In 2018, the global dropshipping market was estimated to have raked in 111.28 billion dollars. With more stores entering the market, it looks like online dropshipping will continue to boom. However, for merchants entering this business, it's crucial to start slow and steady, acquiring a loyal customer base and scaling your business slowly. As a saturated market, you need to nail your marketing strategy to ensure that your dropshipping business is a success.
Having worked with dropshipping stores across the globe, we’ve been able to identify 8 must-have tactics when setting up your dropshipping business to be able to successfully capture sales and build your brand.
8 Best Practices to Set Up Your Online Dropshipping Business for Success
1. Brand yourself with unique colors and brand personality
Shoppers can buy your products from any other store so what would make them choose yours? One defining factor would be your branding. With a striking brand presence, you can make yourself the chosen dropshipping business for your target audience.
You can set up your branding with these easy steps:
- Define your target audience and the problem that you can solve for them
- Set up your brand personality that is, how you want to come across to shoppers
- Create your brand logo
- Identify your brand colors (and stick with it across all communication platforms and channels)
2. Prioritize your Shopify store design
Another way that shoppers will view you as a legit and quality brand is through your Shopify store design. Your store design is the first touchpoint to your brand and shoppers will form their impression of you through this first visit. So, when setting up your Shopify store design, you need to ensure that the design reflects who you are as a brand, from the theme you’ve chosen to the content you’ve written.
Our guide to Shopify store design for beginners is a great place to start. Alternatively, if you have a budget, you can hire a Shopify design expert to help you launch your dropshipping business with a store design that is sure to wow your shoppers.
3. Pick niche products for your dropshipping store
When curating your catalog, it’s crucial to maintain a product list that fits your USP and the problem that your brand hopes to solve. Many dropshipping stores make the mistake of selecting a large number of products that often end up being irrelevant to the brand.
By going niche and curating a small and relevant catalog, you can attract customers highly interested in these products and make them stay on your Shopify store for longer. These customers would see you as the one-stop solution for this one specific problem you are solving and continue to visit your store for this and recommend other shoppers too.
4. Use high-quality images
Your product images play a huge role when shoppers are making purchasing decisions. When setting up your product pages, ensure that you have high-quality and authentic-looking images for your products. If you have a small catalog, we suggest sourcing these products and capturing your product images yourself. This way, you can bring out your branding in these images and even be able to add product videos to show how to use the product.
When shooting your product images, ensure that you’ve taken these crucial product images:
- An image of the product in focus in front of a white background.
- Multiple shots of the difficult product angles.
- An image showing the size of the product next to a human.
- Show the product in context. For instance, if it’s a dress, show the dress worn by a model and styled with other accessories like a handbag or even a jacket.
5. Build credibility with user-generated content
You need to add indicators of your brand’s credibility on your storefront. Some of these visual cues include trust badges and reviews. However, another great way to add trust and make your brand come across as legit is with user-generated content.
Collect images from your existing customers through reviews and Instagram campaigns to use them on your dropshipping storefront. You can use these images across your Shopify store to show exactly how your product would look. Unlike polished and heavily edited images, user-generated content gives an authentic view of your products.
Here are tips for displaying user-generated content:
- Collect UGC from photo reviews and display these reviews on your product page.
- Run Instagram campaigns to get your shoppers to share pictures of them using your products.
- Share your UGC on social media platforms and tag the product featured.
- Once you’ve shared your UGC on Instagram, embed your Instagram feed on your storefront and let shoppers buy from your embedded feed via Cameo.
Also read: How to Add Credibility to Your Shopify Store
6. Offer a streamlined shipping and tracking experience
One feature that many dropshipping stores miss out on is providing a thorough shopping and tracking experience to shoppers. Online shoppers are anxious about losing money to a faceless storefront online and without any indication about the status of their order, they are less likely to order from you a second time if you don’t have a tracking system. With an order tracking link, your shoppers will feel much more comfortable, knowing that they can see exactly when the order will arrive and have the assurance that they will receive their order within a specific timeframe.
You can do this with apps like AfterShip which lets you provide a tracking link to shoppers so that they can track how long their package will take to arrive and view its last tracked status.
7. Provide personalized service
Good customer service is the best way to retain customers. 73% of customers fall in love with a brand and remain loyal because of friendly customer service reps. With a positive and thorough customer service, you can serve your shoppers better and ensure they continue interacting with your dropshipping store.
Provide a personalized service to your shoppers on your dropshipping store by setting up live chat. Use Tidio to enable live chat on your Shopify store and set up auto-responses so that shoppers can get instant replies to common questions they have.
The key to good customer service is ensuring that you are handling each customer query with care so that your shoppers have a satisfying experience on your Shopify store. This is especially important when you are just starting out.
8. Set up social media profiles and frequently post about your products
Before you start running ads, it’s best to grow your brand organically through social media posts. Create your social presence by sharing content and building an audience. Once you’ve set up and started posting on social media, you’ll find that shoppers you acquire via ads are more receptive to these ads because you’ve already built that presence and proven your credibility as a brand.
When setting up your social media, keep these best practices in mind:
- Don’t post generic images of your products on social media.
- Shoppers follow you on social media if you have something relevant to say. Share content around the problem you solve and provide free tips and advice to followers.
- Show how shoppers can use a specific product in different ways.
- Create videos to provide an interactive experience.
- Don’t come across as a robotic/indifferent brand. Instead, use your platform to build a relationship and talk passionately about your products.
Build a successful dropshipping business now!
We hope this helped you understand the crucial tactics you need in place to make your dropshipping Shopify store a success.
Since manufacturing products is off your plate, the most important details you need to manage for your dropshipping business is branding and marketing your Shopify store. How you come across as a brand online makes a huge difference in how well you capture new customers.
This is why you need to put thought and time into setting up a Shopify store design that matches your brand personality and makes customers perceive you as a high-quality brand. At XgenTech, our team of Shopify experts are well-versed in design trends and industry benchmarks to help you set up your store design. We work with you closely to plan and set up a consistent brand image on your storefront.
Reach out to us on info@xgentech.net and we’ll help you set up your Shopify store design!
