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niche or wide-ranging products for dropshipping site?

by Bootfit
4 replies
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My development friends and I have been talking about moving into e-commerce, in particular dropshipping.

I know most if not all advocate choosing a niche to specialise in, for SEO purposes amongst others, but does anyone have any thoughts on developing a site that stocks products across a whole range of departments, similar to what the larger online stores do?

With the right dedicated branding and competitive pricing surely it can't be too hard to get good results, can it?

Should dropshipping be niche-specific or is it e-commerce suicide to start off with a larger range of products?
#dropshipping #niche #products #site #wideranging
  • Profile picture of the author Jesse L
    Originally Posted by Bootfit View Post

    My development friends and I have been talking about moving into e-commerce, in particular dropshipping.

    I know most if not all advocate choosing a niche to specialise in, for SEO purposes amongst others, but does anyone have any thoughts on developing a site that stocks products across a whole range of departments, similar to what the larger online stores do?

    With the right dedicated branding and competitive pricing surely it can't be too hard to get good results, can it?

    Should dropshipping be niche-specific or is it e-commerce suicide to start off with a larger range of products?
    I would start off small at first, to test the waters. If your prices are competitive I would also recommend opening an Ebay and an Amazon store.
    These are not so much for the sales as you will not be very competitive on Ebay with dropshipping, but they do help build authority and drive traffic to your website.
    You can always grow your store into individual "niche" departments.

    Good luck!
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  • Profile picture of the author pavv
    Hi Bootfit,

    As you suggested, niche sites are popular and an area where I've had great success.

    I've never attempted a large department store but some considerations that immediately come to mind:
    - Supplier, one or many? If it was me I'd try to keep things simple and go with one big supplier, but will they offer a broad enough range of products?
    - Competition. Might be difficult gaining market share against the big boys and their marketing budgets
    - High volumes. To compete you need low prices, which means lots of orders to be profitable. Lots of orders means more work with order processing and customer service.
    - Expectation from customers. Big stores are generally bigger budget, think high quality custom design, customer support hotlines, live chat, daily deals, email marketing, managing 10,000's of products.

    Obviously it can be done, there are plenty of online department stores around. Since I don't know your personal circumstances I guess I can only recommend that you have the resources to make it happen, including someone experienced and knowledgeable dealing in this industry at this scale.
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    • Profile picture of the author Bootfit
      Originally Posted by pavv View Post

      Hi Bootfit,

      As you suggested, niche sites are popular and an area where I've had great success.

      I've never attempted a large department store but some considerations that immediately come to mind:
      - Supplier, one or many? If it was me I'd try to keep things simple and go with one big supplier, but will they offer a broad enough range of products?
      - Competition. Might be difficult gaining market share against the big boys and their marketing budgets
      - High volumes. To compete you need low prices, which means lots of orders to be profitable. Lots of orders means more work with order processing and customer service.
      - Expectation from customers. Big stores are generally bigger budget, think high quality custom design, customer support hotlines, live chat, daily deals, email marketing, managing 10,000's of products.

      Obviously it can be done, there are plenty of online department stores around. Since I don't know your personal circumstances I guess I can only recommend that you have the resources to make it happen, including someone experienced and knowledgeable dealing in this industry at this scale.
      Hi Pavv, to answer:

      - Supplier - Ideally one to start off with, with like you say many products on their database. branching out to use others in the future.
      - Competition - Yes, competing with the big brands would be hard. But rather than go down the EMD seo approach we're thinking of developing and marketing our own brand rather than eg 'Designer-Electricals-Discount-Superstore-Online.com' route. A simple branded online presence that offers good customer service and unique brand recognition is the way to go, I think.
      - High Volumes - yes more orders equal more headaches, but more orders also equal higher revenue. Providing we manage our supplier properly and have an open dialogue with them we should be able to iron out any kinks as the turn up.
      - Expectation - Custom design is no problem, neither are email marketing, social signals etc.

      Our personal circumstances are:
      Designer (me) for the past 7 years I've worked on a suite of huge online retail websites, designing front-end e-commerce pages and emails, all designed to get maximum click-through/conversions. I also code front-end xhtml/html5.
      Developer - php guy who really knows his sh*t.
      SEO/Google guy - manages google adwords/adsense accounts for some of the largest online retailers. Turns £10K's monthly budgets int £100k's of revenue.

      With these skills in mind do you think we've got enough of a head-start to break into this arena and give it a good shot? Our first affiliate site will be going live in a couple of weeks and we're going to see how that plays out in terms of SEO and conversion, then if it proves successful we'll look at branching out into dropshipping/e-commerce.
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  • Profile picture of the author robo916
    I would say niche. It's better to target than to not.
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