Five Steps to Building A Successful Online Dropshipping Business

An online Dropshipping business? More like a new land of opportunity.

It’s one of the many innovations for 21^st century businesses. From the creation of the online businesses to the first eCommerce platform, and now this.

Dropshipping is one of the most popular eCommerce models existing today. Discounting other factors, dropshipping’s major rise to fame is due to its target demographic. 

The millennials and Gen Z-ers are heavily influenced by the medium mostly because you need to be internet savvy to succeed in dropshipping. 

Another reason for this is because it involves little financial capital to get started with.

Little to no investment and handsome returns. It truly is a land of opportunity. But how much of that translates to practicality?

This post will help you understand the ways you, as an entrepreneur, can get started with running a successful eCommerce dropshipping business in no time.

Before we begin, let’s discuss what Dropshipping is?

Dropshipping involves a Dropshipping business purchasing certain products from a supplier or a direct manufacturer, who then fulfills the order. 

Seeing as how you’re doing the purchasing only; you don’t have to worry about the costs incurred in fulfilling the order. When you don’t have that problem, you can focus on more customer-centric tasks like customer acquisition.

With Dropshipping, all you need is hard work. Yes, while you won’t have to worry about financial woes, the only thing you need to do is be consistent.

#1 – Selecting a niche

When you’re running an online dropshipping business, what niche you’re working on matters a lot. You need to be solely focused on making sure that you don’t deviate from the niche unless need be. Just remember that you need to have a passion for the niche.

You see, scaling up an eCommerce business is not easy. You need to be consistent in your efforts to scale correctly. If that’s not the case, you’re preparing yourself for failure.

Before you select your niche, you need to consider the following:

Profit-orientation: 

Ideally, the products you select for your eCommerce store should be priced competitively. When dropshipping, you’re not handling any inventory, so the amount of work for a $10 product would be the same as a $1000 one. Because of this, it’s better to focus on the product that gives out better returns at the end of the day.

Shipping costs:

The product you select shouldn’t come with the burden of high shipping costs. If these costs are too high, you’re going to lose the customer. Now, what if your product has higher costs? In that case, you should absorb the shipping costs on your end by providing free shipping to your customers.

Your target demographic:

If you’re looking to quickly drive traffic to your website, you need to select a demographic that focuses on impulse buying with a disposable income. You see, if you focus on selling a product that requires further decision-making, you’re going to have to be patient. If you’re not that type of person, you can always focus on the impulse consumer.

Search terms:

Google Keyword Planner is your best friend in this regard. Finding out trends, keywords, and competition for your website can be a game-changer for your brand. The goal of this is to see which products are being searched for and competed against. If the products you’re looking to sell have no search value, you’re going to be dead in the water.

Create a brand:

With Dropshipping, you can sell someone else’s product as your own. That’s the simple workflow. You can add more value to that by rebranding those products and selling them in custom packaging and give the product a unique look.

Uniqueness:

There are universal products, and there are unique products. To get the most out of your dropshipping store, you need to focus on the second category of products. This way, you attract more customers to your store.

#2 – Performing Competitor Research

When done right, Dropshipping is a business that promises significant returns but also makes you compete against the giants of the eCommerce game. Everyone is online, especially today, and you need to have a strategy present to ensure that you’re competing effectively. Now having a product with little or no competition in the digital world isn’t going to cut it. At the very least, you need to have a product that helps you compete at the basic level.

Selling to a crowd that doesn’t want your product isn’t going to cut it. Ideally, you should look for a product that has at least some level of demand so you can establish a sustainable business model.

#3 – Secure a supplier.

Like with an eCommerce store, getting access to the right supplier is extremely important. It can potentially make or break your business.

Communication, the location of the supplier, and their responsiveness are three things you need to consider diligently. For example, you land on a supplier and you find that they’re not that responsive or communicative to your queries, you need to move on.

Your ideal goal should be to select a supplier that checks all the three marks on your list. As questions and see how responsive they are to your queries. Here’s one place where you can’t compromise. Make sure you’re set 100% on the supplier. If not, you’ll face problems down the road.

Besides reading this, you should also look at other sources and eCommerce blogs where they talk about finding the right supplier.

#4 – Build your eCommerce website.

Before you start your online Dropshipping business, you need to have a web presence. Nowadays, it’s easy to create an eCommerce store. 

There are plenty of eCommerce platforms available that can help you take your store to the next level. You can use solutions like Shopify or WooCommerce to set up your store easily. These solutions provide significant freedom in creating a web presence that stands out.

Now, you can create a web presence through those websites. But to stand ahead of the crowd, you need a customized or an efficiently built eCommerce website.

The benefit of having such a web presence is that it allows you to improve the user experience and gain more traffic to your website.

#5 – Create a customer acquisition plan

Once you’ve developed a website, it’s time you move on to the customer acquisition strategy for your online dropshipping business. How are you going to get your customers? There are plenty of ways you can start with your customer acquisition plan. If you’re in a hurry though, there are paid options for you to gain more customers.

Unlike the organic option, they allow you to gain customers from the outset. This allows you to generate sales quickly and effectively. With all the competition going around, this is a good option to avail. However, if you feel that your niche doesn’t have competition, you could go for the organic option.

Now, when you have the audience in your store, it’s time you play the long game. Search Engine Optimization and Email Marketing are the best tools for that. You need to keep your users engaged as much as possible. When you offer discounts, coupons, and giveaways to your customers, the higher are the chances of improving your conversion rates. 

Final words:

Dropshipping is a great way to get started, there’s no doubt about that. There are plenty of strategies and tactics you can use to ensure that your business is working effectively.

Once you’ve set up a business, it’s time you start to optimize it. For that, you need to track everything from the sales your business is making. Google Analytics is the way to go in that manner. Through setting goals and managing things effectively, you can get a handsome return on investment for your business.

Lastly, you need to constantly focus on seeing more marketing options for your business. Try your hand at different strategies and techniques to ensure that you know where and when you need to optimize your campaigns and strategies.