What is Product Development in E-Commerce?
Product development in e-commerce encompasses the entire process of generating new ideas to outpace competitors, turning those ideas into products, and bringing them to market. This process can be briefly summarized as the creation of the idea and its transformation into a prototype, the R&D and production stages, collecting feedback, and refining the prototype based on this feedback before starting mass production. While these processes represent the "behind-the-scenes" work, parallel efforts in pricing and marketing strategies are also being developed.
Why is Product Development Important?
Every product developed and successfully launched represents a new market opportunity, an increase in sales, and a chance to stand out among competitors. In this context, almost all established companies constantly work on product development to stay ahead of the competition, expand market share, reach new audiences, and become a solution-oriented company. A prime example of this is Apple, a company almost everyone is familiar with today. On the verge of bankruptcy in 1997, Apple became the first company with a market value exceeding $1 trillion thanks to its innovative technologies. With products like the iMac, iPod, and iPhone, Apple continues to dominate all the sectors it competes in, maintaining its position at the top. This success is sustained by the continuous development of new products across all product lines.
Tips for Product Development in E-Commerce
Value Customer Feedback
If you want a product you’ve developed and launched to achieve long-term success, you must value the opinions of your customers who purchase the product. No matter how much testing is done on the production line, many issues seen by the end user may not be caught. By continuing to improve your products based on consumer feedback, you can achieve a product development process aligned with the Six Sigma approach.
Monitor Competitor Product Reviews
Keep an eye on reviews of products similar to the ones you've developed. These reviews can provide insights into why consumers choose the product, the experience they have after acquiring it, and a thorough examination of the product from the consumer’s perspective. This gives you the opportunity to identify the mistakes your competitors made in product development and easily eliminate those errors from your own product.
Set Up Your R&D Budget
Product development in e-commerce brings many costs even before mass production begins. R&D is your indispensable aid in creating correct and successful products. It is a fact that successful R&D efforts are behind every successful product. Therefore, it is recommended to allocate a significant budget for R&D activities.
In recent years, R&D efforts have been on the rise in our country, and they can generate ideas that reduce product costs in the fields of production and marketing, in addition to preparatory work, planning, and feedback analysis for each product produced by your company.
Create a Prototype and Conduct User Testing
Creating a functional prototype during product development in e-commerce provides you with detailed data analysis related to the product. While obtaining important data such as calculating the production process and costs of the product, you can also offer the prototype for user testing and collect feedback, allowing you to identify errors and deficiencies before moving to mass production.
Product development in e-commerce is a serious and important process. What’s even more important are the sales and marketing efforts for the developed product. We have mentioned many times that you need a platform to sell your developed products and the features to consider when choosing this platform. With Comwize's e-commerce solution, you can manage all the processes following product development in e-commerce.
