One of the first questions often asked by those thinking of starting a eCommerce site is “what products should I sell”? Here are some things to consider when putting together that first assortment.

1. Best Sellers

Pretty much a no-brainer I know, but it goes without saying that the first place to look in a catalog or store based business going online is what is already selling well in those channels. Your primary customers in your online channel are likely to be those who are shopping your other channels and they are likely to be after the same great product they love in the store or catalog.

For online only business this of coarse not something you will know as you get started. The best strategy is to try to experiment while keeping your inventory risk low, and then try to get into well selling product quickly. Always a good plan, but harder to do that it sounds.

2. Go Deep Instead of Wide

Another tip is to make sure you create categories of products with enough selection to make them shoppable. A category with only a few products is life a store fixture with only a few things on it. It works for Dolce & Gabbana or Coach, but few others.

Experimentation may require only a few products in a natural category. Think about creating gift, lifestyle, or occasion categories for these.

3. Access to Content about the Products

One of the biggest challenges in getting going is pulling together great content about your products. I am using the term content loosely, meaning images, copy, manuals, videos, and other attributes. Having great content is critical to a great customer experience and making your site successful. Are there vendors you work with who already have content they can share with you? Are there other sources of content? Some sites share their content openly. Be careful not to leverage content from other sites if it is clear they created it.

This content will also be important to help you with search engine optimization.

4. Photograph well

Maybe more of a general rule, but items that photograph well will do better online. This is something to consider in selecting an assortment overall, not just beginning.

5. Items over $20 or baskets over $100

This has as much to do with shipping costs as anything. Customers are going to be very reluctant to buy online if the shipping costs are a large percent of the overall transaction This does not necessarily apply to auctions or very unique products, but those are likely to be over $20 anyway.

Another way to think about it is if you can encourage multiple item sales to get basket size up. This can reduce the issues with low cost items, but this can be very hard to do.

6. Building cross-sells and up-sells

A way to encourage customers to browse and discover your great product is to have products that naturally sell in kits, bundles, or as accessories with each other. To get started this may need to be done manually, but over time you can automate these oruse a service to leverage customer sell through or navigation behavior on your site. But keep it simple to start.

7. Unique and differentiating

One of the most important things is going to be to develop a unique assortment is a unique brand and experience. Online it can be hard to rise above the noise, but having a unique set or product in a well designed experience is going to be easier to find in search, more relevant to a targeted audience, easier to engage loyalty with, and should see less price-based competition.

8. Measure, measure, measure

Keep experimenting and learning, while managing your inventory risk. Measure, measure, measure page views, search, conversation, sell-through, and click-through in your marketing. Trends will develop and you’ll see natural ways to expand and develop your assortment online. Even simple and free metrics tools like Google Analytics will do a long way toward helping you optimize your assortment. This is one of the great things about online retailing, use it.

Hopefully these help you put together your first assortments. We would love to hear what you have learned and what has worked or not for you.