Why you should build a dropshipping website?
A Dropshipping model business can provide you with several benefits such as below:
- You don’t have to invest in the inventory.
- You can easily sell thousands of products without worrying about their procurement.
- You can focus on marketing and sales.
- It allows you to work from anywhere & anytime.
Do you also want to build a dropshipping website?
Creating a drop shopping website is not a big deal these days. But if you are a newbie, you may be looking out for some guidance.
In this blog post, I have shared 6 steps for you to follow in order to develop a dropshipping store.
Let’s dive in.
#1 Select a niche
The first step to develop a dropshipping e-commerce store is to select the niche. What kind of products do you want to sell on your e-commerce store? Do you want to sell fashion products, gadgets, luxury products, household products, or something else?
How you should select a niche?
Here are a few tips for you to consider while selecting a niche for your dropshipping business:
- Think about the profit margin of your chosen products.
- Think about your own interest. It will be fun for you to sell those products that you really like and have an interest in.
- Try to choose standard products instead of customized ones.
- Choose those products that are in demand.
This is perhaps the most important step toward building a successful dropshipping store. Therefore you must put sufficient time and consideration to choose a niche.
Recommended post: 5 Things to know while building a dropshipping e-commerce store
#2 Perform a competition research
Before you step into the development of your eCommerce website, do thorough research on the competition who are selling products similar to your product niche.
If there are already a lot of competitors, it simply means that your chosen products are really in demand and you shouldn’t either face any challenges to grab your market share.
However, if you see that there are not many competitors, you may have to create a demand for your products before you could ask your potential customers to buy.
What other things you can check on your competitors’ websites?
- Which product(s) they focus more on?
- What are their primary marketing techniques? In other words, how they are promoting their business.
- Are they offering any combo packages or bundle discounts?
- What kind of offers & discounts do they provide to their customers?
Perhaps, it would be a great idea to share your competitors’ website details with your website developer so that he can understand your expectations in a better way.
#3 Select a web development platform
Once you have decided upon the product niche and have done enough research on the competition, the next step then is to select a web development platform.
Although there are several options for you to choose to create a website, you must prefer WordPress for a few reasons such as below:
- WordPress is free to use, being open-source.
- The cost to build a WordPress website is lower as compared to other CMS platforms.
- WordPress is user-friendly and easy-to-use for novice webmasters too.
- WordPress website development process is convenient & faster as compared to other CMS platforms.
- WordPress plugins are available either free of cost or at a nominal cost.
- WordPress themes will cost you less than $100 only.
- There is no shortage of WordPress developers. In other words, you can easily hire an affordable WordPress developer to build your website.
- WordPress websites are loved by search engines due to their optimized development architecture. You can also leverage a WordPress blog to boost the presence of your website on search engines.
- There are a few useful dropshipping plugins available for WordPress websites that you can use and import hundreds of products in just a few hours.
Now you have several reasons to choose WordPress for your dropshipping website development.
Recommended post: Why e-commerce & 6 reasons for you to choose WordPress to build your e-commerce website
#4 Hire a web developer
After you decide upon a web development platform, the next step is to find and hire a reliable web developer.
If you choose WordPress to build your dropshipping website, then you can start searching for an affordable yet professional WordPress developer.
If this is the first time that you are hiring a website developer, here is the list of a few essential qualities that your web developer must have:
- Your developer must know how to protect your website from different kinds of security threats.
- Your website developer must provide you with excellent support.
- Your WordPress developer must know how to make a website SEO-friendly.
- Your website developer must agree to handover you all the necessary credentials and information about your website.
- Your website developer must be able to check the performance of your website for various mobile phones and browsers.
Recommended post: 6 Responsibilities of a WordPress developer that you must know
#5 Arrange for a web hosting
The next step is to arrange for a web hosting package to host your dropshipping store. You may also seek your web developer’s assistance to choose a reliable yet affordable web hosting company.
Below are a few essential qualities that your web hosting server must have:
- 24/7 Support
- High configuration servers to ensure that your website always performs better.
- High-security tools/modules enabled.
- Affordable plans
- Provision of scalability
- 1-Click WordPress installation
- Control panel access
You may end up paying between $50 to $200 per annum for hosting your e-commerce store.
Recommended post: 7 Tips to choose a reliable yet affordable web hosting package for your WordPress website
#6 Test your website
Before you launch your dropshipping store finally, you must make sure to test it properly on different parameters.
Below are some of the important performance-related criteria that you must check your website for:
- Mobile responsiveness
- Browser compatibility
- The loading speed of all the webpages
- Checking & fixing broken links
- SEO tags implementation
- Integration of important trackers & scripts such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc.
- Validation of all the forms such as guest checkout, signup, etc.
Recommended post: 6 Important checklists for your new e-commerce website
