At DropHippo we aim to completely automate your business but that’s not where it ends. As well as automating your orders etc we also are on live chat pretty much all of the time so you can speak to the founders of DropHippo rather than someone who doesn’t care about you.
Needless to say, we do not own or operate ANY online stores or do dropshipping ourselves as that would be a conflict of interest and a breach of your trust in us. We can state categorically that we do not run any stores or will compete with you unlike many AliExpress sellers and fulfilment agents who only care about getting more sales and will share your data and products with others.
If you are ever needing to reach out you can get us on live chat either in the app or by using the messenger plugin that is on our website chat as this comes straight to us.
We also have a ticketing system where any issues that you raise are kept and followed up on to ensure that there are no outstanding issues and any that are raised are dealt with speedily. On top of that we also are able to source products that are only viewable when you log in to our app – this is how our bigger sellers use DropHippo as it lets them scale to the moon without worrying that their product is well known and copied.
We only use express line shipping as standard so that your customers get the best service and fastest delivery possible. Once you do start to scale we can even bring your products to our USA or UK fulfilment centres for delivery starting from 2 days!
At DropHippo we understand that not everyone has funds in Stripe or PayPal straight away and even though you can pay using both these methods we can also accept payment using Payoneer or TransferWise too.
We aim to offer the complete 1 stop solution to your dropshipping business and we firmly believe that what we offer is easily the best in the field.
If you are new to Shopify setting up your store can seem like a daunting task however in reality it is actually quite easy to do and straightforward. Luckily Shopify have a great Help and Support section where they go through every step to set up your store. Check it out here https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup
When you are creating your product listing or funnel it’s simply not acceptable to use the generic description that you can see on AliExpress etc for your product sales copy. The most overlooked yet one of the most important parts of advertising is your sales page and we will explain this below.
Firstly, do you have clear product images for your product on your sales page? They can be images or video but they need to be clear and, if possible, without any watermarks or logos that contain supplier information. Luckily at DropHippo we provide clear images without any logos for you to use. Don’t be afraid to use pictures of customers using your product on the page in addition to reviews which we will explain a bit more below.
It is really important to have a clear description with key benefits of how your product can make your customers life easier. Don’t be afraid to be emotive and let your customer know how it can help them and provide examples of how it can help. Most of the typical products sold by dropshippers are impulse buys so you need a sales copy that will ensure that your customers buy from you.
Reviews. A good sales copy page should have reviews from your customers on there to inspire trust in your brand. If you don’t have reviews there are many apps out there that can import reviews for you even if you have never made a sale. Apps for Shopify that can import reviews are Loox and Opinew. We like Opinew as you can also import reviews from Amazon on there as it will be more than likely that your products are also being sold on Amazon by someone else. Whilst it is best to get reviews from your customers there’s no harm in importing reviews as the product will be the same.
Trust Badges. Something as simple as having a good trust badge that features your shipping times, payment provider seals etc are also good to have on your sales page to inspire trust. Be careful though as there is such a thing as too many trust badges and this can appear untrustworthy. It’s all about finding the balance of what is trustworthy and what isn’t.
One of the hardest tasks for dropshippers is finding that winning product that will change your life forever. Luckily there are a few paid apps that can help you with finding good products and we will expand on these below.
Firsly, there is ecomhunt.com which lists products, ad copy used and even links to the ads, store and how many stores are selling the product. It’s updated regularly and is a subscription based service.
Next we have our personal favourite – Ali Shark https://alishark.com/. Ali Shark is a tremendously powerful tool that will help you find winning products on AliExpress and Bangood with several other wholesale outlets to follow in the coming months. It lets you see sales, where the products were sold to and much, much more. There’s even a Chrome extension for your browser. It gets updated with new products every single day and is one of the best tools available on the market today. Check out a video on Ali Shark here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aee_A5KT71E
There’s also an amazing user community on Facebook where you can get help and ask for feature requests here https://www.facebook.com/groups/1027785937402282/
Google Trends is also a great way of finding our if your product or niche will work as they can show you historical and current trends for your search term.
The unavoidable part of dropshipping that hardly anyone speaks about is taxes. Whilst we are not by any means experts on this it is a very important part of running your dropshipping business. Each country where your business is registered will have different rules with regards to taxes but if you are a UK based company there are a few ground rules that you need to be aware of. The following applies to UK businesses only.
Firstly, if you are dropshipping to USA you do not need to charge taxes on each product as you physically are not touching the products. You will only need to pay taxes at your end of year accounts for profit and any wages drawn.
It is always best to speak to an accountant and one of the best in the UK that specialise in eCommerce are 3 wise bears based in London which you can find here https://www.3wisebears.co.uk/services/e-commerce-accountants/
Software: There’s lots of accounting software that can help you create your end of year accounts and examples include Xero, Freshbooks etc. These are the 2 biggest and easiest to use apps.
If you are not based in the UK and have problems with getting payment processors like Stripe, PayPal etc then your easiest way to fix this is to create a company based in the UK. It doesn’t matter if you do not stay in the UK as you can still create a company here.
Luckily there is a company that we work with that can do all this for you. Simply visit www.launchese.com/hippo to start the process or find out more. Hundreds of people have done this recently and it has let them get Stripe and PayPal up and running with a bank account based in the UK.
Another part of running a store is the inevitable PayPal disputes that will come your way. Some customers are unwilling to wait for their packages and whilst we do use priority shipping for all orders as standard there will always be the tiny amount of customers who will complain to PayPal.
What PayPal want to see is you working with the customer rather than just refund every dispute that is raised. An ideal solution is to upload tracking to each PayPal transaction and there are apps that can do this for you automatically.
First and foremost be kind and courteous when replying to any disputes and empathise with your customer. A little kindness can go a long way! If the dispute can be resolved in your favour then that is ideal as we have found that working with the customer before they raise a dispute can work best and avoid any PayPal account holds.
Speaking of PayPal account reservations and holds this is inevitable if you are scaling a winning product. Quite simply, PayPal will take an interest if your account is starting to see a significant increase in transactions and as it is their platform their rules will apply.
Unfortunately PayPal don’t publish the amounts that trigger account reservations and holds however if you work with them it can reduce the amount of funds that they hold. We estimate that processing over $30,000 over a 30 day rolling period in PayPal will cause them to look at your account. There are 2 different types of reservations – Collateral Reserve and Rolling Reserve. Collateral Reserve is when they hold a certain amount of money from you INDEFINITELY. Rolling Reserve is they release a percentage of your funds over X amount of days. The only people at PayPal that can assist with lowering reserves are called the PayPal Credit Review team so please make a note of their number when they call you as you will need it as they can’t be contacted by any other methods e.g. though the normal PayPal Resolution Centre or by calling the PayPal helpdesk telephone support
Disputes might have disastrous impacts on your business in general, and particularly on your Paypal account. Here are some tips you can use to reduce them as much as possible:
Have a GREAT support team: In fact, people get easily furious when their requests are not answered.
Have clear terms of service and refund policy to help your support team make the right choices when they receive customers’ claims.
Now if your support team is not doing the job the way it needs to be done, here’s a better alternative:
Step 1: Go to Settings
Step 2: Click on Selling tools
Step 3: Click on customer service message. This is where you can set a message your customers will see when they are on the dispute page. It is the last chance you have to reset trust and make them feel your business is legit before they file the dispute.
Step 4: Create an email address where you only receive dispute emails and prioritize their treatment. You can go for something like [email protected] and don’t forget to use alerts.
Find below an example of what your message should be like:
Title: Filling a dispute? Please hold on a second!
Message: “We are very sorry you have reached this point. If you are not satisfied, then neither are we. We sincerely apologize if you have not received any answer from our support team or if their answer did not meet your expectations. Please reach out at [email protected] and tell us what your claim is about. This is a very high priority email we dedicated to cases like yours so that your claims are resolved in the best and quickest possible manner. Please remember that you are more likely to be refunded if you inform us about the issues you encountered.”
The text above is indicative and you might need to adapt it to your business.
Now you can enjoy a healthier Paypal account and, hence, a healthier business. You’ll be surprised with the number of emails you’ll receive.
There are so many apps out there that help you it really can be a minefield to work out what is good and what isn’t so we will cover off a few below that can help your business flourish.
DropHippo – our one stop fulfilment and ordering app can completely automate the entire dropshipping process for you. We can source anything and we even have a built in live chat feature so you can reach out to us any time.
MultiPixel – another of our apps that can really make your business grow. This app is ideal for those of you who wish to ensure that your Pixels are kept clean as you can allocate each individual pixel to collections or products. This is ideal for larger niche stores like a pet store as you can assign one pixel to your cat products and a separate pixel to your dog products. It really makes life so much easier for you!
Ali Shark – this online app is easily the best option for you when it comes to product research as you can see lots of information about products and it also lets you see what products are trending so you can get the latest products.
Abandonment Protector – This app will automatically send emails to those customers who abandoned their cart as it lets you set up follow up emails with discounts etc. Best of all you need to set it up once and it will work in the background for you and has been proven to work.
LimeSpot – a fantastic Upsell app that will increase your Average Order Value
There are various methods how you can advertise your products including Facebook and Instagram ads as well as Google ads and Influencers.
We would recommend Facebook and Instagram ads if you are new to advertising as these are relatively easy to set up and you can monitor both in your Facebook Business Manager. For advertising on Facebook and Instagram you will need to ensure that your targeted audience is likely to buy your product so it is extremely important to conduct your research prior to launching any ads so that your ads are shown to the correct audience that are likely to buy.
Google ads are slightly more difficult to set up however don’t discount these as the rewards can be very good and bring lots of revenue if done correctly.
Over the past couple of years a lot of sellers have started to use Influencers for their product where you send your item to an influencer and they promote the product for you. This can be very lucrative but also expensive if you reach out to someone who has a lot of followers.
