Shopify dropshipping lessons – Boost your Shopify sales!

Are you planning to open an online store, but don’t know where to start, what to sell, or have limited initial resources? Then this is the perfect post for you to read! We will explain the process of creating, developing and managing a Shopify  dropshipping store so that you can get the most out of it. Let’s get started!

What is dropshipping?

So, what exactly is dropshipping, and how does it work? When we talk about online dropshipping stores, we talk about those stores that do not keep the products they are selling in stock. Instead, they have several third-party suppliers that have those products in stock, and when a customer buys something from the store, the store automatically places the same order to the supplier.

As you can see, this method is perfect for new beginners because you do not have to invest much money. You only need to pay for the store creation, making it a low-risk business model. Not only that, but it is a great way to test out some products and see how well they sell before taking the next big step of creating a store with physical stock.

Dropshipping allows you to have the first contact with the eCommerce environment and will let you learn a lot about managing and developing an eCommerce store. If you want to try the experience of owning an eCommerce store without any risk at all, we really recommend that you try dropshipping!

Pros & Cons of a Dropshipping

Now that we know what dropshipping is, let’s talk about some of the pros and cons of this business model. 

Pros: 

• A low initial investment: since you don’t have to purchase the products you will be selling and keep them in stock, the costs are really low.
• Choose the products you want to sell at any time: all you have to do is to find a supplier that sells the product you want to sell and add it to your store. You are not bound to sell the products you have previously purchased and can test out different options.
• Easy to manage: since there are useful apps for anything you will need from finding dropshipping suppliers to getting ads on Google to promote your store and get more sales.

Not everything is that great, though. There are some cons that we also have to take into consideration…

Cons:

• The lack of customization capacity on the final product: basically, the product is as your supplier sends it.
• You don’t have to invest a lot of money… But you will have low margins if you want to keep competitive prices for the products you are selling.
• If there’s any kind of error during the whole process (wrong product, damaged product, etc.)… You will have to take full responsibility for it, even when it is not your fault.

How do I create a dropshipping store with Shopify?

You have decided to give dropshipping a try and want to open a store yourself, but you are probably wondering now what the steps are that you should take now. Let us show you a little guide of what you should be doing step by step:

First of all, conduct exhaustive product research. Check what kind of products are selling well and whether or not too many competitors in the market. A good idea is trying to find different niches because if you sell something too general there will also be a lot of competitors. Instead, if you specialize in a certain category of products you will be able to reach more customers inside of that niche.

Tools that can help you find products that are trending:

• Google trends: one of my favorite tools and really useful. It will show you the trends of different products and how they evolved during a certain time period. You can also segment it by country. We totally recommend it!
• Google keyword planner: available once you have created a Google Ads account and it will show you the monthly searches on Google for the selected keywords. This way you can check if there is a good number of people looking for certain products.
• Clever Ads keyword planner: an alternative to the previous one, as in order to get all the volumes and metrics in the Google Ads keyword search engine, you will be required to have an account with spend. This keyword planner, however, is powerful and easy.

Once you have decided which products you will be selling, it is time to find the suppliers for these products. There is a lot of supplier information on the internet so you shouldn’t have any problem finding them. The most common scenario for the new Shopify users is to use Aliexpress as their main supplier because they offer some advantages:

• There’s a specific app on Shopify called Oberlo that will make your life easier and help you save a lot of time. Oberlo can import the products from Aliexpress directly to your store without having to edit them one by one. In short words, you will have your store operative and working in almost no time!
• Aliexpress has a reasonable worldwide shipping time and cost, which are two of the main metrics that people check before buying something from a store.
• There’s a huge variety of products, whatever you are looking for, it is probably already on Aliexpress.

After choosing the products we are going to sell and the suppliers that we are going to work with, it’s time to create a Shopify store. Start by customizing your store with an awesome theme. Here are some of our recommendations:

• If you are planning to sell electronics products you should check the “Supply” theme. It is an Amazon-inspired theme that will look really nice for your store!

 

• If you have decided to sell sports-related products, then “Venture” is definitely an option for you. It has a really simple and clean design that can help you improve the conversion rate of your store. 

 

If you want to read more about Shopify themes don’t forget to check our “Top 5 Best Shopify Free Themes”

After completing all the previous steps, your store should be operative and ready to start selling online.

Now it is time to think about…

• Bringing traffic to your store: there are several ways to do this, such as organic traffic, paid traffic, social media traffic, direct traffic, and referral traffic
• Converting the traffic you are bringing: this is really important because if your store is not designed or prepared to convert, it won’t matter how good the traffic is that you are bringing. Check out more tips about how to optimize your eCommerce conversion rate. 
• Keeping the clients that have already bought from you: converting new clients is way more expensive than convincing previous customers to buy again from you! Give them a reason to keep buying from you.

 

 

If you want more information about how to sell online check out this related post about how to sell online

Extra tip: have you had a chance to explore the PMAX campaigns initiated by Google and Microsoft? They’re certainly not to be overlooked!