As an eCommerce seller, deeply understanding your customers is the key to unlocking success. Consumer research allows you to gain insights into exactly what your target audience wants and needs, so you can create products and shopping experiences that genuinely resonate with them.
But too often, the terms “market research” or “consumer research” bring to mind a tedious, time-consuming, expensive process that’s inaccessible to most eCommerce sellers.
Fortunately, that’s not the case. There are many fast, easy, and cost-effective ways to gather consumer insights and make data-driven decisions for your business. And in today’s increasingly competitive and crowded eCommerce world, adopting a mindset of continuous research and testing will help set your products and brand apart.
If you don’t know what your audience prefers and why, how are you going to create products and experiences that appeal to them?
That, in short, is the reason consumer research is so key to eCommerce success. Knowing your audience – the people who actually buy your products and give you reviews – is everything. Otherwise, you’re flying blind.
Here are a few key reasons why consumer research is crucial for improving your eCommerce brand’s performance.
If you sell across different geographic markets or eCommerce platforms, it’s crucial to understand the nuances in each one. What works in one country might fall flat in another due to cultural, linguistic, or other differences. And customers on Amazon may have very different expectations compared to Walmart’s online marketplace or social media shopping experiences like TikTok Shop. Localized, platform-specific consumer research illuminates these unique preferences so you can adapt accordingly.
Perhaps most importantly, consumer research provides a direct line to understanding what your customers actually want to buy – and the elements that influence their buying journey and decisions. And you should use the insights you gather to make informed, data-backed decisions throughout your eCommerce journey.
By gathering feedback throughout the product development cycle, you can design, price, and market new offerings with confidence that they’ll be a hit, rather than guessing blindly. These insights also highlight opportunities to improve existing products for better reviews and repeat sales.
While consumer research should be an ongoing effort, there are a few key stages when it’s an absolute must. Let’s dive into each scenario below.
Consumer research should be the foundation of launching a new product. Aim to understand your market and audience first, before you dive headfirst into development.
First, look at the overall market and your competition to understand the lay of the land. What products are already out there? Is there an opportunity for you to step in and stand out with something different?
Survey your target audience to understand existing gaps, desired features and benefits, pricing expectations, and more. Using the research methods we’ll outline later in this article, keep your audience looped in throughout the product development and design process. This allows you to validate product concepts, make smart adjustments, and ensure you’re releasing something customers will love right out of the gate.
Check out this guide to Amazon product validation for more tips on gathering consumer insights during the product launch process.
If you’re taking your eCommerce business to a new country, platform, or any other type of market expansion, doing your homework first is critical.
When it comes to selling in new countries or regions, consumer preferences can vary wildly based on cultural norms, language differences, socioeconomic factors, and more. Conducting localized consumer research ensures you’ll enter that new market with the right products, listings, and go-to-market strategy.
Similarly, many eCommerce sellers are exploring selling on channels beyond Amazon – and whether it’s Walmart, Etsy, TikTok Shop, your own website, or somewhere else, each platform has its own unique audience, quirks, and requirements for selling successfully.
Conducting market and consumer research is especially critical when expanding your business so you can launch with your best foot forward and avoid mistakes and unexpected surprises.
Even after your listing is up and running, consumer research shouldn’t stop. eCommerce isn’t a “set it and forget it” thing.
Gathering continuous feedback through customer reviews, sales data patterns, surveys, and more enables you to continuously optimize product listings with stronger images and copy, identify and resolve friction points in the buying experience, innovate based on customer requests, and stay competitive.
Live A/B testing is one way to optimize your listing post-launch. Test your product images, descriptions, and A+ content to find the version that draws more clicks and conversions. But while live A/B testing is helpful for gathering hard data, you won’t necessarily get insights into why your customers prefer one listing over another. That’s where the qualitative research methods below – and tools like PickFu – come into play.
Now that you understand the “why” and “when” around consumer research for eCommerce, let’s look at some specific tools and approaches to make it happen.
One highly effective way to understand your target market is to look at what your competitors are doing. Analyze aspects like product features, pricing strategy, listing optimization tactics, and customer reviews and ratings. You can identify opportunities to differentiate and improve upon their approach based on customer pain points and unmet needs.
How do you run a competitor analysis? Here are the basic steps:
Identify your Key Competitors: Find competing products in your category by searching with your target keywords on Amazon or wherever you’re selling. Focus on highly ranked products with a lot of reviews to put together a short list of top competitors.
Analyze your Competitors’ Product Listings: Make note of their product design and packaging, listing title and description, product images, A+ content, etc. You should also consider other elements like pricing strategy, marketing tactics, and customer reviews.
Interpret and Leverage Your Findings: Maybe your product has features that your competitors’ products don’t have. Or maybe they’re using specific marketing tactics that you can also adapt and leverage for your own campaigns. By analyzing what sets top-ranking competitor products apart, you can get ideas for optimizing your own listings.
Don’t underestimate the power of customer reviews! 93% of buyers say that online reviews impact their purchase decisions, and the more and better reviews your product has, the better it will rank in Amazon search results.
This candid feedback provides a goldmine of qualitative insights into what real buyers think about your products – the good, the bad, and everything in between. Comb through your own reviews regularly, but also check out what customers are saying about your competition to spot potential gaps to fill or ways to deliver more value.
Collecting feedback directly from customers via email surveys or social media is another great way to take their temperature and gather insights.
If you have an email list, this can be a powerful way to build brand loyalty and win recurring customers by sharing exclusive offers, new products, content, resources, etc. And by “giving” to your loyal customers, you can ask for something in return: valuable feedback about your brand and products. Send surveys asking what they think about the product they just purchased, what could be improved in the buying experience, or requesting reviews.
And stay tuned into social media – one of the most important places where people go to get product feedback from trusted peers and influencers. Monitor your own social channels’ engagement and comments, of course, but also keep an eye out for other mentions and discussions about your brand. These “out in the wild” comments are a great source of honest feedback, consumer insights, and opportunities for improvement.
Finally, there are dedicated platforms you can use to gather both qualitative and quantitative data from your target audience – such as PickFu. PickFu is a self-service consumer research platform where you can survey a built-in panel of consumers and get feedback on your product ideas, designs, listings, packaging, and more.
The panel is made of 15 million real consumers globally, which you can segment based on location, demographics like age and income, interests, hobbies, and more, so that you’re reaching people who closely match your ideal customer.
Unlike live A/B testing, you’ll get both quantitative and qualitative data – the audience shares written feedback on every question, giving you valuable insights into their preferences. And results typically come back within a few hours, allowing you to iterate and make decisions quickly.
Here are just a few ways your eCommerce brand can use PickFu to gather consumer insights and optimize their products and listings:
At the end of the day, there’s simply no substitute for tapping into the minds of your customers through diligent consumer research. Make it an integral part of your eCommerce strategy, and you’ll be equipped to deliver experiences and products that draw customers in and keep them coming back for more.
Adrienne Van Niman
Adrienne Van Niman is the content marketing manager at PickFu, a DIY consumer research platform. She has several years of experience writing, editing, and building content strategy for B2B tech companies. When she’s not re-organizing her content calendar and Asana boards, Adrienne is exploring the beautiful U.S. in an RV with her husband and dog.
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