Forecasting is a critical part of any ecommerce business. After all, if you can’t predict future demand, how can you ensure you have the right products in stock?
There are a number of different techniques you can use to forecast demand, but ultimately, the goal is to create a model that accurately predicts how much of a given product will be sold in a given period of time.
The first step in any forecasting process is to gather data. This data can come from a variety of sources, including sales data, web analytics, customer surveys, and more. Once you have this data, you need to clean it and format it in a way that will be useful for your forecasting model.
Once you have your data ready, you can begin to build your forecasting model. There are a number of different statistical methods you can use for this, but the most popular methods are regression analysis and time-series analysis.
Once you have your model built, you need to validate it to make sure it is accurate. The best way to do this is to use it to predict demand for a period of time that you have already data for. This will allow you to see how accurate your model is and make any necessary adjustments.
If you feel like it’s too complicated and you are looking for an easy solution, try our Traxoft product voting app that allows you to test which products and future launches will have the most interest. Simply upload your product images and set up the voting period, ask your customers or website visitors to vote on the products they would buy. This way, you will be able to see which products are in demand and make better business decisions.