7 Best Product Research Tools For Dropshipping

The best winning products research tool for dropshipping is Sell the Trend, as it does not only give you analytical insights but also other tools that can help you succeed.

In this article, you will learn the following things:

• Seven of the best dropshipping product research tools
• How to use Sell the Trend to find products for dropshipping
• Why it is important to be picky about what products to sell

There is also a section where you will learn how to choose a tool, and what product characteristics to look for. In the end, you will see the value of product research, and also how it can help you drive sales to your dropshipping business.

You will no longer randomly select products in AliExpress. Instead, you will cherry-pick only the best selling products.

The Importance of Dropshipping Product Research

There are millions of products that you can sell, but not all of these are in demand, let alone best-sellers in your niche. Although you do not need to pay for inventory, listing products in your online store that nobody wants is still a waste of time and money.

Let us discuss some reasons why researching a product is important.

1. Competition

Product research tools tell you who you are competing against and how they are doing in terms of business. You will also get to see trending products that your competitors are selling. Most product research tools have a list of the sellers that carry the product. If not, they at least have a tool that tells you the level of competition.

This information is important because you can measure if your chosen product is already saturated or not. As a dropshipper, the last thing you want to do is sell an item that is all too common.

2. Trend Advantage

Product research tools have algorithms that can, to some degree, predict if the product is about to blow up or not. Although this is not always accurate, it is still better than second-guessing if your chosen product is going to be hot or a flop.

Most of the time, dropshippers are late to the party. They recognize trends only once the trend has reached its peak. They upload the product to their store and do not make a lot of sales because the trend is over.

With product research tools, you can ride this trend before it even goes up, giving you more room for sales and profits.

3. Quality and Reliability

Product research tools also come with a rating system for suppliers. In most cases, you can see if the suppliers are reliable or not. This information can help you decide who to choose as a supplier and partner. If a supplier has a low rating, you can avoid them like a plague and move on.

Dropshipping Product Research: Things to Look for in a Product

Products in research tools are meant to attract you. Just because these products belong to your niche does not mean you should add them to your inventory. The products you choose must meet some tried and tested conditions to attract potential customers, which we will discuss below.

1. Quality

Quality is of utmost importance when choosing a product is quality. We do not advise selling poor quality products, no matter how cheap they are, as this can only lead to problems later.

Here is an example of how you can spot a product’s quality:

I highlighted the rating in red. As you can see, the score is perfect 5 out of 5 stars, which means it is a great product that people would love to buy. Later, we will have a specific section on how you can use Sell the Trend to find a winning dropshipping product.

2. Demand or Sales

The second thing you need to look for in a product is demand, especially for unsaturated trending products. To do this, just head on to Amazon and search for the item. If it has thousands of reviews, then there must have been thousands of purchases.

Here is an example:

The first product has over 39,000 reviews. You can also see below the star icons how many people bought the item in the past month. In this case, it is over 3,000. From here, we can tell that this product has a high demand.

3. Profitability

Profitability matters a lot to dropshipping. Just because you do not buy inventory does not mean you have no expenses. You need to spend money for your store, your dropshipping tool, and your ads.

Ideally, you should make at least a 20% profit margin from your product. Profit margin is the money you make against your capital.

In the screenshot below, the cost of the item, if bought from the supplier, is $12.99. The ideal selling price is $456.57, giving you a difference of $43.58, which is your profit margin.

4. Shipping Costs

The cost of shipping is also an important factor. Most buyers today do not want to pay for shipping. If the cost of shipping is higher than the product, then it does not make sense for them to buy it.

What you can do as a seller is to look for a product that has a low shipping cost. It has to be low enough that you can offer the shipping for free and shoulder its costs.

Dropshipping Product Research: Things to Look for in a Tool

Not all tools are built the same way. Before you decide what dropshipping research tool to use, consider the following things.

• Data Coverage – you want to use a product research tool because you need to make informed business decisions. You can only do this if you have enough data to work with.
• Integration – a product research tool must integrate with your store. The reason I am saying this is it saves you time in importing the product to your store.
• Supplier Information – choose a dropshipping product research tool that has a link to the supplier. This way, you can easily chat with the supplier, place a sample order, or ask if they are willing to customize your orders and packaging.

As far as information goes, choose a tool that can provide you with these:

• Order count
• Total sales revenue
• Capital cost of the item
• Average selling price in the market
• Profitability
• Number of competitors
• Product rating

All these can help you decide if the product you are looking at is a winner. Without this information, you cannot make a wise decision.

Overall Best Product Research Tools for Dropshipping

1. Sell the Trend

Sell the Trend is an all-in-one dropshipping tool. It has a robust AI-powered product research tool for trending products, advertising tools, competitor research tools, and many more.

Sell the Trend Features

• Store Builder – you can build a store on the platform. This way, you no longer have to use multiple programs to launch and manage your business.
• Dropship Automation – the system will place the order of a customer automatically to the supplier. There is no need for you to log in and place the order manually. This process will save you a lot of time.
• Video Ads Creator – once you have selected a product, you can use this tool to create an ad. You no longer need to hire someone online to do it for you. The advertising tool also includes recommended audiences that you can target.

Here is a sample product research page of Sell the Trend:

In addition to the product stats, you will see a chart of the orders. Here  is an example:

Sell the Trend Pros

• Free trial available
• Affordable pricing plans
• It has all the tools you need for dropshipping
• You can spy on stores

Sell the Trend Cons

• The limit is 5,000 products; you need to upgrade to import more

Sell the Trend is not just another product research tool. You can use it to spy on competitors, find upcoming trending products, create ads, and find suppliers. You can head on to the main page now and sign up for a free trial to test it and see how the product research process goes!

Best Dropshipping Product Research Tools for Amazon

2. Helium 10

Helium 10 is a product research tool for Amazon. It is an ideal tool if you want to dropship in Amazon, or if you want to find information on what products are hot on the platform.

Helium 10 Features

• Product Research – this tool shows you how products perform on Amazon, including their estimated monthly sales volume and revenue. This tool has a Chrome extension that you can install for ease of access. The Chrome extension automatically activates if you are viewing an Amazon product page.
• Keyword Research – use this tool to find out what keywords customers type on Amazon. If you know what people are looking for, you will also know what products to sell.
• Listing Optimization – this tool suggests how you should write your product title and product descriptions. The result is a possible boost in the search results.

Here is a sample of a product research result in Helium 10:

Helium 10 Pros

• Lots of tools to use
• The analytics dashboard is insightful
• You can run PPC campaigns

Helium 10 Cons

• The product research process only covers Amazon
• Too expensive

Helium 10 is an excellent choice if you want to dropship on the Amazon platform. However, it does not have links to supplier databases, so you would have to integrate another tool into your Amazon account for this purpose.

3. AMZScout

AMZScout is also a similar tool to Helium 10. It offers a complete toolset for listing and selling products on the Amazon platform.

AMZScout Features

• Product Database – this is the main tool that shows product supply, demand, competition, and other stats.
• Keyword Research – view the search volume for various keywords related to your niche or product. This tool will show you variations of words that people use to search for products. Words that have a high search volume have a high demand, which you can fulfill.
• Quick View – use this to compare products, their performance, stats, and other data. This product comparison tool will help you decide which product will perform better.

Here is a sample product research page from AMZScout.

AMZScout Pros

• It has a complete suite of product research tools to help you succeed in dropshipping
• You can find out what products people are looking for
• The tool makes it possible for you to optimize your listings

AMZScout Cons

• Expensive; the lowest monthly plan is $49.99

AMZScout is an alternative to Helium 10. What AMZScout does that makes it different is that it offers courses about Amazon arbitrage, which is just a fancy word for dropshipping.

Best Dropshipping Product Research Tools Based on Ads

4.  TikTok Ads

We can consider this platform as a free product research tool. TikTok Ads is where you can find all advertisements launched on the platform. With the information you see here, you will get an overview of what products TikTok users are receptive to, and which ones underperform in popularity and engagement.

TikTok Ads Features

• Search and Filter – you can type keywords related to your product search and use filters to narrow the results. You can filter the results by industry, ad format, position by number of likes, and ad language.
• Stats – each ad offers data for the number of likes, number of comments, shares, the CTR position, and budget. These numbers can help you decide if the product is worth your time selling or not.
• Performance – underneath the stats are more granular data points such as conversion, clicks, CVR, and CTR. There is a chart where you can see the performance of the Vido ad by the second.

Here is a sample TikTok Ad product research page:

TikTok Ads Pros

• You do not need to pay to use the tool
• The dashboard provides lots of data analytics
• You can view the shop of the seller and learn more about them

TikTok Ads Cons

• You will not know the actual sales data
• You can only view what is popular on TikTok but not on other platforms

In addition to all these, you can also view the ad objective of each campaign, such as traffic, reach, conversion, etc. The URL for the advertiser is also available. What you can do with this is to visit the site and see what they offer, like discounts and other promotions.

5.  PowerAd Spy

PowerAdSpy is a premier advertising spy tool that gives you access to multiple platforms. It is an excellent product research tool if you want to penetrate multiple sites. The goal is to find out what products resonate the most to the audience in different social media platforms, and then sell these products to the users.

PowerAdSpy Features

• Networks – you can investigate the following networks: Reddit, Quora, Google Search, YouTube, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and so much more.
• Search – you can use keywords for specific types of ads based on product niches. It is also possible to search based on domains, which means you can search ads based on the URL of a competitor.
• Filters – there are many filters you can use according to the information you want to see. Some examples are gender-wise, call-to-action, ad type, targeted country, ad category, and so much more.

Here is an example of a search result based on geo-targeting:

PowerAdSpy Pros

• There are many affordable options
• Coverage of multiple advertising networks
• Lots of filters to narrow your search

PowerAdSpy Cons

• It cannot provide sales data

A good practice when it comes to using PowerAdSpy is to first determine the sites you want to explore. Once done, you can purchase a three-day plan and do your research before your plan expires.

Best Product Research Tools Based on Supplier

6. SaleHoo

SaleHoo is a supplier directory that makes the product research process easy through their Market Research Labs. However, unlike other directories, the SaleHoo management has a department that vets or checks the credibility of each supplier who wants to offer their products to dropshippers.

SaleHoo Features

• Supplier Database – there are more than 8,000 suppliers in the directory that you can work with. Most of them are AliExpress vendors, which means you can get the products at a really low price. There are more than 1.6 million products on the database.
• Supplier Vetting – not all suppliers can sell their items here. They need to pass the requirements of SaleHoo. For dropshippers, this is a boon because you are not likely to deal with any unreliable supplier.
• Market Research Labs – the product research tool shows you the item price, suggested retail price, and potential profit of the product. It also has guidance on how many people are selling products, and who the suppliers are.

Here is how the product research looks:

SaleHoo Pros

• The tool provides product data analytics
• They offer a one-time payment for a lifetime membership
• There is a dropshipping course that will help you succeed

SaleHoo Cons

• There is no competitor analysis

SaleHoo also has a dropshipping program, which is different from their directory. The dropship program makes it possible for you to integrate SaleHoo with Shopify and then import products from AliExpress to your store.

7. Zik Analytics

Zik is a popular product research tool that covers eBay and Shopify. You can do competitor research, track sales, use eBay Enterprise tools, and also search for winning products in AliExpress.

Zik Analytics Features

• eBay Best-Selling Items – Zik provides data on the best-selling items on eBay. It is similar to the best-seller list of Amazon where you can see reviews, revenue, and sales volume.
• Dropshippers Only – you can filter your product search to “dropshippers only.” This way, all the results you see are dropshipping products only. If you find one that you like, you can start looking for a supplier, knowing that there is a demand for this product.
• Competitor Research – use this tool to spy on the top sellers on eBay and find out what they are selling, how much, and what their selling strategies are.

Here is a sample research result:

Zik Analytics Pros

• Coverage of two of the biggest e-commerce platforms
• You can try the program for as little as a dollar
• Lots of learning tools such as courses, podcasts, webinars, and blogs

Zik Analytics Cons

• You cannot import winning products to your store

Zik is highly useful if you want to sell on eBay, the best part of the tool is that you can see which items sell the most on the eBay platform (eBay does not provide this data publicly).

How to Choose a Dropshipping Product Research Tool

There are so many product research tools that can help you find winning products. Ultimately, you must decide on only one. But how? Below are some of the things you need to consider.

1. Features

Features refer to the things that you can do with the product research tool. It is a good idea to try the program before you commit to paying.

Some of the most important features that you must look for are:

• Database size – millions of products are better than a few thousand
• Stats – we have discussed this earlier; the tool must show sales stats, profitability, demand, competition level, etc.
• Search & Filters – you should be able to type what product you are looking for and drill down based on product characteristics.

There are many other features that dropshipping product research tools offer. At the bare minimum, we recommend that you pick one that has the three mentioned above.

2. Price

The price ranges for product research tools vary. It all depends on the features you get. At the very least, choose a tool that offers a trial period, such as Sell the Trend. Below is Sell the Trend’s price matrix.

You may find this price a bit higher than the typical $29 range for other tools. However, Sell the Trend is packed with features. In addition, it uses artificial intelligence that produces faster and more accurate data analysis for product research and recommendations.

For a difference of $3 monthly, you get more value for your money. To see Sell the Trend in action, you can sign up for a free trial, and use its features for 14 days.

3. Your Needs

Definitely, you also need to consider your needs if you do product research for dropshipping. For example, if you already have a store, then a store-builder is no longer a necessary aspect of the tool. If you do not have one yet, then you can look for a dropship product research tool that also has a store builder.

Business needs vary from one dropshipper to another. However, based on experience, there are several features that you will certainly find useful in the long run.

Here are some examples:

• Product importation – it is pretty much useless to pay for a product research tool if you cannot import the product to your store
• Intelligence – you need stats about the product that can tell how it is performing in the market
• Supplier – the tool must be able to redirect you to the supplier site or marketplace
• Support – look for a company that can provide support 24/7; you will never know when you might need help

It would help if you listed down the things you need from a product research tool. Once you get to review each of the tools mentioned here, you can countercheck if that tool offers what you need.

How to Use Sell the Trend Dropshipping Product Research Tool

Sell the Trend is so easy to use. Once you have logged in, click on the DASHBOARD link in the control panel.

Now, type the keyword for the product you are thinking of selling. Click the SEARCH button.

You will see the page below. You can already see products here, and you can click on one that catches your eye.

The other option you have is to filter your search. In this example, we will use the SHIPS FROM dropdown, and then choose a supplier whose items are physically located in the USA.

If you want to use more filters, click on the MORE FILTERS link at the right side of the SEARCH button. After selecting your filters, you will see some changes in the search results.

The next thing you need to do is click on a product image. Doing this will take you to the product data page. Here is a snapshot of the top:

The top section shows you all the quick stats you need about this product. The order statistics table at the right is equally important, as it tells you how much this product is in demand.

You can keep scrolling down to see a more detailed breakdown of the product details. Here are a few examples:

• Supplier lists
• Stores that carry the product and their URLs
• Facebook interest targeting (audience)
• Competition meter
• Insights about the product

Finally, you can either import this product to your store by clicking on the ADD TO STORE button at the top of the page or use the AI tool to generate an ad for it.

Types of the Best Product Research Tools

There are several types of product research tools you can choose from, and not all these operate in the same capacity or manner.  Below are the most common ones.

• Directory – a directory product research tool that has a list of suppliers, product prices, and suggested retail prices. A product research tool like this typically has no statistics or analytics feature.
• Advertising – these are product research tools that rely on product advertisements from various social media platforms. They do not provide you with links to suppliers or sales stats. What they do is show you how people react to ads, which you can use to measure customer engagement.
• Spy Tool – these are tools that spy on other dropshipping stores in Shopify, Amazon, Etsy, etc. They can provide you with sales stats, traffic stats, and other behind-the-scenes activities that your competitors do.

In addition to these three, there are aggregator tools that work similarly with directories. The big difference is that aggregator tools like Sell the Trend cover a wide range of information, and you can use this information to make business decisions.

For example, Sell the Trend has Nexus, an AI that learns what competitors are doing. The tool also studies how these competitors price products. In addition, it examines data points from various sellers, and you can access insights from this AI for your dropshipping store in more than seven million products in 83 niches.

FAQ: Best Product Research Tools for Dropshipping

What is a product research tool?

A product research tool is a program that provides you with data about products. These are databases that show information, so you do not have to do manual research.

What is the best product research tool for dropshipping?

The best product research tool for dropshipping is Sell the Trend. It was built to serve all the needs of a dropshipping business—from product research to store building to advertising to analytics and beyond.

What is the best product research method for dropshipping?

The best method is to use a data aggregator. A program like this gets real information about sales, demand, competition, and more.

How do I test my product for dropshipping?

To test your product physically, you need to order a sample. To test its performance, the only way to do it is to import it to your store, advertise it, and see how it goes.

How do I find successful dropshipping products?

You can use Sell The Trend’s TikTok Product Research Tool to find successful dropshipping products.

What are the research tools for dropshipping?

The best research tools for dropshipping are product research and advertisement research tools, including those that have a market demand trajectory. Combined, these tools can give you guidance on what profitable products to sell and how to sell them effectively.

How can we do product research?

With Sell the Trend, all you need to do is type a product keyword, use some filters, and then choose from what the database shows you.

How do I know what products are good for dropshipping?

Good products for dropshipping are those that have high demand, low competition, and high margins for profit. All these data are available with Sell the Trend’s product research tool.

Summary

What tool is best for your own dropshipping business? Success in dropshipping depends on the tools you use. It has to be a good product research tool. Most important of all, you can only generate revenue if you sell profitable products that have a high demand or interest. In this regard, a product research tool like Sell the Trend is a wise investment.

Of the several tools for product research found in this list, it is a good idea to try them all and take advantage of the free trial. This should give you exposure to the features they offer, and then you can decide which one fits your business situation perfectly.