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Product Descriptions

How to create and grow a profitable store

You’re Fed up with your 9-5 job and you’re seriously thinking of launching your dropshipping business to ensure your financial independence? It is time for you to make goals of your dreams and step towards their achievement. The good news is that you neither need to invest too much money, nor to seek help from experts. And with more and more users shopping online, you have no excuses to delay your entrepreneurship plans.

To help you start, we created this blog post where we share with you the best tips you can use when creating your store, starting from the platform and sourcing choices and ending with the decision-making.

 

 

How to create your online store?

Before you start thinking of what website builder you’ll need to choose, you should decide first what to sell. Things are easier when you already have a niche you’re passionate about. You’ll only need to focus on the products you’ll sell within your niche, and that users are more likely to buy. Click here to learn more about how to find winning products.

Now that you made your choices, you can move to the next step and start creating your online store. The best way to build it is by using ecommerce platforms. These are software solutions that are available online and which help you build your store with almost no IT skills requirements. You’ll only need an innovative idea, a laptop and a good internet connection.

There are plenty of ecommerce platforms on the web. However, the best amongst them and the one we would highly recommend for its reliability, ease of use and large community is the following:

  • Shopify: A complete ecommerce platform where you can easily create your website, customize your store and manage your different business processes (inventory, payments, shipping…). The good news is that you can run your business from anywhere as long as you have good internet connection. In fact, the platform supports multiple languages and payment gateways.

Shopify offers a 14 days trial for free with no credit card required, and you can choose the pricing plan that suits most your business by the end of the 14 days.

After you sign for Shopify, you’ll need to decide about the pricing plan you’ll go for, a basic one will be good as you’re a beginner. You’ll then need to get a domain name (Shopify offers its services for 10USD to 20USD per year), then pick a suitable ecommerce template and personalize it, add your products to your website and finally set up your payment methods and shipping settings. Don’t forget to preview your store and test it before you publish it.

 

How to best source your products?

There is a various choice online, but before you decide what directory you’ll opt for, consider the following criteria:

  • Make sure that the supplier you choose is trustworthy and that the products they offer are of a good quality. Read other customers’ reviews to decide.

  • Pay attention to products diversity the supplier you chose offers. If you’d like to sell large variety of products, your supplier needs to have a large inventory at his disposal.

  • Don’t ignore your supplier’s return policies. In fact, running a business means also that you’ll probably have to deal with return issues. So, make sure your supplier’s procedures are in line with your business strategy.

  • Opt for the supplier who has the shortest delivery time. The sooner your customers receive their orders, the better for all.

Remember that your supplier is your business partner. Hence, building a good relationship with him is a must.

Drophippo proudly responds to all the criteria mentioned above and even more. Click here to discover why we are the ones to choose to best source your products.

 

How to best take decisions?

Your business growth is closely tied to your decision making. Thus, being careful when acting is a must. Fortunately, Google puts at your disposal its web analytics service to help you take your decisions based on factual data rather than making choices based on assumptions, while planning your growth strategy. In fact, thanks to Google Analytics, you can easily track your store’s traffic and know how many users have visited it, where they are from and how do they behave while on it.

Find here the complete guide Google created to help you better exploit its web analytics service. Note that you need to have a basic HTML knowledge to use it. If not, let your webmaster do the job.

Besides, signing for Shopify means you automatically have access to their Shopify Analytics. This service provides you with an overview dashboard, a live view, key financial reports and acquisition, behavior and marketing reports. You can access more reports if you upgrade your pricing plan. For instance, the overview dashboard provides you with the following metrics: Total sales, online store sessions, returning customer rate, online store conversion rate, average order value and total orders.

 

5 common mistakes to avoid

  • Thinking that all you need is to create a store. There’s too much work to do before, when and after you create it if your aim is a sustainable business.

  • Selling bad-quality products to cut the prices. Disappointing customers will only have disastrous consequences.

  • Not using metrics to make decisions is a huge mistake. If your assumption worked once, it surely won’t always.

  • Not setting a relevant marketing strategy and integrate a good social media plan to drive traffic.

  • Having an online presence with no SEO strategy. It’s like sailing in the ocean with no destination.

 

As a summary, to create and grow a profitable store, choose Shopify as your website builder and take advantage of its easy-to-use features and functionalities. Allow Drophippo to take care of the sourcing part, we have a various choice of good quality products, we replace or refund if the product is defective and we have short delivery time. Finally, Use Shopify Analytics and Google Analytics to make all your decisions based on factual data not on assumptions. These tips are given to you by our former dropshippers at Drophippo based on their fruitful six years of experience, so make sure you take them all into account.

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Product Descriptions Product Research

Best ways to market your dropshipping products

If it has been a while since you launched your Dropshipping business and it’s still struggling to take off, then you surely need to reconsider your marketing strategy, assuming you initially have one. If not, then waste no more time and make of it your focus for the next coming days.

In fact, with the numerous marketing channels at your disposal, you might find it difficult to choose the ones that are likely to work for your business, especially as what successfully worked for others might not have the same results for you. Hence, it is essential that you carefully plan your promotional strategy to drive traffic to your store and consequently boost your sales. Fortunately, most of the available digital channels are affordable, and you don’t need to hire an expert to use them.

In this article, we are going to outline three online promotional channels that are essential to your businesses success:

 

Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC Marketing)

These are a set of marketing channels for which you can start with low budgets and only pay when users view or click on your advertising posts. It is a method you’d choose if you’d like customers to know about your product in the short term. It is available on all social media platforms and Google offers its services as well. So, as an advertiser, you create your ad and you set a budget, then you launch the promotion. Targeting options depend on the purpose of your promotional campaign and the channel you use. For instance, your targeting options are keywords if you use Google, and interests if you rather opt for Instagram or Facebook. The promotional post appears on the top search results in the first page of Google’s search engine while it appears on the users’ news feed in Facebook and Instagram. Using those channels doesn’t require an experts help as each one has clear guidelines explaining how to set your promotional campaigns.

Here are some tips on how to use each one of the PPC channels:

  • Facebook: Promoting your Dropshipping business can be done in two ways through this channel. It’s either you use your personal account, in which you can get free traffic thanks to the relevant content you create and post on your account, or share in various communities related to the niche you’re working in. Or create a business page where you most of the time post interesting and engaging content, and rarely share promotional posts. In fact, too much advertising can have negative impact too.

  • Instagram: This channel, owned by Facebook, counts over a billion users and offers a huge base of potential customers. To promote your business using Instagram, you need to start by posting relevant and unique content. Then, you can think of creating giveaways where you invite people to interact in return of a reward. You also might look for cooperation with influencers who operate in your niche. Finally, automated tools that interact – like or comment – with other users’ posts might help to attract attention to your account. Remember that it is necessary that you create a professional account before you start any promotional campaign.

  • Google AdWords: It is undeniably one of the most powerful marketing channels. In fact, the first thing that comes to a users mind when they want information about a product they need is Google. Appearing on top of the search results – whether in the form of simple text ads or in one of shopping ads with the image of the product and the price mentioned – will certainly help increasing traffic to your store and consequently your sales. Don’t neglect the step of keyword research to have a clear idea of the terms users look for.

Here’s a piece of advice you should consider before you start your PPC marketing strategy in social media: you need to well-feed your profiles with accurate and relevant content to catch your visitors attention and keep them interested and coming back for more.

 

Search Engine Optimization

This is not a marketing method that we would advise you to use if your aim is making a quick profit. It is indeed the slowest one you can use for your business promotion and it requires patience to see the fruits of your labor. Besides, with Amazon spending its billions of dollars budgets on advertising and huge marketing teams to appear on the top results for any product a user might type into Google search engine, having good search results seems to be impossible. However, you need to use it anyway if you would like to build a long-lasting business. Start by learning SEO basics and think of creating a blog where you share content with keywords that are related to your niche. Again, it will take some time for your content to be detected for some keywords, but don’t give up or try to take shortcuts. Be patient and remember to keep SEO in mind while writing product descriptions, blog and social media posts, titles etc, and if you decide to create a website, make sure that it’s SEO friendly and can easily be scanned by search engines.

 

Email Marketing

Emailing is another efficient marketing method that amazingly contributes to increase online sales if used correctly. You first need to expand your list of subscribers. For this, you can use pop-ups to offer discounts or free samples to users who land on your blog or on your store. Once you have created your list of subscribers, you should think of the way you’ll write your emails so that customers get interested and they don’t end up in the Spam folder. In fact, simple messages proposing offers to buy items are unlikely to draw attention. Consequently, writing attention-grabbing emails is a must! Here are some tips that will certainly help you:

  • Choose a simple but appealing subject, users should easily understand your message and feel it is important that they read your email.

  • Start your email with accurate and relevant information and show it along with the subject line.

  • Pay attention to the words your use for your emails. They should be convincing and call users to action.

  • Design your emails in a pleasant way, users are very attentive to the finest of details.

 

Hippo’s top tips

  • Add your happy customers’ testimonials, ratings and reviews to your store. This is a great method to build trust!

  • Retarget potential customers. In fact, most of the users who land in your store won’t buy on their first visit.

  • Users see blogs as a reliable source of information. Start one in which your share content that is related to your niche and use it to drive traffic to your store.

  • Join Facebook groups that are related to your niche and share interesting and relevant posts to catch attention.

  • Work with influencers to reach large fanbases and drive traffic to your store.

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DropHippo Updates Product Descriptions Product Releases Product Research

How to find potential winning products for your Dropshipping business

Have you decided to start your Dropshipping business but confused what products you should choose to sell, especially if you are new to Dropshipping and don’t have the funds that will allow you to invest in high-priced software tools?

The best solution you need to make a final decision on what products to launch is to spend some time on doing product research, but keep in mind that it is extremely important that your research ends with a good product-market fit to maximize sales.

To help you with your research and make your job easier we’ll help explain the following areas to help and guide you on your journey:

  • What makes a winning product?

  • Why is it essential to conduct product research?

  • How do you best conduct product research?

  • Drophippo’s Special tips to always find winning products

 

What makes a winning product?

Traditionally large retail stores spend huge amounts on research specialists to help them understand their customer and have large, dedicated budgets at their disposal . It’s undeniable that this way of doing business had positive results in the vast majority of cases, but it didn’t prevent in so many others from over-evaluating or under-evaluating the real value of a product.

Nowadays, thanks to technology and the internet, turning ideas into marketable products or services has become accessible and affordable to everyone no matter how small your budget is. So, what makes a marketable and winning product?

Understanding how the product you want to sell will benefit your potential customer should be at the heart of your concerns. In fact, it needs to meet at least one of the following criteria:

  • Having distinctive attributes: the product you choose to sell needs to attract attention with unique features.

  • Suggesting a product that would appeal to more potential customers.

  • Proposing a solution to a problem. Selling a product that solves an issue always leads to good results.

  • Selling a high demanded product at a cheaper price. Reducing your costs increases your chances of having a winning product.

  • Being easy-to-use: if the user guide of your product is complicated to understand and follow, try instructional video ads instead.

  • Making noticeable changes: the customer should notice the impact of using your product and see the difference its use makes, don’t be scared to explain the benefits to them.

  • Offering the same product as competition but with more functions.

  • Having actual customers’ testimonials on your sales page will strengthen your sites credibility.

 

Why is it essential to conduct product research?

Before publishing any product on your store, it is essential that you conduct research to answer these questions:

  • Does the product have chances to be successful?

  • What is the best strategy you can use to sell it?

Besides, proceeding to product research helps with evaluating your idea, identifying potential issues and making sure the possibilities the product offers meet your customers’ needs. In fact, it is the only way you can avoid costly mistakes and find the right process to adopt that will set you apart from competition and at the same time meet your customers needs.

 

How do you best conduct product research?

The first phase of your product research is a preparatory phase and it should be conducted in line with the following criteria:

  • Look for items that are durable and easy to ship. Avoid oversized, perishable and fragile products.

  • Make sure the product you think of is available in your dropshipper’s warehouse.

  • The price should be set in a manner that prevents your business from profitability problems and costly expenses. In other words, think of a product that is neither too cheap nor too expensive.

When it comes to the second phase, the in-depth one, the first question that comes to mind is: how to identify the best niche?

As a first step, think of having a look at Amazon and Aliexpress best-selling products, even if you’re not using the latter as a supplier as it will help you to choose the niche that is more likely to generate sales, or confirm it if it’s already saturated. Clicking on the product page will bring more information about how the item is doing as far as orders and customer reviews are concerned.

Your research can also be done straight into stores that offer items from the same niche as the one you’re thinking of on Shopify. Tap “.myshopify.com + your niche” in Google and you are redirected to your potential competitors stores.

While looking through items that are best-selling, you also identify your potential competitors and thus have access to valuable information about their offerings and how they communicate about their items. In other words, it’s possible for you to spy on them and all you need to do to get all the information you need about them is to ask Google. Even better, if you’d like to go further, you might shop secretly from their stores to know what behavior they have towards their customers after the purchase has been completed. This will also open up their email marketing to you too!

Social Media can also help you limit the choices you have and you can uncover trending products thanks to Hashtags. Use https://www.hashtagsforlikes.co/ to search for trending hashtags in the industry or niche that you’re interested in. Then you can look for posts using the hashtags you found in different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram etc. Think also of checking out groups and pages in Facebook for insights about what interests your potential audience, focus on the ones with posts generating a lot of engagement and don’t forget to keep the hashtags you used for your research to reuse them for your marketing campaigns.

While doing your research on Instagram, look also for influencers in the niche you’re interested in and see how they market the items and how the audience is reacting to their posts.

Pinterest can also be a good place to source insights. Use keywords to search for pins and look at the comments users left about them. You’ll need to use keywords because otherwise the result of your research will only be in the interest areas you have chosen in the beginning.

 

Drophippo’s special tips to always find winning products

Drophippo was created by former Dropshippers who went through almost every method and apps related to product research, and here are the three tools we find to be essential that will help you to find winning products:

  • Google trends: Google trends is an online free tool that was created by Google to allow users to see how many times a keyword has been researched over a determined period. Dropshippers use it to evaluate a product’s evolution and see if its popularity is rising or decreasing. It is an easy-to-use tool as all you need to do is to type the search term, the name of your niche, and interpret the results that come out in the form of graphs and maps. The shape of the graphs gives you an idea about the evolution of users’ research for your chosen niche and the maps will guide you to your potential markets.

  • Alishark: Alishark is a great spy tool for any Dropshipper who would like to quickly find a winning product to promote, at a good price. It’s quick and easy-to-use, the data it brings is reliable and comes from different sources and the tool offers good customer support and is regularly updated. To use it, type your product idea into the search bar, then use the filter feature to adjust the results according to your criteria. You’ll need by then to track the results (likes, sales statistics, shares…) before checking details about the item, including the price, on Aliexpress page. By the end of your research, you can upload the item to your Shopify store if the results suit you.

  • EcomHunt: This is another tool that will help you save time you would spend on researching for winning products and will let you focus on things that matter more for your Dropshipping business. It updates all its data, including winning products, profit, links, engagements, analytics, Facebook ads etc on a daily basis and all the job is done by experts. Thanks to its features, the tool allows its users to immediately start selling items they choose on their stores.

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New Entrepreneur’s Guide to Dropshipping

Dropshipping is certainly a term you have heard of as you are looking for ideas to create your own online business. If you are curious to know more about this popular business model, read on and find between the lines of this article the answers to the following questions:
  • What is dropshipping?
  • Is dropshipping beneficial as a business?
  • Why Drophippo is the dropshipper you need to opt for?
  • How to integrate Drophippo?
  • Extra tips for beginners

 

What’s dropshipping?

Running a store without having to hold an inventory is now possible thanks to dropshipping business model. In fact, it is a process that allows vendors to ship their products directly to their clients from the warehouse of a third-party supplier. In other words, as a vendor, you will never need to package, store or ship the products you sell.
The schemes bellow explain more the difference between a normal business model and the dropshipping one:
Thus, starting a dropshipping business with limited funds is feasable as you, as a vendor, don’t need to handle and stock goods you sell. However, it is not a process you can opt for to quickly get rich. To build a successful business, you need to use dropshipping  in the right way and follow the different tips you will find in this guide.

 

Is dropshipping beneficial as a business?

As mentioned before, dropshipping is about running a store without having to carry an inventory and that is the first benefit that this business model has, freeing the business from costs that are related to orders’ preparation, packaging and shipping processes and allowing your business to reach areas where it is practically impossible to ship because of your location’s limitation. Thus, your business can be based anywhere and you still can reach customers all over the world.
Moreover, you only need a website to start your business. Costs linked to holding a retail location are not needed, your products offer can be wider than it would be if you had to store goods you buy to resell, and selling items that are difficult to store, such as perishable products or large ones, is easier.
Another benefit of dropshipping is that it helps preventing logistical problems. Headaches that are linked to shortages or overstocks are no more of your business, and you are not exposed to the risks of changing trends that cause some items to unexpectedly fall out of favor.
Finally, the most important benefit of dropshipping business model is that you only have to buy products when your customers do. This brings the front costs of your business to zero as you neither have to invest your resources on buying a large number of items to benefit from the wholesale pricing, nor you have to pay for their storage.

 

Why Drophippo is the dropshipper you need to opt for?

First of all, Drophippo doesn’t order from Aliexpress, sources directly from suppliers and checks their items’ quality in accordance with its standards to ensure your customers’ satisfaction.
Moreover, when using Drophippo, you only deal with one supplier who understands your needs and pain points, and who really cares about your business and its success as it is run by former dropshippers who have been through all dropshipping issues during several years.
In addition to that, Drophippo collaborators are available 7 days a week in chat you can find within Drophippo app (fully free to use) and who you can easily reach for your claims in case of damages. Drophippo assumes its responsibilities and unquestionably replaces or refunds in such cases. All you need to do is to send a picture of the damaged item. Also, your invoices are downloadable from the app and providing documentation for your end of year taxes or any other payment is easy.
Another reason Drophippo is the business partner you need is that they have a fulfilment center in the USA from where American customers are shipped using Fedex or USPS tracking. Hence, your customers are comforted as they won’t need to deal with Chinese tracking sites knowing that their orders are in the safe hands of reputable companies with names they recognize and trust. Having a fulfilment center in the USA also allowed Drophippo to reduce time delivery takes. In fact, items are shipped the next working day from the day of orders and customers receive them in few days later. The longest time delivery might take at the very most is two weeks, this only happens if the ordered items are not available in the USA fulfilment center and are sourced from China. In case of scaling a product, Drophippo holds stock for you within the USA fulfilment center for free, who else can do that?
Orders from the rest of the world are likely shipped from China but only from a trustworthy distribution center that ensures fast track shipping to your customers’ countries. Items are then surely dispatched fast as their working relationship with the postal service is excellent.
You can discover many more advantages that Drophippo has by trying it yourself. The app takes control of sourcing, dispatching and updating tracking as soon as the items are delivered. All you need to do is to pay for your orders and focus on your sales campaigns.

 

How to integrate Drophippo?

Watch the videos below to learn more about Drophippo and how to integrate it.

 

 

Extra tips for beginners

As a beginner, you can follow the tips bellow to walk steadily towards success in your dropshipping business:
  • Make sure the products you choose to sell are passion products. This is the first thing to think about as it may either drive your business to success or to failure. In fact, people are more likely to buy items related to activities they are passionate about, and their passion will certainly lead to a considerable raise in sales and customer loyalty.
  • Think of logistics before you choose the items you’ll sell and keep in mind the risks that dropshipping business can cause when shipping. Light and durable goods are always a good idea, on the contrary of heavy and perishable ones.
  • Make a good presentation of your items as they’re likely to be sold by other vendors. Generic descriptions are not recommended as they are likely to have negative impact on your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and thus on your sales.
  • Start your business with Drophippo and benefit from all the advantages it offers (explained above).
Maintain a good vendor-dropshipper relationship. Your dropshipper is your business partner and you need to build a relationship that is based on good communication, trust and mutual respect in order for both of you to achieve satisfying results as far as sales are concerned.