How to Find Your Ideal Shopify Niche (And 10 Profitable Niche Ideas to Explore)

Finding a Shopify niche packed with profit potential is often easier said than done.

There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there, from “follow your passions”, to “take advantage of the latest trends”. However, the reality is choosing the ideal niche is often a multi-stage process, packed with analysis, research, and careful consideration.

While every ecommerce seller wants to build their business in an industry they care about, it’s also crucial to ensure your products have the potential to drive a sustainable profit.

Fortunately, while there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy to selecting the perfect niche, there are steps you can take to boost your chances of success.

Today, we’re going to share a step-by-step guide to selecting an effective niche, along with some profitable niche ideas worth exploring in 2023.

What is a Shopify Niche? An Introduction

Before we dive in, it’s worth defining what a Shopify niche actually is.

In simple terms, a “niche” or “market niche” is a specific market segment you choose to target with your Shopify products or services. More granular than your average “target market”, niches are highly nuanced, defined by specific characteristics, needs, preferences, and identities.

You can define a niche by looking at factors like:

• Psychographics: Customer interests, attitudes, and values
• Demographics: Gender, income level, age, education level
• Geographics: Customer location (country, city, neighborhood)
• Quality: Premium, handmade, economical, sustainable
• Price: Luxury, moderate, discount

For instance, if your business focuses on the beauty industry, your niche might be luxury, handmade products, designed for younger women in the United States.

If you were branching into the fashion dropshipping space, you might create niche products for the athletics industry, focusing on older customers in search of comfortable and customized garments, with unique properties.

The Benefits of Choosing a Successful Shopify Niche

Choosing a “niche” target audience for your Shopify store might seem like an unusual tactic. After all, catering to a niche means appealing to a smaller, more refined group of customers. However, in a competitive marketplace, a niche focus can also help business owners, dropshippers, and merchants differentiate themselves from countless other brands.

With the right Shopify niche, you can benefit from:

• A more loyal audience: Speaking directly to a specific group of customers, rather than a broad range of buyers is one of the best ways to build a clear emotional connection. Niche audiences are more passionate about niche products, which can help your business grow.
• Fewer operational costs: When you’re just getting started, taking a niche approach to business can reduce the operational costs associated with managing large amounts of inventory and storage for numerous SKUs. You can also spend less on different advertising campaigns for various product groups and categories.
• Improved visibility: A niche market allows you to take a niche approach to marketing. You can target more specific keywords with search engine optimization, and focus on more precise social media groups. This improves your visibility online, while also reducing the costs associated with marketing.
• Fewer competitors: Niche companies generally have fewer bigger competitors to fight against. While there will still be similar companies out there, you won’t have to work as hard to differentiate yourself against brands with bigger budgets.
• Enhanced credibility: Choosing a niche can help to establish you as a thought leader in your space, rather than just a “jack of all trades”. Used correctly, the right niche can position your business as an expert, earning customer trust.

Finding a Shopify Niche: The Step by Step Guide

The best Shopify niches aren’t always easy to detect. Shopify is a highly versatile ecommerce platform. With it, companies can launch virtually any kind of business, from a dropshipping or print on demand brand, to a company selling subscriptions, digital products, or webinars.

This means your niche options are essentially limitless on Shopify, but only a handful of segments will deliver genuine value. Here’s your step by step guide to choosing a viable Shopify niche.

Step 1: Examine Your Passions and Skills

Choosing a niche you’re genuinely passionate about is always a good idea. Similarly, it helps to pick an area to focus on that aligns with your existing knowledge and skillset.

For instance, if you have years of experience in the fashion industry, then it may make sense to create a print-on-demand store selling customized clothing. The more you understand and connect with your niche, the easier it will be to create incredible products, and connect with your audience.

Choosing a niche that aligns with your passion and skills will also make working on your business a lot easier. Staying motivated is simple when you love the industry you work in.

Step 2: Explore the Market Trends

While trending products don’t always guarantee long-term, sustainable growth, they can offer an insight into changing buyer behaviors. There are various analytical tools you can use to help you learn more about what customers in your target market are interested in. Facebook Audience Insights is a brilliant tool for finding detailed information about specific markets and their interests.

Google Keyword Planner, and Google Trends, provide an overview of the kinds of search terms customers are looking for. You can use these tools to see whether interest in certain products, like “vegan shoes” or “supplements” is increasing, decreasing, or staying steady.

Other ways to examine the current trends include:

• Using Google Search: Search for a term on Google, like “pet owners” and see what kinds of stores and products appear. You can even use Google’s automated suggestions for insights into what kind of topics customers might be searching for.
• Pay attention to common problems: What do the people around you often complain about? What kind of issues do you face every day? Are there any specific products or services that would make your life easier, or contribute to your goals in some way?
• Examine community forums: The web is brimming with communities that share similar interests. You can subscribe to hashtags on Instagram and TikTok to see what kind of niche trends your target market might be talking about.

Step 3: Evaluate the Competition

Whether you’re choosing a dropshipping niche for Shopify, or looking for a specific segment in the technology world, you’re going to have competition. Examining what other companies in your industries are selling, as well as what new solutions they’re focusing on can help you choose the right niche. You might find that the major sellers in your space are overlooking a specific segment.

For instance, if you’re a food business, you may find plenty of companies selling vegan food, but only a handful offering vegan and gluten-free recipes. Looking for competitors in your niche can also help you to identify whether a space is actually worth targeting.

If there are no other companies selling similar products to yours, this could be a sign that you’re going to be a new trend-setter. However, it likely indicates there’s not enough demand for your product.

Step 4: Look for a Clear Market

That brings us to the next step in our strategy for finding an effective niche – ensuring there’s a clear market for whatever you’re selling. While choosing a highly specific niche can be valuable, it’s no good if there aren’t enough people out there who actually want to buy your products.

Using market research tools and insights, you should be able to calculate a “total addressable market” or “TAM” for your niche. This basically identifies how much revenue you could potentially earn if you captured 100% of your target audience.

You can also use online reports to look at how a specific market is growing. For instance, Grandview Research shows the POD market is likely to grow at a rate of 26.1% between 2022 and 2030.

Step 5: Narrow down your Niche Options

By this point, you should have a few different Shopify niche ideas to work with. Though you can always consider branching into other niche opportunities in the future, it’s best to start with one idea. To narrow down your options, ask yourself these questions:

• Where do you have the most personal and professional experience?
• Which niche opportunities are you most passionate about?
• Do you have any specific connections in your chosen niche?
• Is your niche too broad or too narrow based on your research?
• Is the niche too competitive, or not competitive enough?

You can also think about whether there are any niche elements you can combine on your list. For instance, if you see opportunities in both fashion and sustainability, then you could focus on creating eco-friendly garments.

Step 6: Validate your Niche

Validating your niche is crucial to ensure you’re not spending too much time or money on a strategy that’s not going to pay off for your business. As mentioned above, looking at your competition is a good way to validate your niche. If there are too many competitors, your niche might be too broad, and if there are too few, there may not be enough demand for what you want to sell.

You can also consider talking to potential customers. Speak to customers on community forums, run surveys and polls on social media, and look for evidence of interest.

It’s also worth taking advantage of resources that can help you. Tools like Nielsen’s consumer research reports and Think with Google will help you to understand customer pain points, breakout trends, and potential desires in your market.

Tips for Choosing the Best Shopify Niches

Now you know how to find a niche, let’s cover some quick tips that could help you to make a better choice for your business. Remember, all Shopify sites start with entrepreneurs hoping to create the next big thing, but not all niche products are destined to become best sellers.

To boost your chances of creating a profitable business:

• Adhere to your passions: The most profitable entrepreneurs and ecommerce business owners choose niches that play to their strength. Make sure you’re passionate about the product category you choose. This will help you to gain an edge over your competitors when you’re creating marketing campaigns to connect with your customer base.
• Don’t rely too heavily on trends: While trendy products can sell online rapidly, they don’t always deliver sustainable profits. Make sure the niche you choose has the potential to continue growing in the years ahead. Use market research to guide you.
• Appeal to customer obsessions: The companies with the biggest profit margins appeal to their customers obsessions, guilty pleasures, pain points, and goals. Get to know your target audience and find out what really drives them to purchase products. Choose solution-focused products that deliver clear benefits to your customers.
• Minimize risk: If you’re just getting started with a new product, try to keep your risk levels low. Opting for a dropshipping business could be a great way to experiment with new product ideas without spending a fortune on inventory that might not sell.
• Look for branding potential: Make sure you can add your own unique spin to your product. Customers will pay more for products that have distinct and unique benefits. This means you’ll need to look for items with branding potential, that can set your online business apart from other organizations in your space.

It’s also worth making sure you have a strategy in place for keeping up with emerging opportunities and trends in your industry. Influencers and consumers are constantly contributing to new trends. Once you’ve found your niche, the work doesn’t necessarily stop.

You can continue to take advantage of market and keyword research and insights into customer trends to search for more high-quality products to add to your collection. The more unique products you can offer in your specific category, the higher your profit margins are likely to be.

10 Shopify Niche Ideas to Consider in 2023

By this point, you should have all the insights you need to choose a niche that generates high demand for your company.

However, you might still need a little extra inspiration before you’re ready to sell online. Fortunately, we’re here to help.

Here are some of the most profitable niches in 2023.

Home Office Equipment

The age of hybrid and remote working has finally arrived. Since the pandemic, interest in home office equipment has skyrocketed in virtually every part of the world. In 2023, as companies continue to introduce more flexible working strategies for employees, the demand for high-quality equipment, such as laptop tables, noise-cancelling headphones and ergonomic chairs is likely to continue.

In fact, Modor Intelligence suggests by 2030, the market for home office furniture alone is expected to increase in value to around $28.49 billion. With dropshipping suppliers, you can sell all kinds of ergonomic products, eco-friendly items, and unique niche products, with minimal upfront investment.

Organic Health and Beauty

The health and beauty landscape has been one of the most consistently profitable niches in the world for quite some time. However, there’s a particularly high level of demand in the current market for products that help people feel good, without negatively impacting the planet.

Grandview Research found the organic skincare market is growing at an accelerated rate of 8.9% CAGR. You don’t necessarily need to be an expert in organic science to thrive in this industry either. You can work with suppliers to create organic toothpaste, cruelty-free beauty products, natural soaps and more, all with your own unique brand.

Eco-Friendly Products

Speaking of the rising love for the environment, eco-friendly products are having a major moment. During the pandemic, the popularity of eco-friendly and sustainable goods increased by 71%. Today, many consumers are continuing to prioritize sustainable and environmentally-friendly goods.

The great thing about this niche is you can combine it with virtually any passion you might have. You could create eco-friendly garments with print-on-demand suppliers, or prioritize biodegradable essentials for everyday life. You could even get involved with dropshipping equipment for customers who want to get involved with things like solar energy.

Home Workout Equipment

During the pandemic, a lot of people switched working out at the gym, for exercise sessions at home. Since then, many consumers have ditched traditional gym memberships for good, prioritizing at-home fitness sessions instead. This has led to an incredible range of opportunities for Shopify stores.

Studies show the home fitness market will attain a value of around $17.3 billion by 2030. Depending on your skills and interests, you can explore a range of products, from treadmills and exercise bikes, to hula-hoops, weights, at-home fitness apparel, and even webinars for personal training.

Home and Kitchen Accessories

Home and kitchen accessories seem to constantly attract positive attention in the ecommerce market. Demand for these products has only increased in recent years, as new technology has emerged, and customers have spent more time building comfortable, beautiful living spaces.

There’s no limit to what you can explore in this niche, from high-tech kitchen gadgets, to smart home devices, wall art, rugs, furniture, and lighting fixtures. You could even focus on a more specific niche, targeting customers with specific interests in pop culture, or modern interior design.

Pet Products

People love their pets. Even in times of economic upheaval, consumers will continue to spend money on accessories and essential products for their furry friends. By the end of 2027, the market for pet products worldwide is expected to reach a value of $358.67 billion.

Other statistics tell us that in the US alone, pet owners spent more than $30 billion in vet care, and $38 billion in pet food and treats during 2022. There are plenty of opportunities to explore in this landscape, including eco-friendly and natural pet food, handmade pet products, subscription boxes and more. You could even sell customized collars and bowls.

Baby Products

If there’s one thing customers love more than their pets, it’s their children. With more than 140 million newborn babies emerging every year throughout the world, there are always going to be parents in search of high-quality products for their tots.

If your customer base consists largely of families, then looking for dropshipping providers offering a range of baby products could be a great idea. You could also boost your chances of success by combining the baby niche with the environmentally friendly or organic niche.

Reverse Commerce

Otherwise known as “re-commerce”, the reverse commerce niche is another excellent environment worth exploring for your online store. The rise of Amazon, Etsy, and eBay has led to an increase in customers searching for used items online.

As the economy continues to struggle, you may find Shopify stores begin to prioritize more used and affordable products in the years ahead. According to some studies, reselling second-hand and used products as a small business could deliver incredible profits. The market is expected to hit a value of around $64 billion in just the next couple of years.

Travel Accessories

While SEO traffic and interest in travel products have had their ups and downs in recent years, following the pandemic, interest in travel is on the rise again. This is thanks largely to a large numbers of influencers promoting all kinds of sustainable travel.

The great thing about selling travel accessories, is you have plenty of opportunities to get specific with what you sell. You could create a dropshipping store selling tech-driven travel accessories, like portable charges, or you could create custom luggage for your customers.

Online Learning

Finally, not every ecommerce store needs to focus on selling physical products. With your Myshopify.com store, you’ll be able to sell digital items too, like eBooks, webinars, and online courses. If you have specific skills you can share as a store owner, then you could earn a significant income in this niche.

According to market statistics, the value of the online learning market is expected to reach $602 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 17.2%. As an added bonus, unlike with other Shopify stores, a store focused on digital products won’t have to worry about any fulfillment or inventory costs.

Choosing the Right Niche for your Shopify Store

Finding the right niche for your Shopify store can seem like a daunting task. However, if you’re willing to put in the time and effort to choose a successful niche, the rewards can be phenomenal. Choosing a winning niche means your online store will be specifically designed to appeal to a specific audience of fans who can help your business grow.

Once you’ve found your niche, remember you can always expand and evolve over time, provided that you retain the core essence of your brand, and stay relevant to your customers.