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DropHippo Updates

Have questions about chosing an Agent in China?

Have questions about chosing an Agent in China? If so, read this. It is a bit of a long read but trust me, it is worth it.

I’ve seen a lot of posts containing screenshots of tracking numbers with fast delivery times but it does make me wonder what else is missing as I know from experience that relying on screenshots isn’t always the best thing to do. Sure, I can post up screenshots of deliveries being super fast but that doesn’t give you the full picture when it comes to choosing a reliable Agent to ship your goods from China. In fact I would say that it is only a small part of the bigger picture that is DropShipping.

You might see from some of those pics that USA delivery is only 4 days but is that being entirely truthful? In short it isn’t which I will explain here. If you see these super low delivery times from USPS then one of two things is happening;
1: Your agent is using a virtual warehouse so they send to USA using DHL etc and once it arrives in USA they get opened then sent on to your final customers. This is a great thing so your customers don’t see anything coming from China but on the flip side neither do you as we know that it will take a few days to source and ship your items to the virtual warehouse in USA. Suddenly your 6 day delivery actually becomes close to 2 weeks but it can still be a good customer experience.
2: Of course there are some agents like us at DropHippo who are lucky to have an actual warehouse in USA where we can arrange for your winning products to be sent to for delivery within as little as 48 hours.

I have also seen more and more posts about some competitors who it looks like have caused issues with sending the wrong product and going silent when things go wrong. For us this is what sets us apart from 99% of other Agents as we are native English speakers and we also have Arabic and French support available on our live chat. What’s that you say – “Live Chat”? YES! we do have live chat on our website (www.old.drophippo.com) where you can reach out to us at any time and we also have a Slack support where larger sellers have their own private Slack channel where not just our staff but the directors of DropHippo actively participate.

So, what happens when the proverbial crap hits the fan? This is where we are massively different to 99% of other Agents in that we will always be open and transparent with you even at the cost to ourselves. Take the recent COVID issues that were impacting delivery times, especially anything that went through LAX during the height of the Pandemic. We ended up refunding a lot of customers as there was no movement for packages but even though this did cost us several thousand dollars we know, and most importantly the Store Owners who we work with know, that finding a reliable and trustworthy Agent can be worth it’s weight in gold.

I know that this is a long post but I want to speak about 2 additional very important points that shouldn’t be forgotten about as this can kill your business. The first one is communication. We believe that it is one of the most important things to communicate with your customers (in our case Store Owners) as a long term partnership relies on clear and effective communication. An example of where we differ from most others is that we fully quality check every item that you sell to ensure that it is as described and most importantly, works as intended. We had one customer who reached out to us with over 2500 orders recently and asked us to source the product for them as their existing Agent let them down. As soon as we ordered a sample to our warehouse we quickly identified that the item didn’t meet our strict QC and what the Store Owner was selling was in fact a lot of trash. What did we do? We told him straight that the item would lead to massive chargebacks down the line and provided a video to him so that he could make the decision. In the end he refunded the orders which cost both him a lot of money on advertising and us with money in potential profit for an item that we refused to send. So yeah, it’s all fine having an Agent on the ground in China working for you but what is the point if their only concern is about getting as much money off of you as they can?

My final point is closely related to the Communications point I made above and that is Trust. How do you know that the Agent you are using doesn’t run their own stores or have an arrangement with someone else who does? At DropHippo we had 2 pretty successful Shopify stores but closed both and used the profits to create the ultimate Agent experience with DropHippo. The one thing that caused us to re-evaluate and launch DropHippo was when we were scaling a product and the Agent we used started to come up with all sorts of excuses due to a quality control issue, well lack of any quality control really. That is when both Stefan and myself realised that there was a gap in the market for a trustworthy sourcing and fulfilment Agent and this is when DropHippo was born.

Thanks for reading, I know that it isn’t a short post but why gamble your future and your business on an unreliable Agent? Any questions please post below in the comments and we will do our best to answer 🙂

Categories
Product Research

What do successful stores have in common?

We have been looking back at the last 20 months that DropHippo has been running and noticed that we have shipped over 100,000 orders, over 8 figures in stores revenue and hundreds of customers. We are very proud of these numbers as we know it is still only the beginning of the DropHippo journey and, as we come into the 2nd half of 2020, we are confident we will continue to grow each month and help more stores scale in confidence with us.

As you all know, we have all been in lockdown these last few months so, with the permission of our customers, we took the opportunity to have a deeper look at some of our biggest customers stores and we noticed right away that a high percent of them actually run in a very similar way. All stores that we looked at have done over $100k in revenue with us so we know that they understand Ecommerce and are running a very tight ship.

Unique Design

One of the 1st things we can across was that most stores did not look like the majority of “normal” Dropshipping stores you see on FB or beyond every day. With these very well designed stores they are able to stand out from the crowd and ensure they don’t just look like the last 100 online stores most customers have seen on a daily basis. This ensures not only that they are unique but also look like brand so they can easily take to the next level.

Product Pages

SALES COPY, SALES COPY, SALES COPY. This is one of the main features that sets these stores apart from others. With a well written and carefully thought out sales copy they ensure when a customer lands on their sales page that they are able to not only get all information need for them to make a decision on buying the product there and then but they also highlight exactly how the product can enhance there life or solve an issue they never knew they had. We have to say that some of the sales copy we have seen on these stores even impressed us and we cannot stress enough how important it is to have great sales copy on your store and not just for the product you are driving ads to. Put yourself in the shoes of a customer – would you buy from a website that does not have compelling sales copy?

High Quality Product Images

Ensuring you show the product in the best light having well made pictures and videos are a must. Most we know buy the product themselves and will then have videos and pictures taken of them by a professional videographer or photographer. Having the product in your own hands also lets you see the quality and be able to write better copy about it. If they don’t buy it, they do request some more images from us which, if we have, we are more than happy to provide but nothing beats having the product in your own hands.

Split Testing

A/B split testing is a must. We all say we do but most never do it and that is testing many different angles for your sales page. This can be as simple as changing the sales copy or using a collection of different images. By doing this you ensure you are getting the maximum out of your sales page as well as freshening up your ads. By also aligning your ads to what is on your sales page this will give the buyer a better journey through your sales funnel.

Know Your Numbers

One of the most important parts of running a business is knowing your numbers. Knowing what your breakeven point is is essential when running paid ads to your store. By knowing your numbers, you can run more effective paid advertising campaigns ensuring you get the most out of your adsepnd. When you don’t know your numbers, you can easily end up running at a loss very quickly which I have seen many times in my time in this business. There are a few different apps you can use to do this but nothing beats good old spreadsheet to do this. Keeping a good profit and loss sheet and updating it daily will also stand you well if you come to sell your store in the future.

Customer Service

We all don’t like this task but it is one of the most important parts of running an online business and that is customer service. This is a key part of any business but it is especially important in this sector due to being online and it being to easy for customers to be able to leave negative reviews. Ensure your customer support team are well trained and have clear guides or processes to follow for different customer enquiries. Also make sure someone is following up to any disputes you receive to ensure you keep your Payment processors in good standing. By making videos and PDF or word docs for your staff will help them be more confident when replying to customers.

Always Testing

TEST, TEST, TEST. In this business it is definitely a numbers game. The more you test the more chance you have of hitting winners consistently. By always ensuring you have new launches lined up weekly it will ensure you are able to find successful products. When you find a winning product the last thing you want to do is stop testing and only be running ads for that one product. Keep testing to ensure when one campaign slows down you have another one or two to take its place.

Solid Supply Chain

The reason these stores can scale to massive numbers is they have a solid supply chain in place. This is why they use DropHippo. With us they are able to relax and concentrate on other parts of the business and let us run the sourcing and logistics for all their stores ensuring that they have a transparent and trusting supplier.

Yes there are many other factors to take into account for a successful 6-7 figure online store but we found that after looking at many of our customers stores the above steps are common on all stores.

Categories
Product Descriptions

Shipping updates and more…

Hey everyone, I hope you and your families are safe, healthy and well after what was a difficult set of circumstances for everyone due to the Covid Pandemic. The last 3 months have been a test for us all. From health, family, business and now adjusting to a new “normal” until the virus has been eradicated. We have some great news about the shipping and features of the app to share with you all. We are now seeing a big difference in delivery times in most countries, though some are still struggling to work through the backlog of orders (Canada and Australia Customs were backlogged due to the sheer amount of orders and less staff) we are seeing things get back to normal now thankfully. Below I have listed a select few countries we are seeing a huge difference in delivery times.

As we move into the second half of 2020 we have hopefully seen the worst of the Covid Pandemic and we are doing some big upgrades to our application. We are adding what we think is essential to be able to make your life easier but we have also taken action and made some changes due to your valued feedback from our recent surveys. The main difference in the app that you will see in the next couple of weeks will be the removal of having to accept manual orders as our app will automatically pull and sync orders that you would like us to fulfill. Now you can pay in the app for orders that you have made so no more exporting order sheets! This will save a massive amount of time, both for us and your staff, and will ensure that tracking is automatically updated and orders fulfilled in your store. We are also proud to announce that we are Payoneer VIP partners and can accept payments to our Payoneer account if that suits you better. If you would like to know more about this please reply to this email and we will tell you more.

Stay Safe everyone. ⁠
⁠
Kevin & Stefan⁠
DropHippo⁠

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