Dropshipping is a low-risk business model that enables you to sell products to your customers without investing in products manufacturing, trading, or procurement.
If you want to set up & run an e-commerce store but don’t want to get into the trouble of products’ procurement, dropshipping is here for you. You don’t need to spend a single penny on the products before getting any order.
You upload the products from different e-commerce platforms like AliExpress, eBay, etc., and add some margin to each product as your profit.
You sell the products & receive payments online.
You buy the products from AliExpress and provide your customer’s shipping details for them to dispatch.
What are the advantages of a dropshipping business?
Below are some of the advantages that you get with a dropshipping e-commerce store:
You don’t need any investment in product procurement.
You can easily set up a store and start selling in just a few days.
You don’t need to worry about the products and you can just focus on marketing.
Dropshipping is definitely a great option for you to start your e-commerce business without worrying about the products & their deliveries.
But you still need to ensure that your dropshipping store has all the essential features that are required to run a successful online business.
In this blog post, I have shared 5 basic yet essential features that your dropshipping store must have.
Let’s dive in.
#1 Guest checkout
The guest checkout system allows your online shoppers to purchase the products from your dropshipping store without creating an account with our website.
Let’s face it. Not everybody is willing to put their time to create an account with any e-commerce website unless they get any special benefits.
Below are some of the major benefits that you get with guest checkout:
First-time users are not hesitant to checkout and place their orders.
The guest checkout option increases the conversion rate of your website.
Using guest checkout, your online shoppers can make their buying decision quickly.
A guest checkout form takes less time for the users to fill.
Guest checkout can help to lower down the abandonment rate of your online store.
Limited information and a lower level of commitment.
With so many benefits of a guest checkout system, you simply can’t afford to miss out on this feature. Therefore, you must ask your website developer to incorporate a guest checkout feature in your dropshipping store.
#2 Live chat
I rarely see a live chat feature on a dropshipping website.
Most of the dropshipping business owners think they just have to upload hundreds or thousands of products and the users will start buying them. No, that’s not the case at all.
You need to engage your customers with your brand in order to get business from them.
Before purchasing the products from your store, it’s very much likely that your potential buyers may have some queries to resolve.
A live chat feature is perhaps one of the effective yet affordable ways to provide excellent support to your online shoppers as well as customers.
Here are some of the great benefits of using a live chat feature with your dropshipping store:
A live chat enables your potential buyers to resolve their queries before they decide to buy from you.
A live chat option shows that you really care for your customers.
You can up-sell your products using live chat as a medium of direct communication with your users.
A live chat feature enhances the user experience on your website.
It helps your business to gain a competitive advantage because not everyone is doing it.
Live chat helps you to reduce your support cost.
Live chat gives you valuable insights into your customers’ behaviors.
You can get in touch with your potential buyers.
With so many benefits of using a live chat feature on your dropshipping website, I am sure you won’t want to take this advice lightly. Therefore, you can request your web developer to integrate a live chat option with your website.
#3 Social media
Another important thing that most of the dropshipping businesses lack is their social media presence.
A dropshipping business model definitely empowers you to build & run an e-commerce store cost-effectively, but you still need to create a buzz among the targeted audience.
Using social media platforms such as Facebook & Instagram, you can create your brand awareness and encourage your targeted customers to buy from you.
Getting your webpages shared on social media platforms also help to enhance your search engine rankings. All of the major search engines such as Google consider social signals as one of the important factors to rank a website.
How can your web developer help you to integrate social media with your online store?
Linking to Facebook Messenger from your website.
Including social media sharing buttons with each product.
Integrating social media with analytics to monitor the performance.
Displaying social proof from your social media websites.
#4 Multi-currency
One of the major benefits of running a dropshipping business is that you can sell your products worldwide because most of the sellers on AliExpress provide free shipping to all countries.
Now since you can cater to the customers of different countries, you can leverage a multi-currency feature on your e-commerce website so that your online shoppers can choose their desired currency and view all the products’ prices in their preferred currency.
Additionally, you can also ask your web developer to configure the IP-detection feature so that your website shows the default currency on your e-commerce store according to the IP of your users.
Integrating a multi-currency feature is not an expensive thing to do if you have developed your website using WordPress. There are several multi-currency plugins that you can install & configure on your website at an affordable cost.
Similarly, you can also integrate a multi-lingual plugin with your dropshipping store so that your online shoppers can choose their preferred language too.
#5 First order discount
In the case of a dropshipping business, you don’t have to spend your money on product procurement because you are selling the products of other suppliers. Therefore, you can give away some of your profit margins to your customers in the form of discounts.
A first-order discount is a great way to offer discounts to your online shoppers who will place their orders with your website for the first time.
Below are some of the great benefits of a ‘First Order Discount’:
You get more sales & new customers.
Your potential buyers get a reason to buy from you.
You get a competitive advantage.
It makes it easier for your new customers to make a buying decision quickly.
