Ecwid has partnered with a service called Dropshipp.io, which allows you to easily add cool new products to your online store from different third-party suppliers. All you need to do is install the Dropshipp app into your Ecwid store and select the products you like — and your online store is ready to be launched!
This is called dropshipping, and the best part about it is that you don’t need to worry about raising sufficient funds, renting a warehouse, stocking up on your inventory, or even shipping out the products — Dropshipp suppliers will take care of it for you.
In this blog post, we will talk about who this kind business suits best and what the easiest way is to get started.
Is Dropshipping for Me?
Dropshipping is probably the easiest way to start a business today, as you only need a computer and internet access to become an entrepreneur.
It doesn’t matter where you are located, how old you are, or whether or not you have any previous experience selling online — dropshipping provides a quick and accessible way to generate an income and fulfill your dreams of establishing a successful online business.
If you’d like to use the Dropshipp app, you’ll need an Ecwid online store. You can either fill your store entirely with dropshipped products or upload them in addition to your own products that are already in your store.
Let’s say you have had an online store selling women’s dresses for quite some time. Your business is going well, but sometimes you feel like you want to surprise your customers with new products more often or you would like to increase your store’s average order value.
Dropshipping might be the fastest and easiest way to do so – think about adding a new Accessories section to your store and fill it with scarves, bags, jewelry, and belts to go with the dresses you sell.
Another example for you — you’ve tried selling, say, stuff for fishing, but you later realized that this might be too narrow of a niche or you weren’t much into exploring it further.
Easy! Just remove the products you have and choose something else — Dropshipp gives you the freedom to experiment with different products, product descriptions, amount of markup, etc. to test what works best for you and your customers.
How to Set Up Dropshipp
The app is free (available on all Ecwid premium plans), and installing it takes just a couple minutes. Make sure you already have an Ecwid store, then go to Ecwid Control Panel → Apps and search for Dropshipp App.
Let’s quickly go over the Settings to make sure your store is all ready to go right from the start:
- Currency is consistent with the store currency you set in Ecwid. If you would like to change the currency, go to Ecwid Settings → General → Regional Settings:
- Store name is also set in your Ecwid account.
- Markup. You can add any markup you choose. For example, if the price of the product in Dropshipp is $2, and you add a 50% markup, then you’ll be selling the product in your store for $3 with a $1 profit.
- Order confirmation can be automatic or manual. With automatic confirmation, all orders will be fulfilled automatically once they come in. If you would like to check and approve orders before passing them on to suppliers, you can change this setting to manual.
- Default shipping phone number — usually, dropshippers put in their own number for shipping purposes.
- From the list of Countries choose the target countries where most of your customers are from or where you plan to advertise your store. It is important to choose the right countries, as shipping to certain countries may be unavailable for some suppliers.
- Profit threshold is a profit margin below which your product price can’t fall. For example, if your product selling price is $100 and you set your profit threshold to 30%, then in case the Dropshipp merchant raises the same product’s price to $70, you will receive a notification that your profit margin may fall below 30%. This can only happen if you disconnect the products from Dropshipp by setting the product price manually in your Ecwid store.
- Stop-loss point — this setting is similar to the previous one, with one difference: upon reaching the value you set here, the product will be hidden from your store. Similarly to the Profit threshold, the situation where changes in the product price by supplier may become dangerous is only possible if you set the product price manually rather than use the Markup setting discussed above.
- Out of stock threshold. Sometimes supplier products may go out of stock. If you want to avoid selling a product that’s no longer available, set the minimum stock amount. When that amount is reached, the product will be hidden from your store automatically.
- Delivery address — normally, dropshippers choose all orders to be shipped directly to their customers’ addresses. In case you would like to have the orders shipped to your warehouse first, choose "Shop warehouse". Note, however, that this means you will need to forward all orders to your customers yourself.
- Default availability of products — we recommend to set this to "Enabled" so that all the products you add from Dropshipp to your Ecwid store will appear there automatically.
- Default Ecwid Category — set the name of the category in your store to which you want to add Dropshipp products.
How Do I Choose Products to Dropship?
Enough has been said about choosing the right niche for your store — it is up to you whether you decide to sell something you are passionate about, something that is a recent trend, or whether you want to make your store a marketplace with lots of different product categories.
Once you’ve installed Dropshipp, you’ll find that it contains thousands of products to choose from. This is definitely an advantage, as Dropshipp aggregates products from multiple suppliers to make sure you have a full range of products available to you. This really helps to simplify product selection.
Even if some suppliers are out of stock, you are still likely to be able to find the products you are looking for.
You won’t ever need to remember or keep track of which supplier you purchased any particular product from — fulfilment process is entirely automatic, and you won’t ever need to communicate with suppliers.
To get some inspiration about stocking up on new products, check our recommended products with ratings and amounts sold. You can also browse by category or a specific keyword and add as many products to your store as you like.
How Do I Grow My Dropshipping Business?
Dropshipping is like any other online business — it needs traffic to grow. In other words, once you’ve set up your shiny new online store, you’d better move to its marketing.
On the Ecwid blog, you can find out simple marketing strategies that you can use. We won’t go into much detail about how to promote your store, but we do want to assure you that even products with markup can sell very well if you present them right.
If you want to grab your audience’s attention, you’ll need cleanly edited, emotionally engaging copy. You may notice that some of the descriptions you find in Dropshipp aren’t exactly optimized for your store language.
That’s why you need to make sure you work on the content of your store by re-writing product descriptions. Also, if you made any test orders with Dropshipp, take your own pictures and add them to your products as well to make your products more appealing.
How Do I Provide Great Customer Experience With Dropshipping?
Some things about dropshipping may be out of your control — possible supplier mistakes or items lost during shipping — so you have to focus on what you can do for your customers rather than what you can’t.
Shipping times may be tricky. Internationally shipped items take longer to arrive, and you need to make sure you set your customer expectations right. Include a section with shipping times into your store FAQ and answer questions about shipping honestly — usually, when informed properly, customers will be willing to wait.
In the rare case that the item never arrived or arrived broken — contact Dropshipp.io Customer Support to have the matter solved.
The "Contact us" link is in the footer of your Dropshipp account
We will get in touch with our supplier and find a suitable solution, depending on the situation.
We at Dropshipp hand-pick only the most reliable suppliers based on their experience as well as the service they can provide, and we personally know each one of them. If any of our suppliers do not meet our expectations, we will remove their products from our platform.
Make sure you are answering customer emails within a few hours at most or, even better, install live chat software for your website. While for some cases, you can only take care of them with our help, simple questions like general shipping times, store after-sales policy, or payment methods on your website are yours to answer.
For the customer, buying from a store that uses dropshipping is technically the same process they go through each time they purchase anything online. There won’t be any difference between the products you uploaded yourself or those you added from Dropshipp.
Since you don’t own or ship the products yourself, it is important to make the shopping experience for your customer seamless — with great customer support. You act as a middleman between suppliers and customers, and it is your task to give customers peace of mind while we take care of their orders.
Give It a Shot
Dropshipping comes in handy when you just want to try selling online or when you feel like the store that you’ve built ages ago needs a makeover. One of the best things about dropshipping is that operation costs won’t scale up when your business starts to grow and you will basically be able to do most of the work yourself.
Your store built with Dropshipp may be your side business or become your primary source of income — up to you! Dropshipping gives you the freedom to learn as you go with fewer risks and to adapt your store to meet the changing demands of your customers. Put in the necessary time and effort, be patient, and success will be your reward.