5 Techniques to Generate New Product Ideas & 13 Tools to Use

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Finding the right product ideas can feel overwhelming. After all, a lot is riding on your choice. The right product can help you make money, escape the 9 to 5 grind, and build a successful business. Picking the wrong product can lead to failure, lost time and resources, and plenty of frustration. This blog will help you sift through product ideas to find the perfect choice for your store so you can launch a successful online business. Analyzing product or niche ideas is especially important for ecommerce competitor analysis. Before you start selling, you want to ensure a market for your product and that you can compete with your rivals. This article will offer valuable insights to address your goals, like successfully creating and launching a product that meets market demand and stands out. You want a streamlined, efficient process from ideation to market, minimizing risk while maximizing impact.

One tool that can help you achieve your objectives for your product ideas is Shophunter.io’s Shopify sales tracker. This helpful tool can help you get organized and make informed decisions about your product ideas to reach your goals faster and with less stress.

What is a Product Idea

A product idea is a concept or plan for a new item that a company can produce and sell in a particular market. It outlines the item's purpose, features, and key design elements. Many product ideas involve mechanical or engineering components, as a manufacturer uses its resulting design to build an object.

They often target a certain issue that an item can resolve, like how a vacuum cleaner can lift dust off a floor at a faster rate than a dustpan or a wet towel.

Why Do Product Ideas Matter?

A solid product idea helps set the stage for manufacturing success. This idea will evolve as you develop a product, but having a clear vision is crucial before moving on to the design and production processes.

3 Types of Product Ideas

1. Innovative Product Ideas: The Next Big Thing

Innovative product ideas stand out by offering something new or significantly improved. These can range from smart home devices to cutting-edge tech gadgets. For example, smart home devices like intelligent thermostats or home security systems have become incredibly popular due to their convenience and advanced features.

Characteristics of innovative product ideas include:

Uniqueness: Offering features or benefits not available in existing products.

Technology integration: Leveraging the latest technology to solve problems or enhance user experience.

Scalability: The potential to grow and adapt as market demands evolve.

2. Profitable Product Ideas: Focus on The Bottom Line

Profitability is key when choosing a product idea. High-margin products such as:

Tech accessories

Health and wellness items

Home office solutions

Often yield better returns. Tech accessories like wireless chargers and health products like organic supplements are examples of profitable niches.

Factors contributing to product profitability include:

Low production costs: Inexpensive Products that can be sold at a higher price.

High demand: Products in high demand due to their utility or trendiness.

Repeat purchase potential: Items that customers need to buy repeatedly, ensuring a steady revenue stream.

3. Niche Product Ideas: Zero in on Unique Markets

Targeting a specific niche can reduce competition and increase customer loyalty. Niche products cater to specific interests or demographics, such as specialty pet supplies or hobbyist tools.

These markets might be smaller but often have dedicated and passionate customer bases. To know more about profitable niches read most profitable niches in 2024. Advantages of niche product ideas include:

Less competition: Fewer businesses targeting the same niche can increase visibility.

Stronger customer relationships: Niche markets often have highly engaged customers who value personalized products.

Expertise leverage: If you have expertise in a particular area, you can create products that resonate deeply with a niche audience.

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3 Benefits of Developing an Effective Product Idea

1. Fulfill Customer Needs

Creating a thoughtful product idea allows you to address specific customer pain points. Buyers generally seek products to help them accomplish tasks more efficiently. An effective product idea will help you create a product that meets these demands and fulfills customer needs.

2. Launch a Company

An effective product idea can help an individual create a successful private company that can generate revenue. As a result, you can compete with other businesses in an industry and increase your overall net worth.

3. Support Technological Advancement

A product can elevate an industry's technical capabilities, which may help people improve larger systems and reduce everyday costs. For example, sustainable technology can allow people to use energy from the sun to power electricity, which renegotiates the value of other light sources.

Leveraging ShopHunter for Advanced Sales Tracking and Product Validation

ShopHunter's Shopify sales tracker offers a unique tool for ecom founders, particularly those in the Shopify ecosystem. At its core, it is a custom algorithm that estimates sales for entire stores and specific products, helping users quickly validate product potential. The platform goes beyond basic sales tracking, featuring an ad spy tool that monitors advertising activity across stores.

This combination lets users spot trending products and successful marketing strategies early on. Whether you're:

Drop shipper

Shopify store owner

Someone looking

To enter the e-commerce space, ShopHunter aims to streamline product research and reduce the risk of investing in low-performing items.

Sign up for a free trial of our Shopify sales tracker tool, with no credit card required, to find your next e-commerce opportunity or to level up your current e-commerce store by learning from your competitors.

5 Techniques to Generate New Product Ideas

1. Evaluate Your Existing Product Portfolio

An assessment of your existing product portfolio can reveal useful insights for new product development. A product portfolio analysis involves evaluating the performance of your current products to identify high- and low-performing offerings that may impact the success of a new product.

This research can help you determine the ideal product mix for your target market, uncover any gaps in your current catalog, and address overlapping features that may hinder a new product’s performance.

2. Analyze Customer Data to Identify Product Opportunities

Customer feedback can tell you a lot about your existing products and reveal opportunities for new product development. To get started, analyze customer reviews and ratings of your products to uncover common themes.

Look for existing customer survey data that may address your products’ performance. Consider sending out a survey to learn more about how customers use your products and what they want instead of or in addition to your offerings.

3. Assess Customer Needs

Customer needs will change over time, and tracking these shifts can help your business stay relevant and competitive. Researching customer needs can also reveal opportunities for new products that better address your target audience’s pain points.

To get started, analyze existing data on your customers’ needs and consider conducting interviews or surveys to learn more about how they’ve changed and what products they want in the future.

4. Understand Key Market Drivers

Every market has key drivers that impact product performance and customer demand. These include existing trends, potential threats to growth, and changing customer preferences.

Understanding market drivers can help you identify potential opportunities for new products and any risks to be aware of before moving forward with product development.

5. Look to Adjacent Markets

Researching adjacent markets can uncover valuable insights for new product development. Start by identifying markets that are related to your own or share a similar customer base.

Look for any emerging trends or shifts in these markets that could impact your existing products or reveal opportunities for new development. Analyze the competitive landscape in these markets to uncover potential areas of opportunity for your business.

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Best Ecommerce Tools

16 Places to Find Product Ideas

1. Start With What You Have

Before you begin searching the depths of the web for:

small business ideas

Products

Niches

It’s always best to start with the ideas you already have. Maybe it’s a product or idea you’ve had for years. Maybe it exists in a half-written business plan sitting in a folder somewhere on your computer.

Even if you’ve discounted it at some point prior, it’s worth taking a fresh look at it. At one point, you thought it was a great idea, right? Here are a few questions to consider when making my list of Internet business ideas:

What products, niches, or industries are you particularly passionate about or interested in?

What products, niches, or industries are your friends passionate about?

What pain points do you have in your own life?

Identifying problems within your inner circle is a smart way to brainstorm good product ideas.

Michelle Ebbin, owner of Jettproof, a sensory clothing brand, finds product ideas accessible through life’s everyday needs. The brand creates calming clothing to assist kids and adults with:

Autism

Sensory processing disorder

Down’s syndrome

ADHD

Other conditions

Michelle says some Jettproof staff have family members with sensory conditions. When brainstorming for new product ideas, we ask what their loved ones need for different seasons, circumstances, and activities.

Innovating Products from Close-to-Home Needs

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and face masks became essential, one of our team members came up with the idea of sensory face masks using our proprietary calming fabric, Calmtex. The product idea was a success. People with sensory conditions could comfortably wear face masks when visiting:

Therapy centers

Clinics

Hospitals

Workplaces

My best tip for finding product ideas is to look at your inner circle first. Consider what your loved ones need and can use to function well within their families and communities comfortably.

Addressing Everyday Problems to Create Marketable Solutions

Michelle Ebbin, owner of Jettproof: If there’s a problem, solve it. Consider what pain points you have in your life or even those around you. Say, for example, you stepped in to solve the challenge of dog toys that were easily chewed and destroyed.

Dog owners would become frustrated with unreliable products, and the expenses could quickly add up. The market for indestructible dog toys would be based on this one specific pain point.

2. Your Local Community

Sometimes, you don’t need a new idea at all. Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses have been around much longer than their ecommerce counterparts. Paying attention to trends in brick-and-mortar retail and adapting them to ecommerce can be just the ticket you need to create a profitable and unique internet business idea.

Look around your community and take note of what new or interesting retail concepts people are discussing. You can check out different sources for inspiration, such as:

Newspapers

Craft fairs

Local markets

Community events

3. Online Consumer Trend Publications

A great place to start your search for product ideas is top consumer product trend publications. Following trend publications helps give a sense of the direction in which consumer products are going and the trending product ideas other entrepreneurs are introducing to the market. The following trends can help you create:

New goods

Services

Experiences

There are several popular trend publications online, including, but not limited to, the following. TrendWatching is an independent trend firm that scans the globe for the most promising consumer trends and insights. TrendWatching has a team of professionals in locations like:

London

New York

São Paulo

Singapore

Sydney

Lagos

Using Trend Communities for Entrepreneurial Inspiration

Trend Hunter is the world’s largest, most popular trend community. Fueled by a global network of 160,000 members and three million fans, Trend Hunter inspires aspiring and curious entrepreneurs.

Jeremy, the founder of Trend Hunter, says, Like many of us, I was an entrepreneur at heart, but I didn’t know what idea I wanted to pursue. I chose careers I thought would lead me to my business idea but after years of searching, I was still hunting for inspiration. It was then that I started Trend Hunter—a place for insatiably curious people to share ideas and get inspired.

Leveraging Global Trends for Product Innovation

PSFK is a business intelligence platform that inspires creative professionals as they develop new products, services, and experiences in retail, advertising, and design. It analyzes research-based consumer trends and insights that can be used as a jumping-off point and validation for e-commerce business ideas.

A great example of someone who noticed a trend from another country and brought it home is Dan Ben-Nun, creator of the product Inkkas. Inkkas are beautiful, unique shoes made of authentic South American textiles. Dan got the idea for Inkkas when he noticed the shoe style trending in Peru. Determining it was a great product that would also do well in the North American market, he brought the idea home. He successfully launched a Kickstarter campaign, raising over $77,000 in pre-orders.

4. Industry Leaders

If you know the industry or niche market you would like to be in, you can use various tools to discover the influencers in that industry. Following the right people on social media can help inspire new ideas through a constant stream of carefully curated content from people in the know.

It’s up to you to uncover the opportunities. There are several online tools you can use to discover influencers online for a particular industry or niche: Followerwonk, BuzzSumo

5. Product and Trend Discovery Sites

Product review and discovery sites can also be a fantastic source for product and internet business ideas. Sites like Uncrate (men’s products) and Design Milk (luxury products) are great ways to see new curated product trends daily. What better way to get inspired than with a daily glimpse into the new and interesting products other entrepreneurs bring to the market. Here are just a few examples of popular consumer product blogs to get you started:

Uncrate Design

Milk Bless

This Stuff

Cool Material

GearMoose

Werd

HiConsumption

Firebox

Don’t just look at the big and popular sites but explore niche review sites as well. Consider what types of products and niches you’re particularly interested in and search for consumer product review blogs in those niches.

6. B2B Wholesale Marketplaces

What better way to get product ideas than right from the source? This has been a popular option amongst ecommerce entrepreneurs for a while, and this list wouldn’t be complete without it. Wholesale and manufacturer sourcing sites expose you to thousands of potential product ideas. It can be easy to get overwhelmed with the sheer amount of products available, so take it slow. Alibaba is one of the biggest eCommerce companies in the world, up there with Amazon and eBay.

Exploring Alibaba for Dropshipping Product Ideas

The platform connects consumers with wholesalers and manufacturers from Asia. With over 5,900 categories of product offerings, there’s not much you can’t find on Alibaba. Alibaba dropshipping products span all categories and niches, so there's plenty of room for inspiration.

Although it’s generally accepted that Alibaba is the largest online wholesale and manufacturer database, there are many other sites similar to Alibaba you can use for inspiration and to find product ideas.

Alternative B2B Wholesale Marketplaces for Product Inspiration

DSers is a marketplace where you can purchase products on AliExpress and sell them on Shopify. These suppliers provide automated order fulfillment services, so it’s a popular turnkey option for many entrepreneurs deciding what to sell on Shopify.

Browse what’s available and review Oberlo’s trending products to help you come up with your own ideas. Some other B2B wholesale marketplaces include:

TradeKey

Global Sources

Made-in-China

Wholesale Central

7. Online Consumer Marketplaces

Another rich source for product ideas is online consumer marketplaces. Millions of products is probably an understatement, so you should begin my market research with some of the popular and trending items and branch out into other interesting categories that catch your eye from there:

eBay: eBay is the largest online consumer auction site. Check out eBay’s bestselling items to find some of the most popular product categories on eBay.

Amazon: Amazon is the largest internet retailer. Amazon Best Sellers shows Amazon’s most popular products based on sales. Amazon Movers & Shakers displays the biggest gainers in sales rank over the past 24 hours. Both are updated hourly.

Kickstarter: Kickstarter is the largest crowdfunding website. With Kickstarter Discover, you can browse all projects by popularity, funding, staff picks, and other options.

Etsy: Etsy is a marketplace for handmade items. Look up what’s trending to find the most popular listings.

AliExpress: AliExpress is Alibaba’s consumer wholesale marketplace. Which allows you to order in smaller quantities. AliExpress Popular reveals the most-bought products.

Reddit is the largest social media news aggregator. It describes itself as the front page of the web and is enormously influential. Reddit has thousands of subreddits, sub-sections, or niches catering to different topics and areas of interest.

Within these subreddits, you can find inspiration for your next product or business idea. If you have an idea for a particular industry, niche, or product category, it’s worth searching and finding a suitable subreddit community to join and actively become a part of. Many product-focused subreddits are packed with ideas. Here are a couple of examples:

Buy It For Life: For practical, durable, and quality-made products that are built to last.

Shut Up And Take My Money: Interesting, clever, useful products that people want—badly.

If you’re active on Reddit and pay close attention, occasionally, you can come across interesting posts like this one, which asks commenters to share their best purchases for under $50. Regardless of your approach, Reddit has been and continues to be a valuable source of ecommerce business ideas and inspiration, coupled with a great and supportive community.

Using Quora for Ecommerce Business Inspiration

Quora Quora is a community question-and-answer site—A place to gain and share knowledge, as the company says. Essentially, users come to Quora to ask and answer questions about pretty much anything and everything. Like Reddit’s subreddits, Quora has topics you can choose to add to your customized feed.

Consider adding some product- or industry-related feeds and anything else inspired by the online business model. Quora also shows which topics and questions are trending and a count of the total number of answers (each with several upvotes and downvotes from the community).

Exploring Niche Forums for Industry-Specific Product Ideas

Once you populate your feed, you’ll discover questions and answers that may inspire ecommerce business ideas. Here are some:

What is the best gift you’ve ever received?

What’s your favorite product?

Do you buy products from Amazon?

Industry and niche forums

Depending on your target industry, there may be niche forum sites you can tap into for product ideas to sell. Gaming is one industry that has an active online community, and you can check out forums like GameFAQs or NeoGAF. Here are a few other industry forum sites for niche product ideas: The Fashion Spot Nerd Fitness Geeks to Go

You can use social media to search for products and niche ideas in a few ways. Hashtag. If you are interested in a product category or industry, you can try searching for applicable hashtags. Another great option is to search on social media for hashtags that indicate buyer interest and intent, like want and buy.

Product Curation Accounts

Many accounts on Instagram post curated product content. Like many other examples above, I’ll likely want to search for and find accounts within the niches I’m particularly interested in—audience insights.

If you already have a business page on one or more social media platforms, you can use your audience data to find ecommerce business ideas. Understand which:

Pages

Hobbies

Interests

Other characteristics

They have something in common and brainstorm products based on those insights.

Instagram

Instagram isn’t just pictures of food and dogs—it’s also an interesting option for inspiring product and ecommerce business ideas. Because it’s photo-based, scanning many ideas and photos is easy.

Facebook

Facebook still has the most active users out of any social media platform. If there’s a market I’m trying to reach, there’s a chance they’re on Facebook. In addition to hashtags, trending topics, and popular pages, check out which Facebook groups are popular in your niche. Dawn LaFontaine, founder of Cat in the Box, joins and engages with members of Facebook groups relevant to her niche: cats.

Dawn says one of these pages, Purrtacular, has an extensive and active following. Cat lovers everywhere post fun photos of their pets and insightful questions about their health and behavior. These questions and answers from group members often provide a window into the kinds of struggles cat guardians face. Dawn gets product ideas from these struggles for her online store.

The average order value of sales through Pinterest is higher than any other social channel. This indicates that Pinterest users are browsing, shopping, and buying, making it an ideal spot to research popular products and trends. Another visual platform, it’s easy to scan and find inspiration for ecommerce business ideas.

Snapchat

It is especially ideal for a younger demographic. Snapchat admittedly has more limited capabilities in terms of identifying trends. Use the Discover option to find out what the Snapchat community is talking about, and follow influencers in your niche to gain more insight into their needs and motivations.

X Formerly Known as Twitter

X trends will help find new ecommerce business ideas. You’ll be able to see what’s popular in your network or a chosen location. You’ll find these trends on the left-hand side when you log in at twitter.com, or look for the Explore option when you’re on the mobile app.

TikTok

The short video app announced in 2021 that it had surpassed one billion users and was the most downloaded app of 2020. TikTok is known for dance challenges, viral moments, and a place for sellers to gain product awareness. TikTok is full of trending:

Sounds

Memes

Challenges

You’ll never find yourself short of inspiration for new product ideas.

Niche social media sites If you’re searching for niche product ideas, social media sites dedicated to related topics and hobbies are another way to gain insights into new product ideas. Here are a few examples:

Houzz MapMyFitness

Untappd Care2

WAYN

Our primary source for product ideas is our social media following. We frequently create polls to ask what custom products they want to see next. Jade Brown, founder of Sprout Design Lab

10. On-site and Third-Party Customer Reviews

If you already have a business (online or brick-and-mortar), check out your customer reviews. Savvy entrepreneurs consider customer recommendations and their motivation and respond accordingly.

If you don’t have any reviews of my own to consider, look at reviews of companies and products in your niche. Identify commonalities (paying careful attention to customer complaints) and determine how to create a product to address those concerns. Amazon is an especially great place to find honest customer reviews.

11. SEO Analytics and Insights

Search engine optimization (SEO) insights can show you what’s trending on search, globally or targeted to specific geographic locations. Google has some free and paid tools you can use:

Google Trends

Find out what’s trending, globally and regionally, and choose from specific topics like business, health and sci/tech. You can also browse top stories to see what’s most popular. If you have a specific market or idea, you can research keywords to find common related searches and anticipated peak search volume (which can help dictate the timing for your product launch).

Google Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner will help you find average search volume and related keywords to your chosen phrases. You can also look at Google Ads competition to gauge whether someone else is bidding on your targeted phrases for your ecommerce business idea.

Google Analytics

If you already have a website, use the data from Google Analytics to determine which terms users are searching to find your site. Volume isn’t always important: there may be a longtail, descriptive search phrase that makes you think of your next big idea! You can also use data from my onsite search to find the same insights.

Google search

Google.com is an often-forgotten tool to use in your SEO research. There are a few key areas to look at when you’re performing a search on Google.com: predicted text (as you type your query in the search bar), paid ads at the top and on the side rail, suggested searches (at the bottom of the page), and Google Shopping results. Remember to check out images and news, too.

12. Consumer Lifestyle Publications

Consumer-facing publications in your industry can reveal a lot about a market segment and what’s trending. Consider what these publications discuss and which articles resonate most with the audience.

To determine which articles are most popular, look at the number of comments, social media engagements, or social media shares the content has received. The more popular articles could inspire niche market ideas.

13. Your Competitors

Learn from the successes of your competitors and popular businesses in your chosen industry.

Which products have they launched with the most success? Why were they so successful? Sometimes, brands will share the why and how behind new products.

Beyond my competitors’ products, examine their community. Who is their audience, and why do they love those products? Look at what the brand says to consumers and how customers interact with them online. Identify gaps in your competitors’ product offerings and look for ways to fill those gaps with your new product.

Aligning Product Innovation with Market Demand and Brand Mission

Stephen Light, CMO and co-owner of mattress brand Nolah doesn’t constantly offer new products. The brand has a tight range of products, and a new product is offered only if it adds huge value to its existing product line.

When Nolah decides on a new product, it meets the intersection of its mission, the audience’s needs, and the competitive landscape. We recently launched new eco-friendly mattresses and bedding because we saw a hole in the market for a truly natural, sustainable mattress, Stephen says. Eco-friendly products are something consumers are demanding more and are safer for the Earth. We also wanted something to further our mission: create mattresses that don’t use unsustainable traditional memory foam.

While Stephen believes innovation is an excellent goal, it’s meaningless if hard, accurate customer and market evaluation data do not back it. He says that new products have to be born from the same bottom line as any other: solving a real problem or meeting a real need for your audience. Focus on what you know about the competitive landscape and consumer pain points, and work to fill the gaps.

14. Customer Surveys and Feedback

Surveys are among the best ways to get qualitative and quantitative insights into an audience. Craft questions about the problems and challenges they face, which products they love most and why, and what they wish they had to enhance their everyday life. Keep a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended questions that will let you inside respondents’ heads. I use this information when I brainstorm my ecommerce business ideas. Here are some tools to create and distribute your survey:

SurveyMonkey

Google Surveys

Alchemer

Zoho Survey

Typeform

Another way to get customer feedback is through a private Facebook group with your VIPs. It’s a tactic that KeySmart’s CEO, Michael Tunney, recommends for finding new product ideas. After gathering feedback, the brand takes the ideas from all those sources and then creates product mockups to present to our staff and top customers to see what they think will be a success.

15. Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing works similarly to surveying, except when it comes to crowdsourcing, you ask for ideas more overtly. Lego Ideas is a prime example of a brand that uses crowdsourcing to find new product ideas to sell.

Consumers can submit their ideas for Lego sets, and the site also features popular and successful ideas. Create my crowdsourced ideas or look to those hubs for inspiration.

16. Look to the Past

One way to learn is from the past. By examining history and old trends, you can come up with a list of revived product ideas to sell. This is one tactic that Dogfish Head Craft Brewery used when it came up with its product series of Ancient Ales, which uses old-school brewing techniques. But history doesn’t necessarily mean historical events and techniques. It’s also about pop culture trends.

In fashion especially, we often see the resurgence of trends, and consumers love nostalgia. Choker necklaces have returned, and countless movie and TV show reboots have renewed consumer interest and passion. You can evoke this sense of nostalgia through a product that is no longer available or highlights a seemingly forgotten subject likely to inspire fond memories.

5 Ways to Validate Your Product Idea

1. Conduct Product Research

Before you get too attached to your product idea, it's critical to evaluate the market and your competitors. Search for your potential product on Google to see what comes up. You're looking for existing brands, products, and sales volume or revenue information. Jump into social media platforms and look for posts related to your product. Check the comments to determine what buyers like or dislike about the product. This will help you understand the current market and determine how to improve your product. Use tools like:

Jungle Scout

SEMrush

Ahrefs

To get detailed information on sales, traffic, and revenue for specific products and niches. This will help you understand your product's popularity and how well it might perform in the competitive landscape.

2. Do Market Research

Once you've completed your product research, it's time for market research to get a better idea of how your specific target audience feels about your product idea. You can do this through focus groups, surveys, or even social media callouts to get feedback from potential customers.

If you can get a group of people physically or virtually together, you can show them your product and get immediate feedback. You can create a survey to send to your email list or post on social media. Let your followers know you're working on a new product and would like their input. This will help you understand your target market's preferences and potentially uncover ways to improve your product before you launch.

3. Run the Numbers

You'll want to run the numbers to ensure your product has the potential to be profitable. Start by figuring out your costs. If you're manufacturing the product, how much will each unit cost? Will your product require any special packaging or shipping considerations?

If you're dropshipping, what will your costs look like? Once you grasp your costs, you'll want to determine your ideal retail price. To find your margin, you can use the formula: (Retail Price – Cost) / Retail Price = Margin %. Aim for at least a 30% margin; ideally, you'll want to get to a 50% margin or higher. This will help you cover operational costs and ensure profitability as you scale.

4. Try a Crowdfunding Campaign

Securing interest and investment from potential customers before you launch your ecommerce business is incredibly valuable. Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are great for this. You can create a detailed listing for your product and share it with your networks.

Interested customers can pledge money to support your launch. In return, they receive your product when it’s ready, sometimes even a special discounted price. This process helps you gauge interest and can even give you the funds you need to get started.

5. Run a Pre-Sale

Like the above, you can gauge genuine interest from customers by selling the product before manufacturing it. Pre-sales can take many forms; you can create a landing page for your product to collect email addresses and promote it on social media.

You can simply list your product on your ecommerce store and run a sale to incentivize early purchases. Customers who buy during a pre-sale understand they’re not receiving the product immediately and will likely have to wait for it to be manufactured and shipped. This process can help you cover costs and generate early cash flow for your business.

13 Ecommerce Tools for Product Research and Sourcing

1. Shophunter

ShopHunter's Shopify sales tracker offers a unique tool for e-commerce founders, particularly tShopHunter's Shopify sales tracker offers a unique tool for ecom founders, particularly those in the Shopify ecosystem. At its core, it is a custom algorithm that estimates sales for entire stores and specific products, helping users quickly validate product potential. The platform goes beyond basic sales tracking, featuring an ad spy tool that monitors advertising activity across stores.

This combination lets users spot trending products and successful marketing strategies early on. Whether you're:

Drop shipper

Shopify store owner

Someone looking

To enter the e-commerce space, ShopHunter aims to streamline product research and reduce the risk of investing in low-performing items.

Sign up for a free trial (no credit card required) of our Shopify sales tracker tool to find your next e-commerce opportunity or to level up your current e-commerce store by learning from your competitors.

2. Sell The Trend

Sell The Trend is a dropshipping product research tool that helps you with finding winning products for your store with data sources from AliExpress, Amazon, and a ton of Shopify stores. On the left, you will see a menu listing its powerful product research elements that are part of the NEXUS explorer.

3. DSers

DSers is a good choice for those looking for a dropshipping product research tool that connects them directly to AliExpress suppliers. DSers is a Shopify app that not only lets you find AliExpress products to dropship but lets you import them to your site with just a few clicks.

As of this writing, DSers-AliExpress has more than 20,000 reviews in the Shopify app store with a perfect rating of 5.0 stars – making it one of the best product search tools for dropshipping.

4. Niche Scraper

Niche Scraper is a powerful SaaS (Software as a Service) application that assists eCommerce merchants in researching the best products to offer on their eCommerce site, whether it’s powered by Shopify, WooCommerce, or another platform.

5. Intelligynce

Intelligynce is a collection of tools and software that assists aspiring ecom merchants in doing in-depth research, analysis, and extracting the finest and most profitable products. This program has access to over 380 product categories on AliExpress, so you can instantly find the best products for your online store. It allows you to spy on more than 400,000 Shopify dropshipping stores to see their performance. You may also use it to look for commodities on the Amazon and eBay markets.

6. AliShark

Another tool created for dropshippers specifically, AliShark was founded by Yousef Khalidi, a well-known dropshipping expert. The website describes itself as a spy tool that analyzes several data points on AliExpress and alerts dropshippers to which products they should avoid. It’s a sophisticated product research tool that allows you to locate the best dropshipping items.

7. Dropship Spy

Tristan Glaves developed Dropship Spy to create a platform to assist entrepreneurs in winning by providing them access to products worth investing in. Dropship Spy is now one of the most popular product research apps.

8. FindNiche

FindNiche is a free Shopify and AliExpress niche analytics tool that collects data from over 1,000,000 goods, 11,000 niches, and 700,000 Shopify stores.

9. Pexda

Pexda is a popular product research tool that offers daily insights of new winning products and it provides a wide range of features that make identifying winning goods much simpler and more efficient.

10. Sale Source

SaleSource is a product research tool that uses:

Product analysis

Trend assessments

Competition comparisons

To help eCommerce stores develop quicker and more securely. It’s especially beneficial for merchants since it gives them many options for identifying the most popular and in-demand products.

11. Zonbase

The next dropshipping product research tool is Zonbase. We know some dropshippers might be using platforms that are not Shopify – such as Amazon. That’s why we included this one in our list.

12. Thieve.co

Thieve.co will show you what’s trending on AliExpress and give you a lot of inspiration for your product research. You just need to sign up for a free account, and Thieve.co will show you pretty awesome products from AliExpress. You can even filter products by categories and see items inside your niche.

13. EcomHunt

The Ecomhunt website describes it as curating the best new products every day. This means that it is a legit way to find winnings and the most popular products online. It helps the users in hunting for the most popular products more efficiently, which makes the business’s sales conversion high.

33 Amazing Product Ideas Worth Considering in 2024

Here is a list of 33 innovative and trending product ideas for 2024. Each idea includes a brief description and an explanation of why it's worth considering, focusing on trends like sustainability, technology, and lifestyle changes. Categories include tech gadgets, eco-friendly products, home office supplies, and health and wellness items.

1. Jewelry

Jewelry is an excellent commercial idea for a business. You can manage a profitable business if you have the skills and the ability to create fresh, cutting-edge designs. It's always a good idea to start modest and ensure you have insurance in case of theft while selling jewelry.

You may also promote your jewelry on the Facebook Marketplace and other websites. Demonstrating your items to coworkers, friends, and family can stimulate curiosity and grab buyers' attention.

2. Skincare Products

Consumers are constantly looking for goods that can improve their appearance and well-being. You can succeed in the multibillion-dollar skincare sector if you have the correct products.

The most important thing is to have affordable, effective products. Due to licensing regulations, there are numerous obstacles to joining the skincare market, but if you do it right and have the required knowledge and experience, it can be a goldmine.

3. Smartphone Accessories

Today, smartphones are used by billions of people. These gadgets have grown highly complicated and need a variety of add-ons, such as:

Tripods

Headphones

Chargers

Earbuds

There is a persistent demand for these items because they are delicate and break easily. Selling items and accessories like:

Phone chargers

Earbuds

Air pods

SD cards

Cell phone batteries

Are an excellent place to start modestly.

4. Art Products

You can do well with good manual dexterity and can produce beautiful woodwork, pottery, paintings, and other works of art. Although there is little competition, you must produce high-quality work to attract the proper clients.

These products can be sold online, at festivals, weekend markets, and from the comfort of your home. You will need the appropriate machinery to make these goods, but if you do a good job, you should see steady sales.

5. Home Office Products

Another extremely lucrative possibility exists here, especially in light of the increasing increase in remote employment. Selling fewer actual products, such as:

Laptops

Printers

Cell phones

Chargers

Desktop computers

iPads

Files and folders

Stationery

Will help you get started modestly. If your firm succeeds, you can expand your product range to include more oversized products like desks, bookshelves, file cabinets, lights, office chairs, and home office furniture.

6. Air Quality Appliances

The COVID-19 pandemic and growing worry over climate change are both responsible for the heightened interest in air quality. Humidifiers and air purifiers are two of the most accessible product ideas to enter this industry out of all the equipment that claims to handle air quality issues. Humidifiers solve the problem of dry air that can irritate and swell airways by increasing the humidity in a room. Humidifiers can help with:

Colds

Bronchitis

Asthma

Sinusitis symptoms

Without curing the condition. They aren't intended for continuous usage; they are designed to precisely address dry air when it manifests, which is frequently in the winter owing to the use of heaters.

Air purifiers employ a fan and a filter as their two main parts to remove contaminants from the air. Depending on the product, air purifiers can remove dust mites, pet dander, pollen, and mold spores from the air. Being detachable decreases allergy and asthma triggers.

7. Car Accessories

According to estimates, the typical American spends eight hours and 22 minutes per week on the road, or 18 days a year. The average one-way commute time in the US reached a new high of 27.6 minutes in 2019. Meal delivery apps and ride-hailing apps like Lyft and Uber have made using one's automobile to clock into a job possible.

Cars are now essential to the workweek, whether getting to work or getting around while working. The automotive accessories market is expanding and offers a wide range of potential products for you to market, like:

Air fresheners

Organizers

Seat covers

Rear cameras

USB chargers

Are these sectors' most often used products.

8. IoT Devices

The term Internet of Things (IoT) refers to items that have software, sensors, and other technologies that enable Internet-based connections with other systems or devices. Smartphones, smart watches, smart refrigerators, intelligent automobiles, smart security sensors, and smart light bulbs are some of these goods.

A reasonable rule of thumb is that an IoT gadget starts with the word smart. As technology improves, more and more things will be turned into IoT devices, creating an ever-expanding range of product ideas to offer. Of course, the disadvantage of these products is that they can be out of your company's price range.

9. Reusable Water Bottles

The demand for reusable water bottles has increased due to rising environmental awareness. According to reports, younger generations, especially Millennials and Generation Z, are much more concerned about sustainability than previous generations are.

This indicates that the movement for eco-friendly goods, including reusable water bottles, is here to stay. The beautiful thing about this product concept is that any company may sell reusable water bottles to further establish its brand through form, logo, color, or other water bottle design options. It is eco-friendly advertising.

10. Air Fryers

Since technology is advancing and people are becoming more health-conscious, air fryers, in particular, are predicted to become more popular. Some technological breakthroughs are:

LED screens

Sophisticated sensors

Touchpad

Improved energy efficiency

Regarding the effects on health, some customers have reduced or eliminated oil from their meals to lower cholesterol levels. Without using oil, air fryers still produce crunchy treats.

11. Candles

Unlike many things on this list, candles have the added advantage of being consumable because they are discarded after all the wax has been consumed. The customer will have to repurchase the candle if they enjoy the aroma. This market is therefore primed for repeat business. The candle industry does well during recessions as people who stay home to conserve money occasionally treat themselves to candles.

All varieties of candles are fantastic product ideas to take into consideration because they can easily fit into a variety of different businesses. You don't necessarily have to run a candle business to sell candles. Hotels, cosmetics shops, and other businesses already sell candles. Business owners can promote their brands by selling candles to these locations and drastically increase sales.

12. Baby Products

The market for infant products is expected to expand due to growing economies, particularly those of China and India. The rising purchasing power of industrialized nations like North America, Europe, and others also aids the expansion of this industry.

Infant safety awareness among expectant parents and technological advancements in the industry have created a market for novel and essential products. Baby carrying straps, breast pumps, and baby bouncers are particularly well-liked items to sell in this market.

13. Digital Products

Selling digital products is the quickest way to start earning a passive income. You don't have to sell a set number of items to make money, and you can do it even while you sleep. When you have money in your account when you wake up, a company is worthwhile. Because you can produce your products once and sell them to customers repeatedly, selling digital products is a lucrative Internet business idea. You should also consider user feedback and enhance the product's quality.

This business model may grow endlessly without ever having to worry about restocking, is cost-free, and is highly profitable. Digital products come in various forms, including:

E-books

Templates

Programs

Online courses

Applications

And more

Do you have the necessary skills to develop goods that improve the operations of other businesses? If yes, then get ready to produce and sell digital products.

14. Sell Your Crafts

Selling your crafts is one of the top small business ideas for 2023 if you're a creative person. You can include anything from sculptures and paintings to clothing and jewelry under this product section. You must first compile a portfolio of my work to get started. You can promote your company on my blog and social media pages.

You can also sell your handmade goods at regional craft fairs, consignment stores, and websites like Etsy and Amazon Handmade. You'll need to be resourceful and think outside the box if you want to market your crafts, as many opportunities are available.

15. Car LED Light

Every day, new lighting sources are discovered. Most auto manufacturers employed halogen lighting in their vehicles about 15 years ago. Then, because of its superior performance, the xenon technology of producing light replaced the halogen. Today, a lot of individuals utilize LED lights in their cars.

This light source has better luminous flux properties while using less energy. LED lamps truly gained popularity as soon as people worldwide learned they could purchase them for a reasonable price. Google Trends reports high demand for automotive LED lamps, and as nothing new has occurred in the world of light sources, these lamps will continue to rank well shortly. By the way, the volume of orders for this product category might also be impressive.

16. Smart Temperature Sensors

Consider smart temperature sensors while shopping for affordable smart home products. You were given access to a climate-controlled chamber. These sensors measure the room's temperature, humidity, and other factors and send the information to smart hubs, which control all the other smart appliances like smart heaters and drapes.

Smart temperature sensors are becoming one of the most well-liked eCommerce items worldwide because of their extensive versatility! If you offer household appliances online, they could be among your top-selling products because of their low price.

17. Hair Catcher

People must look for methods of catching these things, since some foreign objects, such as pet hair and loose threads, might seriously damage their washing machines and sewage systems. Fortunately, some manufacturers have created a product known as a handy hair catcher. It is a filter that keeps everything redundant out of your kitchen sink or washing machine.

18. Fitness Products

This is another sizable market that has been expanding steadily. Selling items like:

Pedometers

Sneakers

fitness trackers

Towels

Armbands

If enough money comes in, you can add more products to your lineups, such as:

Treadmills

Bicycles

Other fitness gear

19. Sterilizer Dryers

There has been a long-running trend with this product. Sterilizer dryers have been consistently trending since the end of 2018. Their appeal is limited to North America, though. Test this product on your store if you were selling in the US and Canada.

20. Lip Balms

Another affordable, top-selling item to offer online in 2023 is lip balm, which, as you can see

from the trend graph, it is still quite popular worldwide.

21. Matcha Tea

Another product that frequently appears on trending and best-seller lists is matcha tea. And as you can see, it has consistently high levels of popularity and global acclaim.

22. Laptop Batteries

Another one of the top-selling products in 2023 will be laptop batteries. Laptop batteries are an excellent resource for those who want to revive an old laptop or create their own devices. A spare laptop battery ensures that mobile users never go without a computer.

Selling in the laptop sector gives you many chances to grow your product offering. You may:

Market cases

Wireless adapters

External hard drives

Power supplies

Laptop Memory

23. Wall Plates and Covers

Coverings and plates you can put on the wall enable you to personalize your space. This is why many people are opting for this option over others.

You can market ultra-modern decorative plates or classic ones with a finishing touch. HDMI wall plates allow you to plug in HDMI-enabled devices and screwless wall plates with a sleek design.

24. Watch Accessories

Watch accessories are among the most profitable popular items. Although the craze fluctuates in popularity, individuals typically hunt for watch accessories all year round. The market is also enormous, with a projected market volume of $335 billion in 2022.

25. Signage

Next on the list of currently popular products are signs. There are 135,000 searches per month for the term signage in the search volume. Marketing signage via social media is a brilliant idea. Determine who your main audience is.

26. Neck Massager

Neck massagers have become one of the most helpful self-care items you can get, possibly due to the shift to a work-from-home model and the need to get used to spending all day in uncomfortable positions!

They come in a wide range of sizes and forms. The data shows that there have been significant increases in the demand for neck massagers. As more and more individuals start purchasing self-care items to take care of their bodies, it will only increase with time.

27. Portable Blender

Fitness fans can benefit significantly from a portable blender, as maintaining fitness is becoming

more popular. What is the most effective strategy to fulfill many people's resolutions to maintain physical fitness?

By eating a balanced diet! They can accomplish it because a variety of businesses sell the juice. Be sure it is authentic while selling this item because replicas must be better received.

28. Car Phone Holder

Our lives are now more straightforward, thanks to technology. Before, we had to ask others for directions; now, my smartphone provides such information. But how can you use a smartphone to seek directions while driving? Car phone holders can be helpful in this situation.

Automobile phone holders are becoming a necessary car component. They have been on the market for some time. The car phone holder will undoubtedly increase sales, regardless of whether you run a general or car-specific business.

29. Laptop Accessories

What could be better than a laptop compatible with your working environment as you incorporate work into the home? There are always more accessories to add to your business laptop, whether an HDMI cable to link it to the living room TV or my favorite skins.

The market for laptop accessories is still on the rise significantly. They continue to be popular products to buy year after year.

30. Breathable Mesh Running Shoes

Because breathable fabrics are durable and provide movement comfort, athletes are now seeking footwear made of these materials. The airy sneakers are ideal for those who have only recently begun running.

Since they are constructed of organic materials, breathable shoes are trendy. You can keep them for as long as possible because they don't wear out.

31. DIY Kits

DIY kits for crafting, home improvement, and gardening are popular among hobbyists. These kits provide all the materials for hands-on projects, making them ideal for beginners and experienced crafters.

32. Subscription Boxes

Subscription boxes offer curated products delivered regularly, catering to various interests, from books and snacks to beauty products. They provide a sense of excitement and discovery with each delivery.

33. Digital Artwork

Digital artwork, especially with the rise of NFTs and online art marketplaces, is a growing niche. This area offers lucrative opportunities for both artists and collectors.

How to Get Started with Your Product Idea

1. Procurement: Source Your Products

After you’ve narrowed down what you want to sell, the next step is figuring out how you’ll source products. As an ecommerce seller, you have several options.

Will you resell existing products? Or you plan to create or build products on your own. Another option is working with a manufacturer to make products according to your specifications or produce branded items.

2. Fulfillment: Consider Your Shipping Options

How will customers get their orders? Amazon sellers have several options for fulfillment. One is fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), which lets you send products to the Amazon fulfillment network, where we pick, pack, ship, and provide customer service. You can also use specialized services like:

Pan-European FBA

FBA Export

Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MFC).

Then there’s Fulfilled by Merchant. This method lets you use a suite of solutions to save time and money when you fulfill customer orders yourself. You can use tools and automation to sync your inventory and streamline the orders you receive from Amazon and other sales channels. This approach can help you get great shipping rates and offer customers fast, reliable delivery while enjoying increased protection for delivery claims.

Leveraging Seller-Fulfilled Prime for Increased Product Visibility

Seller-Fulfilled Prime: This program allows Amazon sellers to deliver directly to domestic

Prime customers: You use your warehouse while earning the Prime badge to increase product visibility.

Seller-Fulfilled Prime: offers guaranteed delivery-date messaging and other perks.

You can mix and match methods to meet your fulfillment needs. For example, you can combine Fulfilled by Merchant with FBA or an Amazon-approved third-party fulfillment solution through the Amazon Service Provider Network.

3. Listing: Add Products Online

The type of listings you create will depend on the products you offer, and small details can make a big difference between listings that perform well and those that don’t. Learn more in this step-by-step guide to optimizing product listings, and read on for the basics.

To start selling products, match or create a product listing in Seller Central, your go-to resource for selling in the Amazon store. Once you create an Amazon selling account, you will automatically gain access to Seller Central.

Creating and Managing Product Listings on Amazon

If you already have an Amazon selling account, simply sign in with your registered email and password. To begin listing products, you may match an offer to an existing listing or create a new one if the product isn’t already in the Amazon catalog.

Learn more about how to create listings. You can list many products online, but some hazardous materials have special requirements. If you want to sell a product, but foresee any issues with listing the products online, you may need to reevaluate your business plan or go back to the drawing board with ideas on what to sell.

4. Connect With Customers

Think about the products you want to offer, then find ways to help customers find them. With many free tools at your fingertips, an Amazon ecommerce storefront can help drive discovery for your brand name, showcase products, and make it easier to connect with customers.

Once you create a selling account and enroll in the Amazon Brand Registry, you can build a storefront that introduces customers to your brand story and entire product catalog through customized rich media, including text, image, and video content. Give customers a multi-page, immersive experience. Learn more about how to build an online store featuring your brand.

5. Tailor Your Marketing and Adjust as Needed

In the expanding ecommerce space, it takes intention to gain attention. The right ecommerce marketing strategy can help you boost product visibility, improve online conversions, and drive customers and repeat purchases. Effectively marketing products is not a one-and-done activity. Revisit your marketing strategy often and adjust as needed.