An idea is a spark that ignites an ecommerce business to get up and running. How you develop this idea and where you take it depends on lots of factors, from the financial status of your company, the resources you possess to manufacture the product, and how well you carry out marketing and sales. Your product needs to be not only top on performance but also presentation and appeal. But all these matters only when you have a great product idea to start with.
Coming up with fresh product ideas can be very frustrating. Getting new product ideas can seem like an unrealistic goal if you don't know where to start and how to go about it. You can just sit and think about what products are high in demand or beat your brains to think out of the box. But that isn’t an assured way to generate new product ideas. You can easily get sidetracked and forget the whole reason behind the brainstorming. Instead, what if we tell you that is a way you can increase the number of fresh product ideas that you generate on average. You can follow these tips to get the best out of your employees and generate product ideas every single day.
12 easy tips to help you generate unique product ideas
Understanding what products are in high demand and what products consumers will buy is essential for developing new product ideas. But those are not the only questions you must ask before you can brainstorm for product ideas.
Here are 12 easy tips that are guaranteed to give boost your brain cells and have new product ideas popping into your head
1. Easy market reach
Think about the market you want to target with your product. If the target market is something that you don't understand, it will be harder to develop a product that caters to their needs. Choose a niche that you have some grasp on and then focus on solving one problem that people in that niche face.
The most common mistake young entrepreneurs make is that they think purely in numbers. You don't need to focus on developing product ideas that have limited buyers. You can even start with asking what product has high demand in a specific niche and brainstorm ideas for it. You are better off focusing on a niche product, or at least somewhat of a niche product that has a market that you can reach.
2. Known Niche Market
Developing unique product ideas in a field that you aren’t too familiar with is no joke. It’s easier for an expert to understand what products are in high demand, how the markets would behave, and what product would click with consumers, and then come up with solutions for various dimensions. Likewise, stick to what you know best. You need not come up with new ideas every time. You can even re-purpose existing products, like when the first tattoo gun was born by adding a surgical needle and some ink to an electric pen.
3. Existing competition
It would sound weird if someone told you to develop product ideas for a pre-existing market. But that’s exactly what we’re gonna do. And we have good reasons for you to do so. It’s always harder to convince consumers to buy a product that’s completely new to the market. It’s just too much work, and unless it’s those one a billion ideas, it probably won’t work. Instead, go for markets that have some competition.
It helps avoid some beginner's blues like knowing whether the product will be accepted by consumers and have a core consumer or to have a benchmark upon which you can develop your product. A market that has competition can also indicate what products are in high demand. You may want to steer clear of introducing products that have well-established stakeholders. Go for
4. No dominating competitors
Though we told you that you need to have competitors in the market, there also is a thing called too much competition. You need to assess who your competitors are before you go out and challenge their products in the market. Think of it this way: if you come up with a new idea for a smartphone and compete with the likes of Apple, Huawei, and Samsung, well, think again. The bigger the competitor, the harder it will be for you to compete with the product price, market reach, marketing, and sales resources, brand, etc. Moreover, industry giants in any niche are known to suppress competition.
5. Upfront market research
Market research is the most important part of developing product ideas. No matter how much you think you know the market, it’s always wise to analyze the market from every angle. Research helps you understand various aspects of product compatibility. Products that may seem great on paper can become unrealistic when you consider other dimensions of the product. This applies more to physical products where the limitation of upfront research can have drastic effects on sales.
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For example, say you conducted extensive market research and found that people like your product and are willing to buy it. But when your product is out in the market, you don’t see the numbers being reciprocated. Hence you also need to realize the limitations of any market data that doesn’t include money-changing hands.
6. Solves a known problem
So this point can sound a bit tricky. We aren’t talking about educating the consumers about your product. We mean you need to understand what the consumer of your chosen market identifies as a problem and then create a solution around that problem. The best thing you can do here is to identify problems with newer technology. The earphones, for example, were quite famous when they first came out but weren't an essential product. But with the smartphone, companies realized that people will soon develop the need for earphones and established themselves in the market.
7. Differentiated product
When you’re developing new product ideas, you need to think outside the box. Look at problems from the user perspective. It must not only be useful but equally appealing. For this, you need to differentiate your product from your competitors. Come up with product ideas to give your product an edge over competitors. This can include some added features or accessories that attract consumers to your product.
8. Price it Right
The price is one of the most crucial aspects that defines consumer behavior towards the product. Come up with product ideas that are affordable to your target market. It can be difficult to focus on your product if you’re constantly thinking about cost-cutting. But choose products where the cost of manufacturing is low, and you have a good profit margin. You don't want to come with the idea that you don't have the resources to support. You can consider some aspects such as the cost of building and marketing the product. As the sales aspect will be addressed in market research, you only need to think of products that are easy to build.
9. Recurring revenue
An easy way to ensure revenue is by following the current trend of recurring revenue. You don't need to make consumers buy your product on a regular basis. Instead, get them to subscribe to a plan. It makes the product a part of their lifestyle and thus, will commit to the product.
Come up with product ideas where you can attach a source of recurring revenue to the product. It can be a massive boost to your revenue and the success of your business.
10. Potential for a high-profit margin
A product that costs you a lot of money to make needs to be equally expensive. Without a good profit margin, it can be difficult to sustain your product or your business. An easy way to do this is by finding the retail price of the product and developing your new product that costs 4 times less than the retail price. This can avoid any complications that can arise with the pricing later on in product development. You can reduce it to 3 times the manufacturing cost in case you’re selling directly to consumers.
With that being said, keep in mind that your earnings are also influenced by the volumes you sell. If you’re going for a product that’s gonna be expensive, you might have a narrower consumer base. Cheaper products usually have a lower profit margin but sell by the numbers so it shouldn't be a problem.
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11. Affordable to scale to manufacturing
This is one part that product specialists leave out or don’t quite remember when they develop new product ideas. Making a product for 100 or even 10,000 consumers is totally different from when you have to make the same product for a million consumers. The cost of scaling up can be the difference in your product being the top in the market. You should be able to scale the product from the prototype stage to mass manufacturing.
12. Simple and affordable to develop
When pitching product ideas and coming up with the best product, make sure to give enough room for product development. You want to be able to make changes to your product so that consumers aren’t bored with your product. This can seem challenging, but the idea here is not to make a substandard product but build a prototype that addresses one problem area and then moves on to the others. You want to give users the experience of the product evolving with time. In most cases, this is something natural as you will need to keep up with changing market trends and consumer interests. Your job as the think tank would be to first establish a minimum viable product (MVP) and then add on additional features to the MVP. But you need to establish your MVP before you can promote additional development to the product, or consumers might not find it appealing.
It is generally best to focus on only the core, essential functions for your first product version in such a case. Once you have actual market data and sales, then you can consider adding any potential secondary functions.
How to launch your new product ideas?
These tips should help you focus your attention on developing the next big product idea. But the question now is, what will you do once you have got a great product idea and the resources to build it? You will want to market the product and prepare it for a mega launch.
You can’t just put an ad on social media and expect your product to reach all the consumers. You need a platform that is dedicated to marketing your product. A product website is the best platform to launch your product.
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Creating a website is far simpler than all the steps we’ve discussed here. You don’t even have to worry about building the website as there are terrific website building sites like Strikingly that assist you through the entire process. You don’t even have to worry about wasting too much time on website building. Websites like Strikingly provide pre-designed website templates that can be personalized to suit your requirement. You can find out more about website building, branding, and marketing on Strikingly’s blogs.
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Creating fresh product ideas is the most difficult part of the product development cycle. You can be brainstorming for days and not come up with a single good idea. These tips should guide you in case you feel lost or can’t let those ideas flow. For your other website building problems, you have Strikingly.
