Whether you’re just starting out or are a seasoned builder, this list will help build an e-commerce strategy that’s focused on finding innovative products, differentiating your brand, discovering manufacturers, and finding growth-marketing ideas.
It’s a playbook of modern tools that feels like a cheat code for finding products that will work — and growing them.
#1: Thing Testing
Review and Discover Brands | https://thingtesting.com/
An excellent curation of new products and brands. This is a fantastic feed of hip, new products and gives you the ability to identify emerging trends by category.
Plus, they feature reviews of what consumers do and don’t like.
#2: Answer The Public
Autocomplete Data Insights from Search Engines | https://answerthepublic.com/
Type in a partial google search or key terms and see what people are searching by country, including questions with that phrase, prepositions that are added, and comparisons.
An amazing tool to find customer wants and questions, conveniently summed up by autocomplete categories.
#3: Product World
Product development, product sourcing and brand building | https://productworld.xyz
Factory links, resources for finding manufacturers and breakdowns of different product strategies and ideas. A great place to find curated suppliers and product strategy overviews!
#4: Ahrefs (paid)
All-in-one SEO and marketing opportunity analysis tool | https://ahrefs.com/
Ahrefs shows you search volume for any term, how hard it would be to compete on SEO and related terms people are searching for.
You can look at any website and see what product pages are performing on search.
SEO & product dev should go hand in hand!
#5: SnaxShot
Curated and upcoming food and beverage trends | https://snaxshot.com/
Impeccable CPG (consumer packaged goods) curation, with identification of trends far before they hit the mainstream that can be applied across many industries.
My favorite use of this is looking at packaging and product design to consider for new styles.
#6: Marketing Examined
5-minute reads to grow your startup | http://marketingexamined.com
Case study after case study from @alexgarcia_atx and friends on every marketing concept imaginable. Anytime I’m looking for a platform strategy or growth idea, this is where I start.
#7: Junglescout (paid)
Start and scale your e-commerce business | https://www.junglescout.com/
Sophisticated Amazon product research tool that includes an “Opportunity Finder” that discovers high volume, low competition terms.
Also gives great overall Amazon data by category on existing products. Great for finding existing winners for new channels.
#8: Pinterest
The visual discovery engine for finding ideas | https://www.pinterest.com/
If you plug in enough search terms, the algorithm on Pinterest is amazing.
I searched for retail displays to build a new board, and it just continued to serve me more and more interesting ideas.
Use this as an inspiration source!
#9: Drop Point (paid)
Product spy tool for making tons of money | https://droppoint.site
Drop Point aggregates current and legacy ads on social media with the ability to search by product keyword for $5/m.
See ads and product ideas for what’s happening in DTC.
#10: Free Game
Resource center for brands in their earliest phases | https://virgilabloh.com/free-game/
Virgil Abloh “open sourced” a good deal of the brand creative process, and simple things like trademarking and store setup. There’s also lots of his inspiration links along the way.
I hope you enjoyed reading! See the original 10 Top Sites to Help Build an e-Commerce Strategy Twitter thread here.
– Oren
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