If you have a brick and mortar store, you must have items on your shelves or no one will buy from you. But if you have an e-commerce business, you can sell items all day every day without ever having to touch them yourself. It’s called dropshipping.
If you’re not familiar with this term, dropshipping involves selling products in your online store that, instead of purchasing them beforehand, you don’t buy them until you have an actual sale. Then, you simply have the item shipped from the wholesaler or manufacturer directly to your customer.
This shipping method can save you a ton of money, reduce your storage needs, and enable you to keep your costs low. But how do you incorporate dropshipping into your e-commerce business?
Find Products You Can Sell
The first step is to find products that you can sell via dropshipping. When doing this, use a dropshipping provider that enables you to make your decisions based on solid data.
For instance, Oberlo allows you to search for items you can list on your site by providing information such as how many times that product has been imported, how many page views it has received, and how many orders have been made.
This site also uses a 5-star rating system for the products it offers, enabling you to pick the items that are the most liked.
Test Your New Products Online
Once you find the products you can sell via dropshipping, the next step is to test them on your e-commerce site to determine whether they’re a hit with your particular market.
Shopify shares that one way to do this is to ask your customers for feedback. Inquire not only about the products themselves, but also about the shipping process. Did they receive their item on time? Was it in a satisfactory condition?
Finding out this type of information up front can help you determine whether the products are up to your standards and whether the manufacturer or wholesaler is delivering your goods in a way that boosts your brand.
Measure Your Results
In addition to testing your new products, you’ll also want to keep track of your results so you know whether the items you’re selling via dropshipping are performing as well as you’d like.
SalesGravy indicates that a few of the metrics you’ll want to keep an eye on include:
- How many new customers are buying the products
- How many current customers are buying the products
- How many of these customers are also buying other things on your site
The more you know about how these dropshipping items are impacting your sales, the easier it is to make decisions about whether or not to continue selling them.
Make Changes if Necessary
In the event that the numbers aren’t where you want them to be for the dropshipping items you’ve added to your site, it may be necessary to make some changes.
This may involve changing the way you display the item on your site so it is more appealing or dropping that item completely and selecting something else instead. If you’re on the fence at all about what to do, ask your customers for their input.
People like to give their opinions, so you could do a social media post and ask your followers what they think about a particular item. Do they like it? If so, why? If not, why?
Use their input to make changes to your e-commerce product line so you’re more likely to purchase dropshipping items that have the best chance of having higher sales. This is the best case scenario for you and your customers both.
