Thinking About Your Niche Market

One of the mistakes I've seen with small businesses websites is that they are very broadly defined websites that sell 101 things. This kind of general retail approach just doesn't play to the strengths of a small business. The power of a small business on the web is the passion and knowledge that they have for their product area. I've seen in my own business that the key to my success on the web has been to concentrate on a small, well defined market niche that I can do better than anyone else.

In my case, my niche is the small memory foam bedding segment of the larger bedding market. By focusing solely on memory foam, I'm able to give my customers a much richer user experience for this product area than my larger competitors. For example, on my site I have over 60 pages on memory foam. I have over 20 FAQs for example, plus comparisons, and lots of other detailed information.

In contrast, Costco and Bed Bath and Beyond, both competitors of mine, only have a single catalog page for their memory foam topper - a one pager that has a paragraph of typical sales copy. If you were searching on the web for memory foam, which site would you have more interest in? The site with 60 pages of information on just memory foam, or the site that only has one paragraph on its memory foam products? This in-depth approach gives me a real edge over my competitors, and it is one reason that focusing on a market niche is such an advantage for a small web business.

Another advantage you gain by focusing your web business on a market niche is that a website on a particular topic or theme has, in my experience, a better shot at ending up high in search engine rankings for that particular topic. The Futon Covers Online site is a good example of this.

Most of the futon cover competitors have their futon covers as just a part of their larger futon products site. But over the years, through all the different search engine changes, the Futon Covers Online site has risen back to the first page for the keyword "futon covers" (and for many of these years, was in the top couple of places).

Part of this is due to our designing the page so it works well for this keyword, but I believe it also has to do with his site just focusing so narrowly on this area - it just does futon covers.

I've had a similar experience with my site - most of my competitors sell all sorts of bedding products on their site (not just memory foam, but also air beds, latex, etc.) My focus just on memory foam has helped make my site the destination for those looking for information on memory foam. My site just naturally seems to come up high on search engine results for my important keywords since the focus of the site is solely memory foam. As a result, I was #1 for many of my most important keywords for a 5 - 6 year stretch, and I still get about 1/3 of my traffic from organic search results.

So if I wanted to carry other kind of bedding in the future? I would give each type their own site - set up a niche website for each type of bedding product area. Or at most combine a few so that it was a narrowly focused bedding hub type of site. That way I would both maximize the customer experience I could offer on each site and also make it much more likely that each site would come up well in search results.

And that is what I advise other small business people - break your business into small niches, and if you want to sell to these on the web do them on different websites.

Where to start - what niche should you try to mine first? I started at what I knew best - the memory foam topper and mattress products I had concentrated on for a few years. You know your business, and what you do best.

I would suggest breaking it into different niches that you do well, and then test them out as we discuss in the next section to see which one might make the most sense to start with. But I wouldn't let the numbers of people searching dictate what you do necessarily. I really believe that if you go with what you know and have passion for, then you can really make a website that is special.

In other words, don't just go for where you think the money is - at least not in your first niche website. I would suggest using the first one to get your web "chops" down, and this would mean playing to your strength and going with the niche you feel most passionate about or can do the best.

If this works for you, then you can use your experience to then go into other niche markets with other websites tailored for these niches. Don't go for the home run on your first site - I think it is more important to stick with what you know, and build confidence in yourself that you can do this kind of business.

And my experience also tells me that a supposedly small niche can have results you really could never have expected - who would have guessed our the small, niche futon cover site I designed 5 years ago would be doing $500,000 gross a year now? No one - certainly not my client. But I kept hammering away that he should focus on something small that he could do better than anybody, and after years of working it he is really getting some great returns. So think about what niche you want to hit - and then go to our next section to get a feel for how it might work on the web.

Next > The next step is Test it Out

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