I heard a statistic recently which really surprised me. The stat was that over 63% of US Households have an Amazon Prime Account. Just to put that into perspective ONLY 39% of American Households have a landline phone.
Think about that, over 63% of American Households are essentially signed up to a private companies yearly Shopping Club for lack of a better word. It really shows how big, how powerful, and how dominant Amazon has gotten in the eCommerce space.
Oftentimes when people talk to me about potential Shopify stores or eCommerce businesses they want to start my first thought, at least in terms of my own consumer behavior, is that I would never visit their shop to buy the item they are planning on selling, I would just go to Amazon where I already paid for Free 2 Day shipping, where as on their shop I'd have to pay for shipping.
I think there's certain products where our knee jerk reaction is to just immediately run to Amazon and not even look anywhere else. Some of these products that come to mind are phone chargers, aux cables, phone cases, dog leashes, etc, etc, etc.
For someone to start an ecommerce shop in one of those spaces, I personally feel they are facing an uphill battle trying to get people to buy from them as opposed to Amazon. Amazon is only going to grow larger and more powerful, and in order to get sales to your shop your going to have to offer really strong branding, a unique item that can't be found elsehwere, better customer support or a better warranty.
I guess my point is this. Next time your thinking about starting an eCommerce shop ask yourself "why would someone come to my website and buy this from me instead of going to Amazon?"
If you can't come up with at least 2-3 reasons why, you should probably keep searching for a better product or better niche.
Watch the video to get the whole scoop.