample in China, and communicate with the supplier in a targeted manner after testing. There will definitely be costs involved here, but if you are developing a hot product at the time, the cost of improvement can definitely be spread out because there is volume).

Let’s take another example:

Bluetooth speakers are a huge category. You may be scared when you hear about them and not want to make them. However, if you want to explore the niche market, please take a look at BT soundbar.

Are they all very expensive? Are there only international brands? Here comes your chance, brother. Cost-effectiveness is the advantage of Chinese people. Hurry up and buy one (Zebao made one in October last year. I don’t know why I can’t find it when I’m writing this article. I wanted to find it out)

In fact, Bluetooth products are not difficult to make. You can see the core of Bluetooth products, appearance, Bluetooth receiving and transmitting distance, battery life, waterproof, nothing more than these. In fact, you can change your mindset and find some ODM companies that do OEM for brand companies instead of those factories that are available in large quantities outside. The products they make are actually quite good. If you keep up with marketing and promotion, it won't be too difficult to make it.

PS: I’m having trouble writing this, it feels like it’s too long, let’s wait for the next issue.