Is Your New Product Shelf Ready?

So you’ve come up with a good solid product that could potentially fill a gap on the market, but have you considered all the aspects that need to be considered in order to get a product ready for launch? You can’t just think about a product and then boom, it’s ready to go and show to the world, there are several things you need to consider and research in order for you to not only be successful but also protect yourself and be legal. If you have a brilliant idea and are wondering where to get started look at these top tips for making sure a new product is a shelf ready.

Is It The Right Time?

When thinking about releasing a new product you really have to think about the timing of the release, it’s no good releasing a product designed for use in the summer in December, your potential buyers are just going to lose faith in your business. It’s a good idea to conduct some research into the best time of year and also which days you should avoid. Yes, that’s right there are even days you should avoid such as Christmas or New Year's Eve, you're just not going to build the right traction.

Pricing

A really important part of a product successfully launching is to get the price right. It’s surprising how many fail at this hurdle. It’s possible for a product to be both overpriced and underpriced and either way it will have a bad impression on your consumer. If a product is overpriced people tend to go with cheaper competitors unless you’re offered a unique product of course and if a product is underpriced people may become suspicious and wonder why the price is so low in comparison. A good way to think about pricing is to conduct some market research. Have a look at some things such as:

• The price of your potential customers is willing to pay.
• What your competitors are charging.
• What your profits will be after expenses.
• Look at conducting surveys to find out how marketable your product is.

Remember your prices can always be changed in the future, try to be realistic and always perform regular reviews. Try to keep up with when there are sales on, you will begin to notice that there are regular times for sales throughout the year such as Black Friday and Boxing day sales.

What’s It Called?

You should be careful when naming any product it’s one of the most important things to consider when you releasing a new item to the market. You want the name to be memorable, fairly simple and for it to be able to roll off the tongue. You don't want people to be thinking ‘what was it called again’ it will just mean that word of mouth will never work and your product risks being forgotten about as a potential purchase. You will find that consumers like product names to be recognisable. Think iPhone, Samsung, Coca Cola, all simple yet well known and memorable.

Who Are You Selling To?

Make sure you are aware of what you intend consumers like and don’t like. There should be no guesswork going into this aspect of your product as your marketing campaign needs to be tailored around your audience in order to succeed. Thorough market research should be a priority and is necessary so your target market will respond positively to your new product. Think about conducting tests with things like free samples and surveys to make sure you have the right target audience before you launch a product completely.

Identify Your Competition

It’s always going to be important to know and understand what your competition is doing, even more so if you’re releasing a similar product. Have a think about some of the things that hey could be doing that you need to improve on in order to stand out. Look out for:

• The price they are offering, are they offering any deals? Reduced rated? BOGOF? Always think about matching them undercutting, if you can, this could give you a slight edge when on the market.  
• What features does their product have?
• What’s similar to your product?
• What’s different to your product?
• Is your’s better quality, therefore, higher prices or is it a budget version that you can offer cheaper?
• Who buys their product?
• Where do they sell it?

These are just a few things to consider, when it comes to your competitors there isn’t enough research you can do. You just need to make sure and be confident you’re able to stand out from them and offer something better to the consumers.

Perform Extensive Testing

You really need to consider testing the products as a top priority and should have done this several times before any sort of release to the public. You should be considering what sort of testing you need to complete beforehand such as using EMC Test Equipment to test any electrical products. It’s not going to be good for your brand's image if you release something that later needs to be recalled or even worst causes a danger to your customers. Plus you wouldn’t want to release something that’s going to frustrate customers. And, do you really want to deal with a shed load of returns and exchanges?

Packaging

This is yet another area to conduct research on. Notice any sort of pattern there? Getting your packaging right could be the difference from your product flying off the shelves to it being left to be reduced in the bargain bin when it doesn’t sell. Some of the things you could consider are:

• Are the colours appealing? Research and conduct surveys to test a few different schemes.
• Is it easy to handle? Yes, the shape and size of the packaging really do matter.
• If it’s a fragile item, is there enough protection?
• Do you want clear packaging so you can see the product on the shelf or a box where you’re displaying a picture?
• Think about what your competitor is doing.

It could be a good idea to think about attending some conferences where you are able to display your product and ask for honest feedback about different packaging designs before settling, this is definitely something you want to get rights it could be costly to change in the long run.