Dropshipping is a business model that frees e-commerce retailers from the needs to stock their own inventory and ship orders. With a Shopify dropshipping store, businesses can sell products from a network of dropshipping suppliers right from their own websites. Then, the supplier manages the shipping aspects, like packing the products and delivering them to customers.
Understanding how to run a Shopify dropshipping business brings you one step close to a simple and streamlined way of doing business. It provides e-commerce retailers with a range of benefits, from smoothing out supply chain coordination to saving money on real estate, shipping, and more.
Why Use Shopify for Dropshipping?
Shopify Dropshipping simplifies the process of establishing your online store, while providing access to a plethora of apps and plugins to streamline your dropshipping operations. With Shopify’s integrated payment processing, you can swiftly begin accepting customer payments right away.
Some of the benefits one can expect from utilizing Shopify over other platforms include:
- Simplicity: Anyone can easily get started with Shopify. You can maintain, customize, and expand your Shopify store without the need to learn coding. It provides a user-friendly interface and intuitive tools for managing your online store.
- Performance: Shopify offers fast loading times and excellent checkout functionality across the web. You don’t need to host your domain separately or rely on third-party checkout tools. Shopify’s built-in features are top-notch and ensure a smooth and efficient shopping experience for your customers.
- Functionality: Shopify offers over 100 beautifully designed mobile-friendly templates, search engine optimized pages, inventory management, an app store with over 4000 easily integratable tools, reporting and analytics, and a convenient mobile application.
- Easy to promote: Shopify collaborates with new media platforms and provides tools to help merchants promote their products in new markets. It doesn’t require extensive plugin extensions and is easy to maintain. For example, Shopify recently partnered with TikTok, offering Shop Pay in addition to collaborations with Facebook and Instagram.
- Cost-effective: Shopify offers competitive pricing plans that suit businesses of different sizes, allowing you to find a pricing option that fits your budget.
- Excellent customer service: Shopify provides various support resources, forums, and 24/7 customer service to assist you whenever you need help.
Overall, Shopify provides a user-friendly and feature-rich platform with excellent performance, promotional opportunities, competitive pricing, and reliable customer support.
How to Dropship on Shopify in 8 Steps
Dropshipping on this leading e-commerce platform is just as easy as running a store on the Shopify platform. The website simplifies the process of signing up, designing your store, and coordinating with suppliers. To get started, just follow these eight easy steps.
1. Find Your Niche
First, define your business’s niche by deciding what kind of products you plan to sell. This is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as a dropshipper and can have a tremendous impact on the long-term health and success of your business. You can dropship hundreds of products, from clothing and footwear to home goods, office supplies, and more.
It’s important to conduct a bit of market research before you decide on a dropshipping business idea. Doing so will enable you to identify a lucrative niche that helps you succeed in the world of dropshipping and run a profitable e-commerce business. To help you decide, look at resources like Google Trends, WordStream Free Keyword Tool, and Google Keyword Planner to see the search habits of your target audience.
For example, if you are thinking of dropshipping shoes, you could search for relevant keywords such as “kids sneakers.” WordStream will give you a list of related keywords along with their monthly search volume, cost per click for ads, and competition level. This information can help you decide which products are worth adding to your inventory!
2. Name Your Store
Once you’ve chosen a niche, it’s time to name your dropshipping business. Naming your business is extremely important and sets your business up for branding success. Having a name that is easily recognizable, unique, and relevant to your niche will help customers find your business. This important part of your branding should fulfill three important criteria:
- Simple and easy to remember
- Relevant to your brand and representative of your business ethos
- Distinguished from other online retailers
You can turn to Shopify’s free name generator for inspiration as you choose the perfect name for your business. Other tools to help you generate a dropshipping business name include Namelix, Incfile, and Namesnack. Or you could brainstorm the old-fashioned way — on paper!
3. Create a Shopify Account
Next, set up a Shopify account by accepting the free trial and choosing a plan. Shopify offers three plan tiers: Basic, Shopify, and Advanced, each featuring different business reporting options, inventory suppliers, shipping discounts, and other details. You just need to enter an email address as your Shopify user ID and answer a few questions about your store, including:
- Whether you’re a new or veteran business
- The products you plan on selling (aka your niche)
- Where your plan to sell (i.e., on a website, personal blog, social media, or in-store)
4. Get Set Up
Once you’ve created your account and chosen a monthly plan, you’re close to launching your store and selling your products. Next up:
Add Payment Details
Many dropshippers choose Shopify Payments, for the savings and convenience it offers, such as an easy-to-use interface, lower rates on credit card transactions, and built-in tools for tracking your cash flow and payouts. Plus, with Shopify Payments, the platform waves its standard 2.2% transaction fee.
You can also use PayPal, which is familiar to most shoppers, or choose from Shopify’s extensive list of approved providers, which includes:
- Amazon
- Braintree
- QuickBooks
Configure Store Policies
When you sign up, Shopify provides you with a number of standardized agreements, including a refund policy, privacy policy, and general terms and conditions. Be sure to read these over to determine whether they work for your brand before accepting them. If necessary, you can easily revise the policies or use your own.
Set Shipping Rates
Finally, set your shipping costs. You can either choose free shipping or navigate to the next tab and set your prices for Shopify’s three rate models, which are:
- Single flat-rate shipping
- Tiered flat-rate shipping
- Per-item shipping
When setting your rates, choose price points that make sense for your market and enable you to maximize profits.
Add Products to Your Store
Lastly, you will want to use an app integration like Trendsi to source your products and import them into your online store. Shopify makes it easy to import a .CSV file and add products from your suppliers. However, Trendsi makes it even easier. It’s as simple as clicking on the “Add” button on the product page and selecting “Add to Shopify”. You don’t even need to edit or update the product information in the inventory section.
5. Design Your Store
This is where the fun begins when you start a dropshipping business. This is your chance to build your brand identity and distinguish yourself from other online stores in your niche. Admittedly, this can be a daunting task for anyone without a background in web design. Fortunately, Shopify offers a few tools to help you out, including customizable templates and a directory of experts you can hire for design assistance.
Choose a Theme
The first step is to choose from Shopify’s templates and themes. Be sure to choose a theme that reflects the essence of your brand, both in terms of aesthetics and function. You can also design your own dropshipping business custom theme if you prefer.
Here are some of the best Shopify themes broken down by niche:
- Beauty – Canopy by Clean Canvas
- Tech – Warehouse by Maestrooo
- Shoes – Empire by Pixel Union
- Apparel – District by Style Hatch, Inc.
- Health and Wellness – Startup by Pixel Union
- Jewelry – Expression by Clean Canvas
Add a Logo
A well-designed logo that expresses your brand identity is an elemental part of your marketing strategy. For customers, it’s also a key marker of the credibility of your brand. A well-designed logo draws customers in and builds trust. It can be the initial impression that a potential customer has of your brand, so you want to ensure that it is memorable and eye-catching.
Some e-commerce entrepreneurs choose to create their own logo or work with a graphic designer, but many use Shopify’s free logo maker, available in the theme store. The logo maker lets you choose from a variety of logo elements, images, sizes, and more. Other tools for making a logo for your business include Canva, Adobe Illustrator, Logo Maker by VistaPrint, Designhill, and Tailor Brands.
6. Launch Your Store
Once your website looks how you want and you’ve added your products, it’s time to make things official and launch your Shopify store. Your website can be live in just three steps:
- From the admin page, click on “Online Store” and then select “Preferences”.
- Under the Password protection section, just uncheck the “Restrict access to visitors with the password” option. If this is already unchecked, your site is live!
- If you did uncheck it, don’t forget to click “Save”.
7. Connect Integration of Choice
In the Shopify app store, you’ll find a number of integration options that allow you to add various functions and features to your store. In general, integrations can benefit dropshippers in three big ways:
- Improved inventory management
- Website optimization
- Better advertising
For example, fashion dropshippers can integrate with Trendsi for a streamlined product supply solution that packs, picks, and ships orders to customers. On the other hand, the MailChimp app can improve your marketing efforts with automated email marketing campaigns, pre-built landing pages, and more.
8. Start Making Sales
Once you’ve completed these seven steps, you’re ready to start making sales. But to do that, you’ll need to market your store so your target audience is able to find you. That means turning to marketing strategies such as:
- Paid advertising
- Social media marketing
- Influencer marketing
- Email campaigns
- Push notifications
- Optimizing your website for search engine optimization (SEO)
- Building referral programs
Start Dropshipping on Shopify with Trendsi Today
When you integrate your Shopify store with Trendsi, you unlock a plethora of optimizations that make dropshipping even easier. Your one-stop supply chain solution, Trendsi connects you with great products for your own online store. Then, we perform thorough quality checks and ship orders in the voice of your brand to customers all over the world. And the best part? Store owners don’t pay anything until you make a sale.
If you’ve been thinking about breaking into the world of Shopify dropshipping stores, now’s the time. Get started today by creating a Shopify account, building a store, and adding the Trendsi dropshipping app to your website. It’s that easy.