How to Set Up a Dropshipping Store

Choosing the Right Platform for Dropshipping

If you’re thinking about setting up a dropshipping store but you have no idea where to start, the first step is choosing the perfect platform to open up shop.

The most popular options are;

• Shopify

• WooComerce

• Amazon, and

• eBay

The options may be overwhelming, but some key factors must be considered. The platform you use should be easy to use and manage, promote your growth, have constant service available whenever needed, and the obvious, support dropshipping plugins.

Amazon: offers lots of analytics tools but in turn has lots of policies to follow, so it may not be the best place to start.

eBay: has tons of organic traffic but they both have really high competition.

Shopify: makes it easy to get started, with a user-friendly platform and a selection of pre-filled pages, but it can become costly. Its hosting of many top dropshipping stores makes the price seem worth it.

WooCommerce: The WooCommerce plugin for WordPress is free to use and sees the most abundant amount of dropshipping stores. Both Shopify and WooCommerce are highly popular and easy to use, as well as provide ample support for you to get started, but Shopify has spectacular analytics and management tools as well as freedom in designing your brand.

Selecting a Domain for Your Dropshipping Store

Selecting a domain name is an essential part of your dropshipping journey. The importance of your domain name is significant, as it impacts branding and is the first impression people have of your shop. Your domain name should not only represent your brand, but be relevant, short, and memorable so you are easy to find again and hard to forget.

A memorable name will keep people coming back. Choose a domain name that is on theme with your brand and relevant to your shop and the items marketed, but make sure it's simple and clever. A long name with hyphens or numbers is harder to remember and less pleasing for consumers. As for the domain itself, .com is the most popular route, but .shop can also see a lot of traffic and be just as memorable.

Selling on Shopify defaults to having a Shopify domain, your-store.myshopify.com, and you can change the Shopify domain once, but the best route is buying your own domain name. Having your own domain name is more trusted among consumers and easier to remember, presenting as your-store.com instead. Adding your personal domain name to platforms like Shopify is very simple and will be what consumers remember. Keep in mind that once you’ve bought your own custom domain name, it cannot be changed once it's registered. You can buy a new one or wait for the registration period to end, but changing your domain would cause confusion for consumers who already remember you.

Designing Your Dropshipping Website

Website design is one of the most important parts of having a successful dropshipping shop. Representing your brand and theme through design ensures your shop is memorable and appealing, and being user-friendly and easy to navigate is a great way to have consistent sales. Users make immediate judgments of your brand based on the website design.

Glorify is a great design tool to aid you in the process of creating your website. With tons of available template bundles and an easy-to-understand design process, customizing your website will be a breeze. Pick a template and brand it with your color theme, fonts, and other design aspects you want to include. Glorify is a fast and efficient way to easily create the perfect shop for your dropshipping prospects.

The first step in conceptualizing your website design is to match your theme and aesthetic to the products you are selling. Incorporate a color scheme and design elements that reflect both the products and your target audience’s aesthetic. Once you have an overall matching brand and website theme, pay close attention to user-friendliness.

Little details such as a “continue shopping” button, recommending “similar items”, and “guest checkout” options during checkout can keep a consumer browsing for longer and ensure they don’t feel forced to sign up for anything. Having your website optimized for mobile is important too, as well as adding a search bar for easy access to finding your products. The landing page, or home page, is equally as important. Consumers want to see your products displayed alongside product information, and many prefer easy-to-read bulleted lists.

Optimizing Your Dropshipping Store for Conversions

The most important analytic you should pay attention to is your conversion rate. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your shop that buy a product. There are many ways to optimize your store to gain conversions, mainly using tactics that include things consumers like to see.

Here are some of the best ways to build trust with your customers and encourage purchases.

• Consumer reviews: when customers can read reviews from other people who have purchased a product, they are more likely to feel confident in their own purchase decision.

• Return Policies: A lenient return policy can help to reduce the risk associated with making a purchase. This is because customers know that they can return the product if they are not satisfied with it. This can be a major factor in a customer's decision to make a purchase.

• High-Quality Images: Having an abundance of high-quality images of your products to properly showcase them will help consumers envision having your products and increase conversions. Clear and detailed product descriptions, fast shipping, special offers, and offering multiple purchase options also encourage trust and conversion rates.

It’s also important to incorporate trust logos and security seals so your consumers are satisfied with the safety of their information. Your brand is important in getting conversions too! Targeting a certain niche with your branding to promote relevant items will help with building a reputation within that niche.

Setting Up Payment Gateways and Shipping Options

Choosing the right payment options:

Putting together a diverse range of payment options for your consumers is good for your conversion rates, but there are a lot of different ways to set them up. Payment gateways allow you to receive payments from customers with the help of third-party payment processors such as PayPal. These processors do the authorizations involved in transactions to verify funds and send them to you. In considering payment gateways, it's best to consider ease for the user and payment times, as well as fees for the service.

• PayPal is the most popular, as it supports most major credit cards. You can choose between external gateways that redirect users to a different website for payment processing, or direct gateways, which allows payment directly in your store.

• Direct gateways are the consumer's preferred method. From there, once you’ve chosen which payment gateway services to use, you set up merchant accounts and integrate it into your payment screen on your website, which is typically streamlined by the platform you use to create your shop.

✲ Be sure to display what kinds of payment methods are accepted, like Visa, Mastercard, etc, so your consumers know if they can pay.

Calculating shipping:

Shipping can get quite confusing, but there are ways shipping is typically handled.

• Firstly, you can have free shipping and include estimated shipping costs in the product price, which is a fairly simple way to calculate shipping if you’ve learned your supplier’s rates.

• The second option is a slightly riskier one, flat rate shipping. This means you charge the same shipping cost regardless of weight and other package information, but this can sometimes leave you at a loss with heavier items.

• Thirdly, you can charge whatever your supplier charges, but in such a competitive space this doesn’t always appeal to consumers.

Adding Products and Inventory Management

There are many trusted suppliers for dropshipping shops, but building your own relationships with those suppliers is important. It’s fairly easy to add products to your shop as long as you have obtained product information from your suppliers as well as high-quality images. Once you establish your product niche, you can find suppliers from Aliexpress and other wholesale providers. Services like Aliexpress also detail the availability of their shipping times and where they can ship to, which is also something to consider when looking for wholesale suppliers of your products.

Even though you aren’t in charge of the supplier’s stock, inventory management is still something to keep track of. Sync data from your suppliers to your online store to manage product information and stock properly. Work with suppliers to stay up to date on product availability and set up inventory minimums to ensure a certain amount of stock is always available. There are also many services available to help streamline inventory management. Keep track of trends to know what is popular and relevant and to help you prepare for possible increase or decrease in the demand for certain products.

Conclusion

When looking into how to set up a dropshipping store, there are many key factors to consider. It all starts with choosing a platform that works for you. Establishing your brand and theme early makes the design process with Glorify and product searching with Aliexpress move a lot faster. Setting up your dropshipping shop can take as little as a week with the right services helping you along the way. There will be a lot of fees and such at first, but don’t worry, dropshipping will become profitable if you give it some time.

Figuring out which payment methods to include and optimizing your store for conversions are important steps that will take some time and research, but the profit will make it more than worth it in the end. There is a lot of calculation involved in determining your shipping method, but ultimately it comes down to whatever you are most comfortable with.

Start your dropshipping journey today and set out to make that profit! Dropshipping is becoming insanely popular, so the competition can seem overwhelming, but with a good brand theme and determination, your conversion rates are bound to be good. Getting started with services like Shopify to set up your shop, Glorify to quickly and easily design your shop, payment gateway services like Paypal, and Aliexpress for wholesale products all make your journey easier than it sounds.