What you should choose: Niche Store vs. General Store?

If you are planning to start your online business but not sure what kinds of products you would like to sell: A general store that sells everything or a niche store, this article is for you. Each kind of store has its own pros and cons. But which one is suitable for you? Let’s find out.

What you should choose: a niche store or a general store?

First, let’s take a look at a general store.

What is a general store?

You may probably guess from its name. A general store is an online marketplace that sells almost every category of products from socks to light bulbs. Many dropshippers believe that selling everything is the best way to get customers. As it’s more likely for a visitor to find something they want in a general store. But is it true? Let’s see what its advantages are.

Advantages

No research is strictly required

As we have mentioned a lot, choosing the right product is the key to your success. But it will involve a lot of research or support from your soucing agent dropshipping to finally pick the best one for you. But when you sell a wide range of product types, as you can see, there’s no need to do that much research.

The product choice is diverse

When you open a general store, you can choose anything you want to sell. While for a niche store, your option is quite limited.

The circle of potential buyers is really wide

When you sell like everything in the world, your customers are also that diverse. They come from every customer segment. And the circle of potential buyers is really wide.

Disadvantages

However, it still has some disadvantages.

Many product-related tasks to do

When you have a large-scale store with a diverse range of products, you will have too many product-related tasks to finish like importing products, editing product pages, and so on. Furthermore, your customers may find it’s better to go to bigger marketplaces like AliExpress to purchase the same product at lower prices.

Competition is way too tough

If you sell almost everything, you will have many indirect competitors correspondingly. You will also have to compete with large marketplaces like eBay, Amazon, AliExpress. And needless to say, you stand next to no chance to win the competition.

Your SEO will be affected

You have no specific to focus on. As you have so many products, so many things to promote. And it obviously will badly affect your SEO, which leads to a low ranking on the search engine results page.

It’s hard to build your marketing strategy

As you don’t have a focused product to promote, marketing becomes a challenging task for you. You don’t know how to build and what to emphasize. You will soon become confused because you have nothing to focus on. Especially for beginners, it will be much harder for you.

What is a niche store?

In contrast to a general store, a niche store sells only a narrow range of products. Those products share the same features and normally belong to one type. For example, a pet niche store would sell pet bed houses, dog jackets, and so on.

Advantages

Easier to manage

If you open a niche store, you just sell a much narrower range of products than a general store. And it’s easier for you to manage a smaller business.

Moderate competition

As you select just specific products to sell, there may not be much competition. If you can find something that is not available locally, you even become a one-of-a-kind store. That means if people want your products, they will not find them anywhere but in your store. This is the best for your reputation and brand recognition. When people want your product, they remember you and come to you.

Target your audiences better

As you just focus on a specific type of products, you will know your customers’ interests, needs, likes, and dislikes. Understanding your customer is the first step to target them more effectively.

Build a successful marketing strategy

For a niche store, you know what to focus on and what message you want to convey when you do marketing. You know what channels to choose or what your buyers’ interests and behaviors to build up your promotion campaign accordingly.

Efficient SEO

You will have the opportunity to find and focus on your keywords and increase SEO efficiency. You know exactly what keywords you want to pick.

Higher conversion rates

Surely, you will have more chances to make your page and the product page look more trustworthy and catchy. Therefore, there will be a higher conversion rate compared to a general store.

Disadvantages

How about its disadvantages. Let’s see.

You need to conduct a lot of research

This is a big disadvantage. But we think everything has a price. If you want to succeed, you need to put effort into it. So in order to understand what you are selling and targeting, a lot of research will be required.

Your activity is limited

It might seem that when you sell a narrow range of products, you will have less turnover or profit. But in fact, you just need to market your store in the right way, then you will have even a large number of orders on the way.

Which is better for beginners?

As you can see from the above, starting a general store is much easier. You don’t need to spend time doing research and finding the right product. But on the other hand, it’s much harder to make money. If you open a niche store, you will be able to build a more effective advertising campaign or target your potential buyers better. So we would recommend that beginners should start with a niche store.