How to set up your dropshipping store with Shopify
Dropshipping is a flexible business model that is growing in use and popularity by ecommerce entrepreneurs in Europe. Essentially, dropshipping is a great way to penetrate an e-commerce market. With none or low costs for manufacturing, logistics, sourcing and inventory, dropshipping is considered an efficient business model for entrepreneurs to start their online businesses.
The use of dropshipping by business owners is not only time and cost efficient. There are advantages when it comes to finding potential products to sell through your ecommerce store. By using a supplier-portal you get access to hundreds of thousands of products that you may import to your ecommerce store with a few clicks. By doing so you save valuable time to be spent on promoting sales and growing your business.
There are many ecommerce platforms that support different applications that give you access to products for dropshipping. If you already have your ecommerce business set up, then you are probably already familiar with what kind of dropshipping applications that are supported by your platform provider.
However, if you plan to start a dropshipping business from zero, then you should choose an ecommerce platforms that give you the possibility to make use of some of the best dropshipping apps on the market.
Shopify is a platform that is already integrated with Droshis supplier portal for dropshipping. Through Droshi’s application you will not only get access to the biggest assortment of products for dropshipping in Europe. The service can also be used for free (with all Asian suppliers), allowing startups and smaller companies to start selling through dropshipping, without any initial investments. Choosing a good ecommerce platform from start will also save you a lot of time and money as your business grows.
This is a guest post provided by Skapawebbkraft.se. In this post we will take a closer look at Shopify, one of the most popular ecommerce platforms on the market today. Please visit the blog to read more about ecommerce platform reviews and related topics.
What is Shopify and why using this platform?
Shopify is one of the leading ecommerce platforms in the world today. Shopify is especially popular by smaller ecommerce owners and start ups. However, there are also plenty of internationally renowned companies with yearly revenues of millions of dollars that choose Shopify as their platform provider.
Some well known companies in the Shopify curriculum are: Tesla, Budweiser, Nestle and Red Bull. Until today Shopify has hosted more than half a million ecommerce stores and their market shares keep growing.
A complete range of services
The platform offers a complete range of services for ecommerce businesses. The good thing with choosing a service with everything at the same place is that the set up is easy to manage for the users.
Shopify provides web hosting, domain registration, customer support, SSL-certificates, themes and applications etc. In this way many things that are required in order to set up an ecommerce store can be dealt with at the same place. By choosing an ecommerce platform with a wide spread of services you will save valuable time since everything may be taken care of at the same place. There is no need to invent new solutions for your problems since there are standardized processes set up for all common customer needs.
On the contrary, by choosing a provider that offers a complete range of services your options will be limited. You will be bound to use their specific themes and applications. With a platform such as WooCommerce, for instance, you will have more free options to pick and choose services from a wider range of suppliers.
The good thing with Shopify is that the platforms has an open marketplace for apps. Independent developers can create and sell apps through the Shopify app store. In this way new apps and functions are constantly being innovated or upgraded, ensuring up to date functionality for the Shopify community. Visit the Shopify app store to read more about the functions offered for your specific needs and market.
As mentioned, Shopify is a perfect service for entrepreneurs and smaller businesses that want to set up their stores online with little up-front investments. One of the advantages with the platform is that you can try it out for free for 14 days before you decide whether you want to pay a monthly fee for the usage of their services.
The good thing with a free trial is not only for you to understand how the system is set up in terms of user friendliness, design and so on. By trying the platform you will also get the chance to discover potential problems that could be unique to your specific market that you didn’t think of before you tried it out. One such thing could be paying methods that may not be accepted by Shopify for your specific market.
For instance, Shopify is integrated with Klarna, which is one of the most popular payment methods for the Swedish and Scandinavian market. Here you can read more about how Shopify works for the Swedish market. In general Shopify works well for the European market but there could be limitations in services that are of importance for your specific market. For this reason, you better try the platform for free before you decide to pay for the service.
The platform supports most of the established payment gateways in Europe. You can also choose whatever language you want for your specific market. Even the admin panel can be set to some of the major European languages, allhough English works fine for most businesses.
Launch your dropshipping store through Shopify
To launch a dropshipping store through Shopify is probably one of the easiest ways to get your dropshipping business started. You don’t need any technical experience. Upon registration of your Shopify account you can download and install the Droshi-app. With a few clicks you will then be able to import a list with all the products you want to sell in your ecommerce store.
This is a great advantage in comparison to traditional retailing. Traditional retailers usually have a long and static product cycle. Not only do the products need to be purchased and stocked in the warehouse of the retailer but the administration of making the products ready to be sold is a time consuming and cost driven activity. Products must be registered, with images, product number, product information (size, origin, instructions etc.)
By importing a list of products through Droshi to your Shopify-store you will get all this work done in just a few clicks. If you want to stop selling a product or exchange it for a new product it is also done in almost no time.
So is this all? Just register an account, get registered with Droshi and then start selling?
Yes, almost. However, there are a few steps that need to be taken before you can start selling. So let’s take a closer look on how to get started with your dropshipping business.
The steps to be taken to build a dropshipping store
Shopify is a good tool that does not only provide you with good apps, themes and customer service.
Most of all, Shopify is easy to use. That is probably the major reason why many dropshipping businesses choose to use the platform. However, no matter if you choose to build your dropshipping business through Shopify or any other platform on the market, you will need to go through a few steps to get started.
You should define in what nisch and market you want to operate. Through Droshi you get access to hundreds of thousands of products. You need to focus on a specific assortment to start with.
Define what you want to sell might sound easy but it is not enough. You need to do research and find information that supports your business idea. In some cases you will have to modify your initial business idea. This is a natural process of making a business plan.
Check the trends of your products and nisch. A free tool you may use to understand more about how your nisch is Google trends. It is completely free to use and you will get knowledge of value for you determine whether your niche could work.
Check how people are searching for related keywords on Google. A great tool here is Google Keyword Planner. The more data you have the better. If people do not search for related products and Keywords for you nisch, then you are not likely to be successful. In this case you should reconsider or modify your business idea.
Define your market – Where do you want to sell and who is you customer?
Check out your competitors: What are your competitors selling? Why would you be more successful? There are plenty of tools available to structure this information in a way that will make it easy for you conclude opportunities and potential problems. Check out some of the most common tools used to analyze a market, like: SWOT and Porter’s 5 forces.
2. Find suppliers for your dropshipping business
Having a good product and nisch in mind is worth nothing unless you can find a supplier that can dropship the product to your customer. The price, the delivery time, customer service and so on must be good. Most of all you want to find a supplier for your market that is not used by any competitor.
The best way to find suppliers that can dropship products to your customers is to go through a supplier-portal for dropshipping. This is a critical step. By choosing the best service for your market you can find products and pricing that is competitive for you nische.
Some entrepreneurs do a big mistake here and sign up for programs that give them access to an assortment limited to the suppliers that are connected to AliExpress.
This is a bad way to start a dropshipping business. First of all it is common that such programs take out a fee for you to sell and dropship these articles to your customers. Secondly, to be successful you are better off choosing a platform that gives you access to not only the suppliers of AliExpress but to choose a service with more suppliers so you can find unique products for your market.
Droshi does not only provide you with the same articles as the assortment of AliExpress but without any extra costs. You can use Droshi’s services for free and dropship AliExpress-articles.
More importantly, Droshi gives you access to much more suppliers and products to choose from than any other option on the European market. If your intention is to sell on the european market, then dropshipping through Droshi is simply a supreme choice. You can use the service for free (for a big part of their assortment) which most other apps charge money for at the same time you get access to many more products for dropshipping than any other app can offer for the European market.
3. Create your own dropshipping store
There are many ecommerce platforms to choose from. Using Shopify is one option that gives you a big range of apps to choose from. The system is easy to use and Shopify provides you with everything you need in order to create your store by yourself. Shopify is also integrated with Droshi which makes it one of the best options for those who intend to gain competitive advantage through dropshipping. So let us take a closer look on what steps you need to take in order to set up your own dropshipping store with Shopify:
First of all you need to get a unique name for your business. Try to relate it to your nisch but don’t limit yourself. Even if you intend to dropship on a specific market your business might expand over time. For this reason, avoid names that only make sense in a specific language. You should also make sure the domain name is not taken. There are many ways to check the availability of a certain domain. One popular service is Namecheap. Don’t forget to check different top-level domains related to your business. (.com/.se/.net/.nu/.uk etc.) preferably you choose a domain name that is not taken by any top-domain that is related to your markets. You may buy your domain elsewhere and transfer it to your Shopify store but the easiest way is to register your domain with Shopify from start.
Register a Shopify account. If you are hesitating about what platform to choose, then you can test Shopify for free during 14 days.
The functionalities that you will get access to through the Basic package is enough for you to get started. There are a few free themes to choose from but you can also buy other themes with more specific designs. You can start by using a free theme and then upgrade to a more fancy theme when your business is starting to make money.
Get Droshi and start to import the products of your choice. Droshi has more than 400 000 products to choose from which can be overwhelming. Again, make sure you have a well defined strategy and nisch that you will be focusing on. You can start to use the free plan and upgrade later when your business starts to make money.
There are many smart Shopify apps and extensions that you can use in order to boost your dropshipping store. However start small and let your ecommerce business grow gradually. The point with dropshipping is that you won’t need to invest a lot of money to start selling products through your own ecommerce store.
Good luck!
Jacob, (guest writer Droshi)