Below, we broke down the steps in the easiest way possible and provided where to find US suppliers so you can start selling from the US today! 

Here is what you can expect:

1.0 – Why Is Dropshipping From The US So Beneficial For My Business?

1.1 – Shipping Times
1.2 – Product Quality Control
1.3 – American Made
1.4 – Customer Satisfaction
2.0 – Understanding Inventory Supply And Turn Times before picking a US Supplier
3.0 – What Makes A Great US-Based supplier?
4.0 – Top 5 US Dropshipping Suppliers
5.0 – Why Is China Dropshipping Dying?
6.0 – The Bottom Line

There are many reasons why finding a US-based supplier is beneficial. Things like faster shipping times, higher quality products and cheaper delivery costs create a more sustainable business when selling in North America. 

Let’s dive in to explore why and how you can start dropshipping from the US today!

Why Is Dropshipping From The US So Beneficial For My Business?

While most dropshipping automation apps like Dropified and DSers easily integrate with AliExpress and thousands of Chinese vendors that supply millions of product options…

…there are a number of reasons dropshippers are looking for US-based supplier options.

Here are 4 reasons why.

1. Shipping Times

The shipping times from China are probably the single biggest reason for wanting US options. It still takes several weeks to arrive once your customer places their order.

Amazon Prime has conditioned most buyers to expect quick delivery, especially since they are so used to 2 Day delivery times. Now, most don't mind waiting a few days longer to get their orders when they order from a non-Amazon, e-commerce store. But with that said, they still expect their order fast.

And it’s not just your US-based customers that are demanding faster shipping – it’s huge social media platforms like Facebook that also now demand fast shipping.

But isn’t Facebook just an ad platform? How do they demand this? Well, customer service and satisfaction are one of the biggest factors in the Facebook ads algorithm. So dropshippers that run ads on Facebook are being affected by complaints about their ads, which in turn results in higher ad costs.

Yes, Facebook monitors ad feedback. When it comes to dropshippers, one of the most pervasive complaints is the length of time it takes customers to receive their orders, and it results in higher ad costs. Conversely, dropshippers using US-based suppliers with fast shipping times are rewarded with better feedback and ultimately lower ad costs by Facebook.

2. Product Quality Control

Another big reason that US drop shippers want more US supplier options is product quality.

While there are, no doubt, countless Chinese suppliers that provide excellent products, the sheer amount of suppliers available that just pop up on the fly leads to a lot of shady suppliers with poor quality products.

And when the dropshipping businesses are so far from the suppliers, it’s hard to reach them or hold them accountable for bad quality items.

US-based suppliers are gaining popularity, because they are, in theory, easier to reach if there is a problem. There is a comfort level in that they can be met personally to discuss issues if needed. I say “in theory” because there will always be people that act in bad faith or will just be straight-up scammers. But that’s where due diligence needs to be done, just as with any supplier, to cut down the chance of this happening. And we will be sure to show you how to avoid this in the upcoming sections.

3. American Made Products

There is also the intangible reason for working with American companies versus foreign companies and using “American Made” products or “American Stored” products.

In many cases, being able to market your products as “American Made” can not only help you sell more products, but it may even lead you to be able to charge higher prices. 

4. Customer Satisfaction

As we touched on above, using US-based suppliers can also lead to higher Customer Satisfaction.

The factors listed above, such as faster shipping times, higher quality products, local or US-region phone numbers and contact information as well as being made in America, can all lead to better experiences for your customers. 

When a customer knows they are doing business inside the US, they don’t really have any worries about issues popping up. If there are issues, they trust they can get things resolved quickly and easily.

When dealing with foreign products shipped from outside the US, there can be more worry about when the product will arrive and if it will be of good quality. If there is a product issue, they worry they will have to deal with someone that may be hard to reach or difficult to communicate with.

Understanding Inventory Supply And Turn Times Before You Pick A US Supplier

Before you pick a US dropshipping supplier, one of the most important factors in deciding which supplier to use is how much inventory they have available at any time as well as how quickly they can turn out new inventory as it begins to run low.

Smaller suppliers may have a lot of inventory available but may not have the resources to manufacture new inventory as fast, so it’s important to know how quickly they can turn out new inventory.

After all, if you start selling a product fast, it’s only as good as your supplier can keep at volume. If you sell out the inventory, and it takes several weeks for the supplier to get new inventory, then you can’t grow and scale.

Not only that, but once you start selling fast, it can draw the attention of other sellers. Your supplier may now need to start supplying multiple sellers at once to try to capitalize on the same hot product which leads to faster inventory sellouts.

With many Chinese suppliers being small fly-by-night operations, they tend to jump on hot product trends, and they’re easily affected negatively by quick product sellouts and long inventory turn times… on top of the long shipping times.

That doesn’t mean US companies won’t have that same issue, so you just need to be aware of it and do your due diligence to limit the possibility.

With all that said…

What makes a great US-Based supplier?

Just as with any supplier, you need to do your due diligence and research. Once you find your winning product, the regular factors you need to review should be the same for all potential suppliers regardless of where they are located. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to validate a great US dropshipping supplier:

Trust / Feedback: 

• What kinds of feedback have you found in your searches? 
• Are they listed on the Better Business Bureau, Yelp or any other review sites? 
• Are they part of any professional associations that list feedback or that can be reached to get feedback?

Communication:

• When you reach out to them (and you must reach out to every supplier prior to doing business), do they respond promptly and professionally? 
• Are they able to answer your questions accurately and thoroughly? 

Shipping Cost and Time:

• Do they have the ability to dropship on your behalf, with your company info? 
• Do they make it clear and easy to include accurate shipping costs? 
• Do they ship out items quickly once an order is placed? 
• Do they offer shipment tracking? Does their system integrate with your dropshipping automation app so everything can be handled automatically?

Inventory Turn Time:

• How much inventory do they carry at any given time?
• How quickly can they replenish their inventory should you start selling their products fast?
• How much demand can they truly handle without ever running out of inventory?

Additional Fees:

• Do they require any additional fees to work with them?
• Do they require minimum sales amounts to do business with them?
• Do they charge extra for any dropshipping services such as packing, labeling, and inventory?

Returns, Refunds and Defects:

• How do they handle product returns?
• How do they handle refund requests?
• How do they handle product defects and/or product quality concerns?

Now that you know what makes a great US supplier, where do I find them?
This is the exciting part…

US-Based Dropshipping Suppliers

There are many US dropshipping suppliers to choose from, and we’ll list some of the more popular ones below.

However, YOU are the one responsible for doing your research and due diligence to make sure these companies meet your needs, are trustworthy and worth doing business with. This is also not a complete or comprehensive list, and these are NOT in any particular order. 

They are also not necessarily direct suppliers – rather they act like AliExpress and offer a directory of suppliers according to their own criteria.

1. Salehoo

According to Salehoo, they are a “powerful research tool, supplier directory and online community for dropshippers, wholesalers and e-commerce stores.”

They list 8,000+ trusted wholesale and dropship suppliers that they’ve personally reviewed and 1.6 million+ branded products you’ll recognize at prices that leave plenty of room for profit.

2. Doba

According to Doba, they’ve “brought hundreds of qualified manufacturers and suppliers into one marketplace.”

They list 2,000,000 products from hundreds of suppliers in one catalog, and they offer a Supplier Scorecard to evaluate the companies they work with.

3. AliExpress

AliExpress doesn’t just operate in China – they also have many suppliers based in the US. 

There are 2 quick ways to find products that ship from within the US on AliExpress:

On AliExpress: 

1. Do a search for the product you want on AliExpress
2. Once you’ve done a search, select the Ships From box at the top of the page above the search results and select the United States. This will filter the results to all products that ship from the US.

In Your Automation App:

Some automation apps like Dropified already integrate the database of US products from AliExpress right into the app dashboard. To find those products:

1. Open your automation app (like Dropified)
2. Click on the US Products Database
3. Enter your product type in the Search box
4. Review all the products you can sell!

4. Spocket

Spocket allows you to choose the best products to dropship from various categories from dropshipping suppliers all over the world.

80% of their dropshipping suppliers are based in the US or Europe, shipping is quick, reliable, and effortless.

5. Modalyst

Modalyst says “New stores and experienced sellers alike can use Modalyst. Modalyst connects you directly to designer brands, eco-friendly suppliers, private label manufacturers, and AliExpress sellers.”

Order product samples right from their dashboard in a few clicks. Easily test out the products and suppliers to build a reliable dropshipping business.

Why is China dropshipping dying?

A political factor between the US and China has put an end to the “China dropship model”. Right now, shipping costs from China are generally more expensive and take longer to arrive. This makes it incredibly hard for businesses to source from places like AliExpress and Alibaba.

Since 1969, the US was part of the Universal Postal Union, allowing for steep shipping discounts for poor countries to ship goods to the United States.

Those steep discounts, subsidized by the United States Post Office, meant shipping rates for Chinese suppliers were discounted from 40% to 70%.

The result meant that in many cases, it was more expensive to ship items within the US than it was to order a product from China to be delivered in the US.

However, there were discussions between the leaders of the US and China to pull out of that agreement and cut the discounted shipping because China is no longer viewed as a poor country.

As the shipping discount got removed, the low-cost advantage Chinese suppliers have counted on to undercut product pricing has vanished.

That also means any dropshipper using Chinese suppliers will see their shipping prices jump significantly. So not only will it take weeks for products to arrive, they will now no longer be super cheap.

As a result, the shift to US manufacturers and suppliers will jump quickly, and that could mean a bottleneck in supply.

The Bottom Line

The better and faster you can serve your customers, the better you will do long term.

As a result, it’s a smart thing to begin to source, develop and begin to work with US-based product suppliers, because your customers are demanding faster delivery and better quality.

At the end of the day, you need to work hard to research and find solid suppliers that offer you high-quality products with dependable inventory and fast shipping times.

After all, the writing is on the wall that the pricing advantage that Chinese suppliers enjoy may quickly be coming to an end, and if you only offer Chinese goods, you’ll end up with higher-cost products with long shipping times, and be left scrambling to find local suppliers.

Is there anything we missed?

Comment below what you think about US-based supplier dropshipping!

Of course, you could go the alternate route and deal with finding reliable suppliers, inventory management and shipping products on your own, but who wants to do that? We should better spend our time on strategy, sales and marketing to improve our profitability.

Hopefully, that convinces you that dropshipping is the way to go. So, if you are ready to get started, here are the simplified but necessary steps you need to take to become a successful e-commerce entrepreneur.

Pick Your Product Niche

Not everyone can be like Amazon and build the “everything” store. Just because you have access to thousands of dropshipping products doesn’t mean that all of them need to be in your store. Choosing the right product niche is the most important decision for your e-commerce business.

The niche determines your marketing ability, and it determines your profitability. Choosing the wrong product niche can lead to frustration as you spin your wheels and wonder why your numbers remain in the red no matter the effort.

But if you choose the right product niche, you’ll be floating in cash as you laugh at how difficult your life used to be. Ok, maybe our aspirations are less vain than this, but choosing the right niche for your dropshipping business will be less stressful and more profitable. Both sounds like a better lifestyle than the 9-5 job most people hate but keep on doing.

Think about a business idea that you understand as you consider your dropshipping strategy. Interests and hobbies may provide insights into marketing and product packages that those unaware wouldn’t have thought. It may also be easier to write your initial sales copy, because you understand what motivates the purchase.

That makes sense, right? But this familiarity also branches out into other important economies of scale, for instance, blogging and social media. Curating content is easier when you understand the needs of the potential customer.

Wait, before you do that…

Research Your Product Category

Just because you understand an industry doesn’t mean there is a guarantee of profits. Many product categories come with greater ad spend and inventory costs resulting in a lower profit margin, and it can run at a greater shipping cost per pound. These are just a few examples of why you need to research your product category before starting your dropshipping business.

If you are new to entrepreneurship, considering this practice will serve you well. While we shouldn’t suffer paralysis from analysis, doing initial research prevents you from making a long-term mistake that you only figure out years down the road. Yes, the best way to succeed at entrepreneurship is to get started, but when you begin, lead with strategy.

Itching to get started without putting all of your eggs in one basket just yet? Then create several test stores where you walk through the steps in this dropshipping guide – taking notes from the information you gain during the business setup process. Then, choose the dropshipping store with the most potential, and go all-in on that operation.

Develop Your Marketing Strategy

These dropshipping products won’t just sell themselves. You must have a marketing strategy guaranteed to infiltrate the market.

How do you plan to market your business? Is it through social media marketing, content marketing or paid advertising? No marketing strategy will be perfect until you gather data as you move forward with your small business, but there is data you can get right now.

Talk to other dropshipping businesses in non-competitive industries and find out what works for them. Jay Abraham, a master marketer, says that one of the biggest mistakes companies make is following the marketing trends within their own industry. By communicating with other small business owners that dropship products, you can find out the marketing strategies not used in your industry.

Once you have a strategy that you will commit both money and time to, it is time to do the stuff that none of us wants to do.

Set up All Governing Taxes and Licenses

Who enjoys paying their taxes? The process is tedious and painful even when you know you are getting a tax refund. But it’s time to put our professional pants on and do the dirty work that will save us hassle down the road.

Just because you hide in your garage and run an online business doesn’t free you from the legal requirements that a brick and mortar retailer needs to have. Most businesses need a business license with their city, a fictitious business name with their county and a sales tax permit with their state. If you choose to incorporate, you may need to file for additional permits and licenses.

You need this information when building your online store, setting up with dropshipping suppliers, setting up a business bank account and receiving online payments. Get this done now so that you don’t have to go back and take care of what you despise doing once you are ready to launch.

Purchase Your Website Assets

Now that you have taken care of the dirty work, let’s get back to the fun stuff. Now that your business expenses have their own accounts, it is time to purchase your business assets. In a dropshipping business, this means your website assets.

Choosing Your Domain Name

If you are like many of us, you already purchased your domain name. However, the research into your niche and the creation of your marketing strategy may have created a need to change your domain name. Either way, choose the right domain name for the product category you plan to enter.

It is important to decide whether you plan to choose a name brand that is personalized, industry-specific or a combination of the two. At Dropified, we took a creative approach to our industry name. We spun the dropshipping name into a more memorable name that speaks to us and what we plan to accomplish with the brand.

One important consideration is how your website looks a year or two from now, when you have built your store into a super-powered profitable business. Do you want someone registering a website with the same name and stealing traffic and potential sales from your site by spoofing your branding? (Trust us, it happens all the time). If you are concerned with this issue, it is worth the small investment to pick up the domain names shoppers will accidentally search.

Ok, we have gotten a little heavy on strategy, so let’s get back to basics here. Purchase the formal domain name from GoDaddy and set it to renew annually. If they offer it, pick up a business email package, so that you can add an info@ email address for your store for customer service queries. Some domain companies offer this free, whereas others charge a minimal amount per year.

Choosing Your Hosting Plan

Unlike choosing a domain name, you can’t just choose any company to make your purchase. Different hosting companies have different product offerings. Even more important is to consider that hosting companies have different reputations for how their services impact website speed, downtime and technical website issues.

What we are saying here is that not all hosting companies are the same, and choosing the wrong one can cost you website traffic, customers and ultimately revenues.

You will not have to worry about this issue if you set up a done-for-you shopping platform. Website-in-a-box platforms, such as Wix, Squarespace or Shopify, offer their own hosting.

After you have decided on your focus niche, choose your domain. We know platforms allow you to select a hosted domain name, but do you need to buy the root domain and own that address too?

Picking the Right E-commerce Platform

Dropified works with Shopify, CommerceHQ and WooCommerce for importing products from AliExpress and other supported sites into the e-commerce store. If you have selected another platform, be aware that you can still use Dropified, but you will need to copy product specifications, descriptions and images manually to your shop.

Unless you are a technical website developer by trade, stick to the automatic integrations so that you can focus on building your business. Let’s look at the ones we mentioned.

Shopify Store

Shopify is the biggest name in e-commerce stores, and their sales catapulted the moment brick and mortar businesses realized Covid wasn’t a short-term setback. If you want an easy e-commerce solution, then Shopify is the way to go. But keep in mind that their ease of implementation comes at a financial cost and the cost of limited expansion.

CommerceHQ Store

Some might shy away from this emerging e-commerce platform since it has a higher price tag than Shopify, but don’t quit on CommerceHQ just yet. This e-commerce platform may have a higher initial monthly fee, but it comes with many plugins that you will have to pay for with Shopify. Also, CommerceHQ does not charge processing fees, making it a cheaper option in the long run.

WooCommerce Store

WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress that turns a blog into a full e-commerce store. WordPress is no longer a blogging platform and is now preferred by some of the largest enterprise companies. The benefits of WooCommerce are that there are nearly endless opportunities to customize your e-commerce shop.

Your initial WooCommerce store is free, but certain features available through plugin extension come at a one-time or annual cost. While a WooCommerce store is mostly plug-and-play, you are still required to update your plugins. If you don’t, you subject your website to vulnerabilities in the plugins which create serious website issues if not addressed.

Automated E-commerce

Dropified product tools do the heavy lifting for you (saving you time with click-and-add functionality) when choosing a Shopify, CommerceHQ or WooCommerce store.

Design Your Store

Now that you’ve developed your business model, identified your ideal customer and understand how to target that audience, it’s time to work on the foundation of your e-commerce website.

You should think of your website as your product packaging since these dropshipping products do not come with white label customization. So when you build your homepage website and product pages, include uniformed branding. This allows each product to resonate with its message through unique imagery, color schemes and messaging.

To start, let your creativity loose! Design an e-commerce store that stands out from your competitors but stays within what the customer desires. How do you do that? Start by searching other shops that sell similar products and find out what elements and messaging they are missing. Then add your personal touch and branding to your website for a custom feel and experience that the potential customer will love.

Navigating Your Website

Page structure and navigation are a crucial part of your website that few small businesses pay attention to. Every page on your website needs to be built with intention. If you will not give a page your full effort, then in this world of responsive websites, you are better off not having that page at all. Instead, put the information on an existing URL where it can comfortably fit.

Here is a shortlist of what you may need:

• Product pages
• Contact us form (for customer service and questions)
• Terms and Conditions page (required by search engines). This page should also outline your return and refund policy.
• Testimonial page. Collect customer feedback on your company. Your product testimonials should live on your product pages for social proof and increased SEO keywords.
• Sale or discount product page (for bundles and special promotional offers)
• Mailing address. If you do not want to use your home address, consider a street address through UPS or iPostal1 that functions like a PO box. This will allow you to register a Google My Business account (which does not allow PO box addresses).
• Customer service telephone number. Don’t use your personal cell number. Check out service providers like Grasshopper.

Don’t forget to add PERSONALITY to your shop! Show your passion for the product niche and make the user experience interesting to convert site visits to purchases.

Make Your Website Secure

In this age where data breaches seem to happen daily and countries now use cyber warfare, your website must be secure. It is shocking how many existing websites have that warning page show up that says the website may not be secure. Setting up an SSL is a good business practice, but it is also a marketing strategy. Trust leads to increased conversions, so don’t just have an SSL. Show off your SSL!

Here is a bit more technical information about what an SSL is.

SSL certificate is a cryptographic key that identifies your business as a trustworthy one for financial transactions, secure browsing and data transfer. This is an essential step to show the reliability and legitimacy of your retail shop with search engines like Bing and Google. They are available through Shopify, CommerceHQ and WooCommerce platforms. After setting up the SSL for your store, visit a free testing site like Qualys to test your settings.

Get Your Free Trial of Dropified (Add the Browser Extension)

As a part of this complete guide to dropshipping, we are going to provide you with a quick tutorial on how to set up your Dropified account. The entire process is simple, and we have tutorials that explain each step. If needed, our friendly support team will be glad to help you with the hurdles you come across.

To start, visit our pricing page to sign up for your free trial to test drive the SaaS tools you can start using right away with Dropified.

Create Your AliExpress Account

This only takes a few minutes. Visit AliExpress to create your account.

Create Your eBay Store

Connect your Dropified account to the eBay store you want to sell on. Here is a complete guide to setting up your eBay dropshipping store.

Connect Your Shop(s) to Dropified

We’ve made it quick and easy with a video tutorial for connecting WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce and CommerceHQ shops to Dropified. Just visit our video tutorial page for step-by-step instructions and screen sharing. It will only take about 4 minutes to connect your store to Dropified.

Organize Your Product Boards

Can we give you a pro tip that will save you time? Before you start your product research and discovery and saving products from AliExpress to Dropified, organize your product boards first. Think about how you will want to keep these products sorted by category, then add your products. From your product boards, you can connect those products to your shop(s) using Dropified.

Watch the video training tutorial for creating and organizing product boards.

Using Dropified Filters for Product Research and Discovery

It’s a bit of work but a lot of fun. After you have completed the setup of your first store, you’ll want to start ‘shopping’ for trending products you can sell from AliExpress. But you want to be strategic about the products you choose to pick products that:

• have high sales volume (think of this as an indicator of consumer demand).
• come from reliable and highly rated vendors.
• have the shortest possible delivery times
• have variants that are popular sellers (don’t waste time adding custom product descriptions for variants that have a low sales volume). If they aren’t selling, they are probably not worth the effort to add that variant to your shop.

Use your gut instincts to choose trending items that everyone wants to buy and keep your product focus as narrow as possible to your specific niche. Specialty stores get more traffic and have refined branding that appeals to a specific target market and consumer.

Stay ahead of the game by organizing your product ‘wish list’ using Dropified. That way, you can organize seasonal products and special offers for products you’ll want to add later. Visit our blog for some tips.

Add Products to Your Store

Once you have organized your boards with exciting products, the next step is to connect them to your store or make them ‘live’ for purchase on your website. Visit our video training portal for a tutorial, and learn how to connect your products, change product descriptions and select variant images (or edit them) using Dropified.

Learn How to Fulfill Orders (Or Set Up Auto-Fulfillment)

There are two ways that business owners can fulfill customer orders as the sales roll in. The first option is manual order fulfillment, and that’s where many beginners start so that they can be more hands-on to evaluate purchases and track customer service issues.

Visit our video training portal for a guide on fulfilling orders manually or to create the settings that will automatically allow Dropified to fulfill orders.

Tip: Remember to notate each vendor order by requesting they remove the shipping waybill or invoice in the customer’s package. This way, your customer does not see wholesale cost information when they receive their order.

Set Up Social Media Promotion

After completing your strategy and opening your shop for business, it is time to go get those customers! Here are the social media channels that e-commerce power sellers rely on for sales and promotion.

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• TikTok
• ClubHouse
• Pinterest

Depending on your product and target market, you may sell to businesses who may use your products. If this is the case, you want to set up a LinkedIn Company Page. Use this page to post products, blogs and special offers on the world’s largest B2B networking site.

Aim to post content at least 5 days a week. To make your life easier, investigate social scheduling software like Hootsuite or Sprout Social. These tools allow you to pre-write posts and automate your social sharing.

Tip: Remember to include quality images, share your blog posts and draw traffic to your dropshipping store.

Set up Your Email Marketing Account

Email marketing is still an expensive way to communicate with both leads and existing customers. You can think of email marketing as the midpoint between your social media posts and long-form articles. While open rates are not what they used to be, the cost of email marketing is cheaper than ever.

If you’ve taken our advice and committed to posting 5 days a week on social media, then you have the raw materials for email marketing. Connect the dots on your social media posts to create a thoughtful, value-adding email.

Tip: Have a lead capture form on your homepage or wherever it is most effective at capturing emails. This simple strategy makes it easy to communicate with prospective customers who may have jumped ship before making a purchase.

Add Content to Your Blog

How do your products fulfill a lifestyle need or want for your customers? Blogging allows e-commerce business owners to share valuable tips and advice that consumers appreciate. Through interesting blog content, you can create a community of repeat visits.

Aim to blog in the beginning, at least 10 times per month, and keep your articles at least 350 words long. Long format blog posts (1,000 words or more) are valuable in terms of SEO. Your long-form content helps appease search engines like Google and Bing and encourages them to refer more traffic to your site.

Keyword research is an important part of e-commerce success. Neil Patel shares a great article with a list of free keyword research tools you can get started with.

Tip: Since most households are using virtual assistants like Alexa or Google Home to find products, remember to include voice search key strings. These are specific phrases (conversational search terms) that your customers would use to find your products. Make those keywords and strings part of your product descriptions, social media hashtags and blog content.

Add a Reputation Management Tool

Social proof is one of the best and least expensive ways to increase conversion rates. Let customers who love your products tell the world about their experience. One of the major benefits of having your own e-commerce store (compared to being an amazon seller) is having full control of your reputation. This doesn’t mean deleting critical reviews, as that is not good business. It means directing these reviews where they can best help your company grow.

Reviews help people further understand how to use your products and they provide keyword-rich content for your product page. Managing your reviews is a great way to understand what missing information needs to be discussed in your product page, FAQ page and blog articles.

Upgrade the Dropified Plan Membership

We hope you enjoyed this complete guide on dropshipping. After your free trial of Dropified is over, and you’ve learned from our e-commerce success email series, we invite you to remain part of our thriving community. Subscribe to one of our monthly/yearly plans, and experience the full power of Dropified.Remember, the support team at Dropified is always ready to pitch in and answer your questions about our software or general questions about e-commerce business strategies.

I know… so sad.

But what if I told you there is a way to start selling today in minutes? No setting up a store, no upfront costs, no hours of wasted mediocre web design for a product you don't even know will sell. This is all made easy when dropshipping on eBay. 

*Disclaimer* 

Now, I am going to be completely honest with you. eBay will not make you rich overnight. Although it is easier to sell and list, it will still require work and effort. If you're rolling your eyes now and you want to move on to the next “get rich quick” article, this one is probably not for you. 

But if you stay here and learn the fundamentals, tricks, and tools, I am going to show you how to start eBay dropshipping today, and you are going to be miles ahead of the game. Are you ready to pave the road to success?

Here is what we are going to cover:

1.0 – Pros and cons of selling on eBay

2.0 – eBay dropshipping with no tools

3.0 – eBay dropshipping with tools

4.0 – The complete eBay dropshipping framework

4.1 – Creating an eBay account

4.2 – Sourcing a killer product

4.3 – Creating an engaging headline

4.4 – Writing winning benefits and descriptions

4.5 – Validating great pictures

4.6 – Pricing it right

4.7 – Optimize shipping on eBay

4.8 – Beating the algorithm 

The Honest Pros & Cons of Selling on eBay

Like every single thing on earth, there is a good side and a side we often overlook. Simply said, different things work for different people. So let's quickly go over some of the pros and cons of dropshipping on eBay to ensure it is right for you.

Pros:

• People are already on eBay with a buying mindset. There’s no need to interrupt their Facebook feed!
• You’ll reach a very vast and big audience.
• You can sell pretty much anything!
• It is very affordable to create a seller account.
• There is no store needed.
• eBay helps rank your products on SERPs.
• It’s easy to manage customer support.

Cons:

• You are operating under eBay’s enforced rules and guidelines.
• There are selling fees. eBay does take a small % of each sale.
• There is a lot of competition in saturated and big niches.
• Your final value fees are based on your reputation.
• eBay does have control over your listing when live.
• It can be challenging to keep your inventory in sync.
• You must ship items within 24h or less to rank on eBay.

2.0 – eBay Dropshipping With No Tools (For Free)

Although it's incredibly time-consuming and tedious, eBay dropshipping with no tools is surprisingly very easy.  But if you are just starting out, you won't need to worry about this until you get rolling. 

Step 1: 

Once you follow the listing framework below and make a sale, the first step is to receive the customer's order request and get their address and postal code. Make sure to work fast as you do not want to have a delayed order.

Step 2: 

Go to where you sourced the product and place the order with your customer’s shipping address. *Note – The customer will have already paid, so you come out on top with more money after buying the product and shipping it to their address.

Step 3: 

Supply a tracking code. As soon as you get a tracking number from AliExpress (or where you sourced the product), provide that tracking number to your customer through eBay. My eBay > Selling > Manage Orders > Add Tracking #

It’s that easy! Just remember that you are responsible for your customer's experience and complications – not your supplier!

eBay Dropshipping With Tools

If you're always looking for the easiest way to do something like me, I would suggest using a tool to manage all of your eBay listings, especially if you are already selling lots of products or when you start having more success. Tools can help you to list faster from a single dashboard, automatically place orders and send to your customers, bulk edit prices, notify you when something is wrong, and complete so many more tedious tasks that fill up your day.

With our experience in this game and from having offered a service that will take care of all your eBay dropshipping needs (plus much more), we have made a list of several other great tools. We encourage you to check us out, but we recognize that everyone's needs are different. Make sure you find something that works for you! When you get the right software to manage your eBay dropshipping business, everything gets easier!

Top 5 eBay Dropshipping Tools (In our expert opinion):

1. Channel Advisor
2. SellBrite
3. AutoDS
4. Inkfrog
5. 3D Sellers

The Complete eBay Dropshipping Framework: Made Easy!

I'm going to share with you the 8 step eBay framework I use when starting an eBay business. It’s a proven and easy-to-follow list. It may seem simple, but below, you will find the important parts and steps to execute the perfect listing, so you can start having success with dropshipping on eBay as soon as possible.

Print or download the eBay Dropshipping Framework PDF here

Step 1 – Create an eBay Seller Account

eBay makes onboarding easy. Start by signing in or creating an account for eBay.

Enter your name, email, and a password of your choice. Select “business” if you already are selling products or “personal” if you are just starting out.

After you enter all the required information, click “create account” to be taken to the eBay homepage. 

Before you begin to sell, add a bank account to your account so you can get paid!

To add a payment method, click on the top right corner where it says “My eBay”, and then click “selling” from the dropdown menu. From there, you can click “account” and set up your most preferred payment method.

After setting up a bank account, you are ready to receive payments from customers. It’s that easy!

Note – It is not mandatory, but small things, like your profile picture, seller description and so on, can help convince certain buyers. I would also recommend familiarizing yourself with the eBay platform to understand the basics from a buyer's perspective.

Step 2 – Source A Killer eBay Dropshipping Product

Now that we are done with the boring part, pay attention because sourcing a winning product is the single most important part of this whole process. Without an incredible product, you will not be able to sell near as well or as much. If you have a product that people want, need, and love, the product sells itself! I can not stress enough how important this is. 

But how do I find a winning drop ship product?

If you want an in-depth and very thorough way to find a product in under 5 minutes, check out this blog post I wrote a couple of weeks ago: How to find a Winning Product in 5 Minutes.

Here is a quick overview of one of the three ways discussed above to find winning products using social media:

1. Download TikTok
2. Search the phrase, #tiktokmademebuyit, into TikTok’s search bar
3. Filter the results to ensure there are only new and up-to-date videos (3 months and newer)
4. Search through trending and viral product reviews to validate a winning product that has at least over 100k likes
5. Source the product with AliExpress or a US Marketplace

Easy enough, right? I would highly suggest reading through the three detailed methods to learn the steps, tips, and tricks to find and validate a winning product. This skill is crucial and is what makes a “great marketer” successful.

Here are some questions to ask about the product you chose to further help validate it:

• Is the product trending? (Are there lots of orders/competition on social media?)
• Can the product sell for over $20? (This is a good general rule of thumb when dropshipping)

• Would you buy it in the customer's shoes?
• Does this product solve a problem or make something easier or more fun?
• Is the product easy and light to ship? This will help with the cost of shipping.

Once you have found your winning product on AliExpress, Alibaba dropship or a U.S supplier, you're ready to move on to the next step. Just ensure to keep the link to your product source safe!

Step 3 – Create an Engaging Product Headline

Headlines are the first thing a customer will see when they come across your product on eBay. It is important to create one that stands out to increase your click rate on your listing. The product headline is basically your ad headline. There should be much thought that goes into this.

One thing I always do is write out at least 5 variations of a headline and pick one that stands out the most. Make sure to read them aloud to see if they actually flow. Below, I'll illustrate 6 tips when writing out your 5 variations. Feel free to use your eBay Dropshipping Framework to keep your thoughts together.

5 Key Takeaways When Writing Dropshipping Product Headlines on eBay:

1. Make sure to include 3-5 keywords in your headline. These words are descriptive words that will relate to the product search terms.
   
   Ex: Instead of a “Kids Suction bowl”, try something like “No-spill Suction Bowl For Babies and Toddlers”

2. Make sure the product is actually related to the headline. I know, it sounds obvious… but you would be surprised at how many people miss out on key parts of the product in the headline.
   
   Ex: If you’re selling a suction bowl, make sure to actually include “suction” not just “baby bowl”.

3. Is your headline somewhat of a product interrupt? Is it interesting enough to actually catch the attention of a reader?

4. Ensure to avoid all caps in your headlines. Although it may seem like you will get more eyes on your listing, it is actually the opposite as it looks spammy and is harder to read.

5. Make sure to include things like the item's traits, their model, year if you can, color and size. These are all things that may make a difference when your customer is searching for it. Where you can, try and include these in your headlines.

Step 4 – Write the Products Benefits 

Another important part when getting your product ready to list is to write out the benefits. What are the actual benefits that my customer will get from buying this product? How does it help them? This is a key part to learn when selling online. Don't just state the features, turn the features you have into benefits.

Ex: If you are selling a camp stove, don't just tell them, “120 minutes of cook time”. Give them the benefit of that. “Cooks all your favorite camping meals over the weekend without running dry of propane.”

A big trick with finding benefits is to go into the reviews of related products, going to one-star reviews, and seeing what people can't stand about the product. This will usually give you a great idea to include as a flipped benefit in your description to have more edge over your competitors.

You can take this negative review of another camp stove (or similar product) and turn it into a benefit of yours. 

Ex: “We know the wilderness can take a toll on your gear. This is why we made our camp stove with high quality and durable steel to last you years of outdoor use.”

Made simple, ask yourself what would convince you to buy this product? Then write just that.

Step 5 – Great Pictures

Pictures are just as important as anything else in your product attributes. This is what confirms in the buyer's mind that what he is reading is really true. I personally would not buy anything online without first seeing a picture, and there are not many who would. 

The first picture that a customer sees is like the first impression of your brand or product. The higher the quality, the better the impression. But this can also work the other way. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.

The free eBay Seller account supports up to 12 pictures. I highly suggest making the most of these. Either take your own high-quality photos with a product sample or use photos from your supplier.

Step 6 – Pricing your eBay Dropshipping Product Right

When dropshipping, pricing your product can be challenging. Usually, you're paying for a product that is a bit high in price, but you still want to be able to sell at prices that are competitive. Lucky for you, you don’t need to worry about advertising costs as much on eBay, because eBay brings buyers to you!

Here are the things I personally do when pricing my product:

1. I usually make sure that I am making $15+ of profit. This is a generalized rule as every product will vary, but try to pick products that can have a high-profit margins. On eBay, there is more room to play with markup as you do not need to account for advertising costs as much as on Facebook and Google platforms.

2. The second thing I do is to make sure it is priced in a similar range as my competitors. It is okay to be a bit higher priced, but you should stick around the same price range. Do not go for the lowest possible price. Although price is a consideration, most buyers will make a decision to buy based on the benefits. A lot of the time, a higher price will equal a higher perceived value when the product saturation is lower. 
   
   Ex. When buying bed sheets, if I find a set for $10, I will probably assume to get $10 worth of quality. If I see bed sheets that are $70, I will correlate that pricing with more luxurious or soft sheets.
   
3. eBay offers a ”bidding” preset when listing a product. Ensure you do not hit the “bid”     option when pricing. Especially for dropshipping products, make sure your pricing is clear and transparent with the “fixed” price option.
   
4. The money-back guarantee! This is CRUCIAL when wanting to make sales. Although it is not directly pricing, I think it falls pretty close to the tree. Always ensure to have a money-back guarantee. This will establish trust with your customer, as there is no longer any excuse for a questioning customer to buy because they can always return it.

Step 7 – Offer Free Shipping

Not really a step but come on, it's 2022… and free shipping is expected when buying something online. It's very important. Studies show that a higher-priced product with free shipping is perceived to be a better deal than a lower-priced product without free shipping.

Now that you are educated about the price of your product and how much you're going to sell it for, work on the cost of shipping as best as you can. If it seems impossible to offer free shipping, try to have a maximum of $5.00 for shipping. Work the rest into your price.

Step 8 – List Daily! (Beating the Algorithm)

This is where the work comes in. I know.. it's tedious and can get boring, but this is what separates a successful eBay seller from a mediocre one. Think about it. Just like working out, you can't do it once and expect to see rock-hard abs. It takes days and disciplined hard work. With eBay selling, you can't put up just one or two products and expect to make $10,000 a month. 

Listing daily will do 3 things to drastically increase your chance to succeed.

1. The eBay algorithm will reward you for listing quality products often. It will start to recognize you as a well-established seller and move you and even your store up in the eBay rankings.

2. It will make you very good at finding and creating product listings. Yes, you can read 1,000 articles on how to dropship on eBay, but once you know the fundamentals (which you’re learning here), it is the experience that will make you the best of the best. With trial and error, you will figure out what works for you and your store.

3. The more you list quality products, the more coverage you have. Simply put, your chances to make sales depend on the number of listings that are live. Even if it takes 20+ listings before you start making sales, that is okay… and is normal! Push for success!

Announced on May 11, 2022, Oberlo says, “Our dropshipping app is shutting down on June 15, 2022. After this date you won’t be able to access your Oberlo account”. Oberlo supports and automates over 12,600 businesses worldwide, and as of June 15, all of those accounts will be terminated for good! 

If you are one of these 12,600 businesses or were looking to start dropshipping with Oberlo in the near future, you might ask yourself, “Now what?”, “Where do I start automating dropshipping?”, “Why is Oberlo shutting down?” or “Is the recommendation of DSers Automation as good as Oberlo?” 

So, what happens when no one has any access to their accounts or information? Don't panic. In this article, we are going to guide you through what to do next so your business keeps thriving or is started off right!

Here is what we are covering to ensure your business is ready to rock ’n roll on the 15th of June:

(1.0) Why is Oberlo shutting down? (The Hard Truth)

(2.0) What Exactly Happens When Oberlo Shuts Down?

(3.0) What should I do with my business when Oberlo closes?

(3.1) Do I Have To Integrate With DSers?

(4.0) What Are Some Alternatives to Using DSers?

(5.0) DSers Vs Dropified

Why is Oberlo Shutting Down? (The Hard, But Real Truth)

Here is what Oberlo says about why they are shutting down: 

“Shopify’s top priority is doing what is in the best interest of merchants. We are sunsetting Oberlo on June 15, 2022 and transitioning how we enable drop shipping to a more optimal solution developed by a trusted Shopify partner, DSers.” Then it goes on to say, “This product deprecation, which is a routine occurrence, is in pursuit of providing merchants with the best solutions to reach their customers wherever they are.”

In other words, the traditional way we have been dropshipping is dead, and there needs to be a change-up. Although it still can work and does work for many businesses, let's face it… dropshipping from places like AliExpress and Alibaba is not as easy as it used to be, and it is getting less and less popular. It makes sense why a company like Shopify’s Oberlo (built on its now tiny empire of China drop shipping) is cutting off its branch and handing the operation to an outside party.

What Exactly Happens When Oberlo Shuts Down?

On June 15th, 2022, Oberlo will be completely uninstalled from your Shopify store. This means that all of the data and products you have stored within Oberlo will be gone. All of the data will be deleted and not to be accessed again. Your store's sales will be put to a halt until further action is taken, or orders can be chosen to be fulfilled manually.

As far as payments go, Oberlo says,

“If you’re currently on a paid Oberlo subscription plan, then you can cancel it immediately, and then receive a refund or Shopify app credits depending on where you’re billed:

• If you’re billed on Oberlo, then you will receive a refund.
• If you’re billed on Shopify, then you will receive Shopify app credits. 

On June 15, 2022, all remaining Oberlo subscription plans will be canceled, and affected Oberlo accounts will receive refunds or Shopify app credits for unused subscription days.”

The last day you can create an Oberlo account was May 11, 2022. After this date, Oberlo is removed from the Shopify app store, and you will no longer be able to create an account.

What Should I Do With My Business When Oberlo Closes?

If you are interested in continuing your dropshipping business, there is much other similar software to help you continue. Oberlo is suggesting users migrate to a platform called DSers in order to continue with their dropshipping business. 
Although DSers will work to automate orders and import products from suppliers, it is not necessarily the best option to use according to previous Oberlo customers. As more and more customers are having issues with the DSers software and migration, it is worth looking into other tools that will do just as much and, in some cases, more than what DSers offers in order to get the perfect software for your business.

Do I Have To Integrate With DSers?

No, although Oberlo makes it easy with an import option, lots of other software have an import option as well. Oberlo does suggest some other automation software to try as well. We highly suggest doing your research before picking another company to immerse your business in completely. 

After all… it is your business!

What Are Some Alternatives to Using DSers?

1.) Dropified

Now, you might have noticed that you are on the Dropified site, but we highly encourage checking out the other alternatives to ensure you choose the right automation tool. We offer dropship automation and much more. We have been one of Oberlo’s largest competitors and know the dropshipping space very well. We are also working on our new Dropified 2.0 which is going to change the game when it comes to Dropshipping! 

For a full DSers vs Dropified Comparison of our Retro Plan, check it out below!

Oberlo Migration Tool: YES

Price: $67/Once-Time-Payment

Some of Dropified’s Features:

• Unlimited products
• Sell on FB Marketplace & eCommerce platforms (Including Shopify)
• Auto Fulfill from eBay, Alibaba, AliExpress
• List products from 50+ Retail Platforms
• 3 Store Integrations
• Rapid ordering w/ the AliExpress/ Alibaba API
• Organize product research with Product Boards
• Automate pricing markups
• Add unlimited sub-users

2.) Spocket

Spocket helps with allowing you to choose the best products to sell from thousands of dropshipping suppliers all over the world. You can order product samples right from the dashboard in a few clicks to easily test out the products and suppliers. And connecting to an e-commerce store is very easy on Spocket.

Oberlo Migration Tool: NO

Price: Free, $24.99/month, $49.99/month, $99.99/month

Some of Spocket’s Features:

• 250  unique products
• 25  premium products
• Branded invoicing
• 24×7 Chat support
• AliExpress Dropshipping
  

3.) Modalyst Dropshipping

For Retailers, “Modalyst makes it simple for an online store to source, list, and sell an array of niche products. Experience zero upfront inventory costs and total ease of automation when you start your dropshipping business today.”

Oberlo Migration Tool: NO

Price: Free, $35/month, $90/month

Some of the Modalyst Features:

• Add Products in 1-click
• Import All Products Info, Images, and Variants
• Easily Edit All Product Information
• Real-Time Product Update
• Real-Time Inventory Updates
• Order Tracking with Tracking Numbers
• Product Editing Before Adding to Store
• Image & Variant Mapping
• Bulk Add Products to Ecommerce Store

DSers Vs Dropified

Below you will find a full comparison of Dropified’s dropship Retro Plan vs the DSers monthly plans. For even more features, check out the Dropified pricing page!

Feature	Dropified Retro	Dropified Retro Lifetime	DSers Basic	DSers Advanced
Price	$47/month	$67/one-time	Free	$19.00/month
Auto Fulfill from AliExpress
Set up Tracking in Shipping Confirmation Email
Import List
Publish Products to Store in Bulk
Unlimited Product
Send Customized Order Notes from Customers to Suppliers
Organize Product Research with Product Boards
Sell on eCommerce Platforms
3 Store Integrations
Chrome Extension
Auto Fulfill from eBay
Automated Address Fixing
Advanced Pricing Markup Rules
Automated Tracking Number Sync
Split Product
Add Unlimited Sub Users

Time Zone & Currency Settings
Bulk Order Processing
Profit Dashboard
Rapid ordering w/ the AliExpress/ Alibaba API
Auto Fulfill from Alibaba
Automated Pricing Markups
Sell on FB Marketplace
Insiders Report (Weekly)
AliExtractor PRO
Ad Design Studio
Variants Mapping
BOGO/Bundle Mapping
Cost Change Management
High Speed Captcha Solver
Orders Audit
Multi Integrations
Custom Product Descriptions
Advanced Image Editor
Bulk Product Editing
Vendor Control
Simple Image Editor
Product Feeds
Image File Uploader
Customer Service Playbook
Swipe Box Headline Generator
YouZign Graphic Design Studio
TubeHunt

It is important to note, DSers also have a “PRO” plan ($49.99/Month) and an “ENTERPRISE” plan ($499/Month). The only difference between these plans and the “ADVANCED” plan is more products, stores, and more AliExpress Saver Shipping Adaptor products.

Interested in trying the Retro Plan? Sign up here!

You don’t need to worry though, in this article, we’ll be discussing the different types of pricing strategies that you can use for your business. So, without further ado, let’s get straight right into the meat of the content. 

First up on the list is cost-based pricing. 

Cost-Based Pricing

This strategy is pretty much the most straightforward and common pricing strategy out there. It’s possibly the first strategy that people that are getting into a business think about. After all, it's an easy concept to grasp. You just add a fixed percentage and amount to the overall cost of your product to generate a profit. 

It’s easy, simple, and very convenient to calculate. It doesn’t take up much of one’s time, and it also is proven to work plenty of times. It’s a tried and true strategy, and many businesses at one point have tried it, thought about it, or even taken some ideas off of it. 

Take this Baja hoodie e-commerce shop as an example. 

Now, try to think about measuring its overall cost. You need to consider its production costs first, such as materials, labor, and other fixed costs that you might incur along the process. Let’s say the entire process costs around $60. You can start gaining a profit if you charge an extra $5, but that’s not going to cut it if you’re thinking of other external costs that you are incurring in running your business. 

Not to mention that you also have shipping costs or maybe even advertising costs to worry about since you’re an e-commerce business. The best course of action is to try and get at least 50% of the profit margin in order for cost-based pricing to be a viable strategy to use. 

Consumer-Based Pricing

Consumer-based pricing is another pricing strategy that works well for a lot of industries, such as SaaS startups. The reason for this? Simply because consumer-based pricing does not take into account expenses incurred through the production process. Instead, you try to price your product depending on the price that your consumers would be willing to pay. 

This takes advantage of the simple fact that if your market is willing to pay more for your service, why not charge them for that specific amount until you’ve reached the limit? Consumer-based pricing doesn’t care much for competitors with their prices; instead, you just want to worry about trying to optimize your product prices as best as possible along with maintaining the good perception of your consumers on your product’s or service’s value. 

However, there is one catch to this strategy, and it’s that you always need to continue developing and innovating. It doesn’t need to be exactly on your product or service. If you offer your audience convenience in the buying process or make communication lines much easier for them to handle, then you’re going to get the sales that you need. 

It’s not much of a catch. However, in the long term, consumer-based pricing both provides you the profits that you need and the innovation that you will eventually have to strive for in order to be successful. 

Bundle Pricing

Bundled pricing is a favorite pricing strategy for a lot of e-commerce sites on the internet. You also often see it in real-life retail stores in malls or shops. It’s because it’s one of the most effective pricing strategies there is and mixed with the proper marketing techniques, it can generate a lot of interest for your products. 

Bundling products and services in a package and offering a discount to their overall price is a great way to attract a lot of attention due to the simple fact that people might be interested in just getting everything they need at once rather than trying to find one single item.

In the context of e-commerce, this only gets a lot better as you can do a lot of marketing alongside the bundled packages. You can do things such as outbound calling to existing clients through predictive dialers and offer them these bundled discounts. 

You can showcase infographics or photos of the bundled product and its associated accessories quite easily on your website or on other e-commerce sites. You can even send abandoned cart emails if there are customers that have seemingly forgotten about bundled packages in their carts on your online shop. 

Combine discounts, convenience, and quantity then you get a great combo that is quite hard to pass up by many wandering interested customers. 

Dynamic Pricing

As compared to cost-based pricing, dynamic pricing is the exact opposite. It’s a strategy that is all about being flexible and adaptable to different situations. In dynamic pricing, your prices should never be staying on one single price point for too long but instead should move depending on the constant changes of supply and demand. 

You can often see dynamic pricing change on food in particular due to the simple fact that there is a lot of demand there due to it being a necessary item for a lot of people, and supply for food is constantly changing because of weather, natural disasters, bad crop season, pests, and many more. 

In the world of e-commerce, the same can be said. If you are getting a lot of customers in a short period of time, then the only way to go is up and up for your prices. However, that’s not to say that there is also a bad side to this. Oftentimes due to price fluctuation, some consumers wouldn’t be willing to pay whenever the price is high and would prefer to wait things out. 

That’s going to affect your sales conversions in the long run. In a sense, you’re trading high price value sales for the sacrifice for a number of conversions that you ought to receive with a fixed price.  

Market-Based Pricing

Market-based, on the other hand, is a strategy where you take a look at your competitors for the prices that they put up for their products. It’s a lot like being a copycat, but instead of copying from your seatmate, you're taking into account a lot of other competitors and trying to see which one works best for your strategy. 

Considering the prices that your competitors have and just trying to gain the competitive edge by under-cutting them while still maintaining a profit is a great way to get a lot of attention in the market. However, it does carry some costs and questions as well as to why you cost less. 

That’s easily debunkable. If you can provide the necessary quality with the price points that you sell, then customers and consumers will be a lot more attentive to your brand name as you offer the same product as the rest, however at much more affordable prices.

Let’s take this e-commerce paddleboard store as an example. 

If they manage to keep their paddleboard prices low as compared to their competitors while at the same time keeping the quality, customization, and accessories associated with their products, then they are going to be a lot more competitive in their niche market as compared to their competitors because they’re just offering an overall better deal for the consumer. 

There are plenty of tools out there that you can use to easily track your competition, tools such as HubSpot sales hub are well-known for these types of in-depth research, and you can easily base your market-based pricing strategy through this. 

Premium Pricing

Premium pricing is the exact opposite of market-based pricing. On this strategy, you don’t try to undercut your competition but instead, try to push your prices over to the edge. You try to make your product look as expensive but at the same time at a premium quality as compared to others because of the price that you ask for. 

Premium pricing often markets itself in the context of things such as luxury, exclusiveness, and quality. There are companies that stand by these three things and do showcase to its market that it isn’t all talk but does instead offer authentic premium quality goods. 

Take, for example, this protein supplement e-commerce store. 

Their industry is quite special as it revolves around health, and often, people would be willing to pay a premium price for protein supplements that they believe would be of superior quality. It’s these types of products that most consumers are more concerned with the quality rather than the price because it’s often their health that is at stake. 

You can even offer quality discounts for premium pricing, such as military discounts that are often used by large companies to attract specific customers to their product lines. 

Premium pricing is a great strategy, only if you have the necessary resources to back it up. If you are proven to be a lot superior in terms of quality or you offer especially exclusive luxurious products, then you would be able to gain a lot of profit from consumers that are willing to pay the extra mile. 

However, if your brand name can’t catch up on the hype, then you’d be in a risky position that nobody might even be interested in buying your products or worse, consider your products to be a cash-grab or a scam. 

Before Executing Your Pricing Strategy – 

Once you’ve decided on what pricing strategy to execute for your business, you need a few more things to check and get ready before entirely investing in the dive. It’ll be bad if your initial change and momentum gain is abruptly brought to a halt by some factors that could have been prevented. 

Get Stocked!

First thing’s first, you need to always know the strong points and weak points of your business. If you lack the assets to back up your inventory stocks, then consider first getting an inventory management platform to prevent bottlenecking your sales line. After all, executing the right pricing strategy also needs the proper tools to back it up.

This not only prevents you from losing out on potential sales but you can also grow trust with your customers due to the simple fact that you can deliver what they ordered. The only worse thing than having bad prices is not having enough products to sell in the first place. 

Appeal To Your Target Niche 

After stocking up, make sure you have the necessary marketing capabilities to sell your products and their appealing price lists. Make your e-commerce store as appealing as possible to your target niche. In your website or in your social media pages, try to make as much buzz as possible and even try to appeal using aesthetic imagery and graphics.

Market as much as possible before implementing any new types of pricing strategies. If you don’t have the capacity to do any of these or if you’re just starting out then you don’t have to worry much about marketing new pricing strategies. Instead, just focus on marketing your brand and business first and establishing a foundation for your future business goals. 

Ready Your Website

The last thing that you need to do is to make sure that your website and other e-commerce platforms are all set and ready to go. This is the final crucial step that will decide your new pricing strategies and e-commerce store to be successful in the end. 

Nobody would be able to buy your products and services, let alone see them if you did not go through with your web designers on how ready and capable your website is to handle the traffic. 

Use UI research & analytics tools to make the best out of your website before the grand finale. Make sure as well to maximize and optimize your website as soon as possible. 

Not to say that traffic will start flowing in surges, but oftentimes, businesses make the mistake of not being ready for any uncommon contingencies such as introducing a product into the market and being an instant hit. Too many companies in the past have lost a lot of potential sales due to their initial momentum being stalled by overwhelming customers.

See What Works! 

After executing and getting the initial sales of your pricing strategy, it’s important to see what results did your company receive. At this stage, the only thing left to do is to ensure that everything goes smoothly and to check if and when the pricing strategy worked. It’s best to constantly monitor sales and marketing for a period of time to fully understand if the pricing strategy that you have chosen is working in your favor. 

This information would be all the more valuable for you if you ever decide to switch pricing strategies again or to even scale your current pricing strategy to the next level with your present business. After all, information does give better guidance in the decision-making processes of growth hacking your business to the next level with the pricing strategies that you have at hand. 

Key Takeaways: 

There are plenty of pricing strategies that you can choose for your business, and while some work best in certain conditions and while some do not, it goes without saying that pricing strategies are essential for the success of any e-commerce business that is looking to set its foot into the internet markets.

Author Bio

Burkhard Berger is the founder of Novum. You can follow him on his journey from 0 to 100,000 monthly visitors on novumhq.com. His articles include some of the best growth hacking strategies and digital scaling tactics that he has learned from his own successes and failures.

While dropshipping is great for keeping a low overhead, it cannot succeed to its fullest without solid digital marketing strategies. For people to notice your brand and become customers, there’s some work you need to do. You should think of marketing tactics. But which one to choose among the dozens of approaches?

We know the answer to this question. This post will focus on 3 known digital marketing strategies that still rock and will make your dropshipping store strive.

Challenges of dropshipping marketing 

Before diving into marketing practices, let's discuss why you need it. Being quite a well-known strategy, dropshipping has a few challenges to overcome. 

Competitive environment 

_{Source: Google Trends}

From the screenshot above, you see that high levels of competition are constantly growing in the dropshipping segment. Unless you have signed an agreement with the supplier for them to exclusively dropship certain goods, there will always be others selling the same things with sometimes a better price.

Relying solely on dropshipping means that retailers will always need to find ways to stand out in the competition and emphasize their own strong sizes.

When developing a marketing strategy, you need to look at your competitors, carefully analyze their metrics: pricing, conversion rates, customer reviews, and other e-commerce KPIs. As a result, knowing your competitors will allow you to start with the marketing efforts.

Keep in mind that except for brand promotion and customer engagement, you should be able to provide a high-quality customer experience and service.

Target audience identification

With the competition comes another challenge, you need to identify your target audience and not try to attract all the buyer personas possible. For example, you are operating in the online clothing field or any other oversaturated segment. There are dozens of consumer types, and it's a real challenge to interact with all of them. That's why finding your own niche in a broader segment is a solid way to obtain identity and attract target customers.

Without understanding customer segments, their behavior, and communication preferences, it's also challenging to choose a correct dropshipping marketing strategy. In this way, focusing on a smaller segment of customers and leveraging a smaller number of marketing tactics may solve the challenge.

There are also two challenges that indirectly affect marketing efforts:

Budget restraints

Usually, to get a better profit, your store should have an increased sales volume. To increase sales, you'd probably require promotion, advertising, and acquisition tactics. These, in turn, need a budget. That's why the challenge of underfinancing can affect your marketing. 

Operations costs will always take a good chunk of the profit. To keep the balance with marketing expenditures, a detailed plan and roadmap to understand upcoming marketing spendings are a must. Otherwise, a decline in marketing budgeting is inevitable.

Suppliers factor

With dropshipping, there is always the need to rely on a number of suppliers who execute orders. Related failures can harm customer experience with your store. Imagine you have started a promotional campaign for a product, warm up your customers, but there is a manufacturing delay. Some customers will wait, some customers will turn from you. And the entire campaign with all the spending becomes useless.

It is essential to ensure there is always a Plan B for the situations when the supplier fails to operate as agreed.

Dropshipping digital marketing strategies to have

With all the existing dropshipping challenges, it still remains one of the effective e-commerce approaches with an expected 29% of annual market growth in the next 4 years.  

And while it might be hard to start with dropshipping marketing, your store needs it to bloom, develop, and withstand the competition.

Below, there are 3 digital marketing strategies that you should consider trying.

Content still works 

You're now reading this article on the Dropified blog. That's because people still read and like blogs. We find blogs valuable, trust them, and follow the things brands describe or advise.

_{Source: Dropified}

Launching a blog is a great and relatively inexpensive way to talk to your target audience. The major benefit of blogging is generating more website traffic and attracting new customers. 

With SEO magic, your blog can increase relevant, organic, and free traffic. You'll have a higher ranking, a bigger number of daily visitors and potential consumers. 

Keep in mind the following core principles of content marketing in 2021:

Only valuable content. A 500-word post about how cool your store is won't work anymore. People strive for valuable content. Product comparisons, posts about trends in your niche, practical tips, personal stories, roundups with expert quotes are the content you should produce. Blogging is about providing value foremost and not about just advertising yourself.

Consistency in posting. No need to post something every day. But try to post on a somewhat regular basis. You'll need to have a content calendar, think of a blog post series describing an area in detail. Never forget about one essential point: quality over quantity.

Various types of content. Content marketing is not about blogging exclusively. People like visual content, so think of making infographics, product reviews with high-quality images. Landing pages for special offers or occasions are a good way to experiment with a more promotional type of content. Creating a podcast series can be a good move as well. 

Besides, starting a newsletter, as a combination of email and content marketing, where you can share your store news, best blog posts are a way to distribute your content and engage without much effort.

In general, volumes of content production depend on your goals and, of course, resources. Starting a blog and focusing on textual content empowered by some original visuals is not that expensive to experiment with. You have an option to hire freelance writers and designers, use AI copy services, and post on your own.

Social media is worth trying 

Social media presents a good opportunity to spread the word about your dropshipping store. Setting up accounts, showcasing products you have, replying to comments, addressing questions, building trust – through social media, you will have all the means to engage with your target audience. 

Additionally, with such an abundance of different social media platforms, you can choose the ones that will suit you best. In the post-Covid environment, Instagram, for example, has increased its advertising potential due to 43% growth in visits. Needless to mention, TikTok bloomed.

_{Source: Wishpond}

But with the various social media platforms, the question arises: which one should I choose? According to the Oberlo research, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram are among the most promising social media sites to grow your business. 

Undoubtedly, a selection of which social media to try depends on your niche and target audience. However, Facebook and Instagram work well. If you want to boost your brand’s presence and get noticed, ads on Facebook and Instagram can help you do that.

You can also experiment with non-obvious social media channels like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, or Telegram.

Overall, social media is good because it's focused on customer engagement and fast promotion delivery. You have an opportunity to create different types of content: textual posts, videos, stories, images, carousel posts, etc. The main disadvantage is that it's a trend-oriented, pretty expensive full-time activity. It gets harder to engage customers using the same patterns.

Video marketing is a new black 

To buy a product, you need to see it from different angles – it's much better than reading reviews. No wonder that 90% of people are ready to complete a purchase after seeing a product review video. 

_{Source: Grey Sky Films}

It is easier for consumers to get a sense of the item, and for you to present your store and goods in a visually appealing way.

For a dropshipping store, videos can make a huge difference and help it withstand massive competition with similar brands. You can start with product reviews, short how-to videos, or a video series. Each and every video you publish can be distributed via YouTube, shared as a blog post, shared on social media as a part of your video marketing strategy. 

Another great way to use videos is to cooperate with influencers, experts who are working in a similar niche and ask them to review the products you offer. People have a natural sense of trust and developed empathy towards those they have been watching for a while and will gladly try a new product advised by a trusted person. You might even consider sending an influencer some products for giveaways to their audience to create some buzz as well. 

When you can show your potential consumers explicit videos of your products, the latter might become the needed conversion point that results in sales and becomes that advantage for your brand to differentiate from others. 

Even though having a video marketing strategy is worth it, the process of creating videos is usually not fast and requires resources. 

Conclusion

If you want to get your dropshipping store noticed, digital marketing is your go-to strategy. Among several approaches, the three mentioned above are must-haves. They are relatively easy to implement, they can be interested and mutually empowered, and they show good results.

It would be nice to check your thoughts and the strategies you use. Share them in the comments section.

Author Bio

Dmytro Zaichenko is a Marketing Specialist at Coupler.io, a data importing and synchronizing service. He has 6+ years of experience in content making. Apart from writing, he's passionate about networking and the NBA. 

Given that most consumers are already desensitized to these types of marketing strategies, more businesses are looking for a different approach. They need something fresh to scale their business. 

One marketing strategy that can help with all of these needs is called inbound marketing. The strategies used here don’t force the brand to be in front of the customer’s face. But rather, these are strategies that attract customers to look into the business and search more about the brand. 

If you’ve been looking for a different approach for your marketing strategies, consider knowing more about inbound marketing. Below are different activities you can do when it comes to this type of marketing.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Some say that inbound marketing is a sure way to improve the current state of your business. When it is partnered with other softwares like growth hacking tools, it’s a pair that’s a match made in heaven. Utilizing both things allows your business to grow at a rapid pace.

But what exactly is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is the process of making your customers find your company. It’s the opposite of outbound marketing wherein you put your brand out there through billboard ads, event sponsorships, print marketing, TV ads, etc.

The process involved in inbound marketing is all about showing your value to your customers and prospects. By giving value, you attract customers to know more about your business. You intrigue them on what your brand is all about. 

On top of creating valuable content, businesses also make sure that these campaigns and strategies are tailored to their audience – it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. 

Personalization gives out a higher conversion and click-through rate. This type of content is known to have better metrics and is capable of hitting marketing KPIs. 

Now that you know what inbound marketing is, it’s time to go deeper into the topic. Let’s discuss the different inbound marketing strategies that you can do right now.

9 Inbound Marketing Strategies

1. Share Your Story

Nothing draws people more than a well-told story. As mentioned, inbound marketing is all about attracting your audience. And a way to do this is by telling your brand’s story. 

There’s a reason why companies share their “why” to the public so that they can attract consumers that support and believe in their cause.

Nike’s reason is to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. Tesla's goal is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy.

Once people know what your business or brand stands for, they’ll be more inclined to purchase from you if they support your beliefs.

2. Be Social In The Digital Space

Whenever you see someone that’s friendly, kind, and smart at a conference, it’s impossible to resist the feeling of making acquaintances with the person. You see no risk in being friends with the guy. 

This is exactly the persona you want your business to be seen in the online world. So how can you show that you’re friendly, kind, and smart? You can do so on social media platforms. Be friendly to your audience, cater to their needs, and add value to them.

Once they see these characteristics, they’ll be drawn towards your profile and proceed to your website to know more about you.

Some big companies value this aspect so much that they invest in a social media engagement tool to make sure they’re on top of every response or comment they get. 

Look at how Key West Aloe puts in the effort to respond to every comment in their posts:

Notice how it’s not an automated response. It’s personalized and in context to what their audience is saying. 

3. Create Value-Packed Blog Contents

A way to add value to your audience is to share information through written content. All sizes of businesses do this because it’s one way to teach their audience, share their products, and display their expertise.

If blogs weren’t helpful, big companies like Amazon, Tesla, and Microsoft wouldn’t have spent time and effort in doing this activity. But that is simply not the case. Blogs benefit e-commerce stores no matter the size.

Blogging is an avenue for brands to educate their audience. It’s also a way to share updates and announcements. 

Showmojo, a self-showing rental property platform, uses its blog page to announce its products and promotions. It also has blog posts that inform and educate its audiences.

An additional tip to create a value-packed blog is to include images. This makes the overall content engaging and easy to read.  You can insert tables, diagrams, and even infographics.

Look at how e-commerceCEO’s blog on How To Sell Amazon. Not only is it teaching its audience a detailed way on how to do something but their overall content is engaging as well. It used diagrams, quotes, screenshots, and graphs.

Remember, one of the most important benefits of blogging is creating content that can improve the lives of your audience. The most engaging blogs are topics that can help with their business and personal development.

4. Guest Blogging

We believe that guest blogging is one of the top inbound marketing strategies out there. 

Guest blogging is a way for bloggers to display their knowledge and skill in front of a whole new audience. It’s a way to show your value to different sets of people. 

Once you’ve created a great post and people see value from it, it can start a whole new inbound traffic for your website.

A guest blog if created properly can attract motivated leads, qualified traffic, increase brand visibility, and build authority for your business.

5. Use Infographics

As effective as blogs can be, some people just don’t have the time to read a whole article. If you believe your audience is in the same group, you can use infographics.

Infographics combine both the graphic elements and the written part of the content. It allows businesses to present big ideas in small spaces. Infographics condense information into one image that makes it visually appealing to see. 

It’s an advantage to use infographics because it’s one of the best ways to affect learning and information the most. According to Forbes, it’s the first among powerpoints, articles with images, and blog posts.

So if you want to show value or present a unique idea to your customers and prospects, using infographics is one of the best ways of doing so. If you don’t know how to create such images, don’t settle. Instead, consider hiring freelance graphic designers to cater to your idea.

Take a look at how Spores explained its tokenomics (a topic that’s new to many) to its audience using a single infographic:

Another example is how MannequinMall used an infographic to make the topic of dressing mannequins interesting:

Rather than discussing each point in a blog form, they used colorful graphics to engage the audience as they read the whole thing. Plus, each point only comes with a short description – they didn’t settle with long paragraphs. This made the whole infographic and the whole content easy to read.

6. Use The Virality Potential Of Videos

If there’s one content that has the highest potential to go viral, it’s video content. That’s why a lot of businesses outsource videographers just to have video content released. To some, they do it on their own since there’s many free online video maker software out there.

Videos are much more engaging than an image and a set of paragraphs. Businesses can express themselves more in a video than in any other format. They also make product videos to really highlight the best features of their item.

But not every video is created equally. The length for it to be engaging and received well by people will depend on the market. To some businesses, their audience likes 1 minute or less videos. As for others, their audience likes a longer format. 

So if you’re unfamiliar with what your customers like, it’s time to do some testing on your end. See what kind of videos they engage in the most. If you’ve seen the metrics, stick to what’s working and has the most engagements.

Once you’ve determined the perfect video length for your audience, it’s time to experiment on what type of video content do they like the most – do they love tutorials, how-to guides, or one-minute explanations?

Video content though isn’t just limited to advertisements – webinars and online conferences with customers also fall under this category.

7. Influencer Marketing

Most brands don’t realize just how influential these influencers are. Some of these influencers have successfully built a solid fan base that is really loyal to them. That’s why some businesses always allocate a budget for influencer marketing. 

Inbound marketing plus influencer marketing is such a great combination to have that research shows 86% of marketers use this strategy.

The reason why this combination works is that audiences don’t feel like they’re being sold to when they hear it from their favorite influencer. 

It’s natural for a business to market their products but most of the time, consumers believe that they’re marketing it for their own financial good. But if it comes from a person that they look up to, it feels more of a recommendation than an effort to sell them.

The payment structure could differ per business. A brand can approach an influencer and talk about being an affiliate of their business. Wherein they’ll introduce a referral program or an affiliate structure that works for both parties.

8. Give Freebies

Aside from giving out valuable content like blogs and videos, another option for you to do is to give out free digital resources. 

Consumers are naturally drawn to free things. That’s why we have free tastes in groceries and free promos in shopping malls. 

By giving out free digital products, not only do you get attention but you also give them a sneak peek of what your business is about. 

If you’re a personal brand that teaches SEO marketing, you can give out a free PDF of your books. If they like the product, they’ll be searching for more resources coming from you. That’s where you can introduce your other books or services.

But freebies aren’t limited to digital products, giving your clients free consultation or an hour of your time will be greatly appreciated. 

By giving out free things, you’re not forcing your business on your customers. It’s the consumers that are naturally coming to you. And if they like what they’ve received, they’ll surely come back for more.

9. Search Engine Optimize Everything

What better way to end an inbound marketing strategy section than making everything search engine optimized. 

A strategy that’s used by many to not be intrusive is to show up on search engines. Whenever your target audience is searching for keywords that relate to your business, you want your website or page to be on the first page of Google.

It’s no secret that ranking on Google is a hard feat to achieve but it’s not impossible. A way to increase your chances of ranking is to optimize everything you produce online. 

From your blog posts to video content, you need to make sure that they are optimized. Here are a few ways to do so:

• Make original content
• Picking the right keywords
• Add meta descriptions
• Insert meta tags
• Add relevant links
• Construct attention-grabbing titles
• Use headings properly
• Include call-to-actions
• Make it engaging
• Promote the content

5 Problems That Inbound Marketing Solves

Now that you know the best strategies under inbound marketing, it’s time to further convince you what this marketing does to your business problems.

Most people think that outbound strategies are the only way to see real conversions but allow me to reveal 5 problems that inbound marketing solves:

1. Driving traffic to your business

We all want traffic going to our business. Traffic means more people get to see our products which results in a higher chance of converting a sale. 

When you optimize every content you put out there, you increase the chances of getting seen organically without spending a single dime on promotion or advertisements.

Getting more traffic is one of the problems solved by inbound marketing. When you’re not trying to forcefully push your brand to be seen, consumers will naturally check your brand out.

2. Brand awareness

When you bring value to your audience, it’s natural for them to share your content especially when they see it as helpful for others. 

That’s one of the benefits of putting time into your content. The greater the quality is, the more people appreciate it and share it with others. 

Plus, with the added effort of optimizing your content, you increase the chance of ranking in Google or other search engines. Just being on the first page allows people all over the world to know your brand. 

3. Customer retention

When you take care of your audience, the more loyal they will be. By giving valuable information that can improve their lives and business, they won’t look for any other business anymore. 

If you give them free digital resources because they need them, they’ll greatly appreciate the gesture and will continue transacting with your business.

Looking after your audience through the content you produce will give great results both short and long term.

4. Conversion rates

Do you know what makes people buy? It’s convincing them that your product solves their problem. But the “convincing” part shouldn’t come in the form of sales pitches or the act of using predictive dialers. Instead, approach your customers like a friend. Converse with them in the same manner as well.

This strategy is the foundation of many inbound strategies like conversational commerce and personalized marketing. 

Ultimately, when you see them as a friend rather than customers, your marketing campaigns will see improved results and a better conversion rate.

5. Increased sales

All of the things mentioned above only point to one direction – an increase in sales. More traffic to the business increases brand awareness, more customers being loyal, and a high conversion rate leads to more sales. 

Conclusion

The inbound marketing strategies mentioned here attract customers for the reason that it doesn’t feel like they’re being sold to. The strategies here are educational, engaging, and sought out by consumers themselves. 

When inbound marketing is done right with the proper effort and time allocated to it, the strategies can ultimately bring you more sales and can grow your business exponentially. 

Author Bio

Burkhard Berger is the founder of awesomex. You can follow him on his journey from 0 to 100,000 monthly visitors on www.awesomex.com. His articles include some of the best growth hacking strategies and digital scaling tactics that he has learned from his own successes and failures.

What's Inside…

Greg Gives The Inside Scoop On The Fundamentals Needed For Turning Your Idea Into A Legitimate Business

Gregory Meade is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of CROSSNET. Greg manages all aspects in the company from marketing, finances, legal to employee and contractor relations. He helps generate daily ideas that will lead the business down the path of success.

Greg is an adept marketer forged in the start-up world with a black hat social media background. Seven years of building multiple successful companies has taught him how to put together the perfect team.

Featured on Forbes, The Today Show, Entrepreneur, and more!

Website: https://hydrodog.com

What's Inside…

Anthony Gives The Inside Scoop On Using Authenticity and Transparency To Create A Customer Base of Raving Fans

Anthony Amos founded the mobile dog-grooming company HydroDog at age 21 during his off-time as a professional rugby player. His franchise model achieved massive growth and success in Australia, and Anthony has introduced HydroDog to The United States through the extended, nationwide 50-state BatheToSave.com Tour that includes his entire family in public dog-washing events benefitting local shelters and raising awareness for rescue adoption of dogs at a time of epidemic-level canine euthanasia.  This tour’s legacy also continues beyond the Amos family tour, in the form of regular public dog-washing events conducted by local HydroDog franchises that continue to expand rapidly throughout the country.

Within four years HydroDog had grown to over 100 franchises in every single state & territory across Australia. It was the first franchise of its kind to be in every state and territory of Australia. After the 100th franchise milestone was reached, HydroDog implemented a Master Franchise model taking the franchise system to the next level. All states and territories in Australia were sold within an 18 month period and grew to nearly 200 franchises in half the time it took to get to 100.

Website: https://hydrodog.com

Are you ready to create a customer base of raving fans? Be sure to listen in!

And one way to do that is through trust badges. These are the stamps or seals that are strategically plastered on store pages to make the consumers feel comfortable in buying their product or availing of their service.

But what are the different types of trust badges? And how does it help with gaining customer trust? These are only some of the questions that we’ll answer in this article. 

We’ll also talk about why trust is important, studies on trust badges, and how to increase consumer confidence beyond those badges.

Why Is Customer Trust Important?

Before we discuss the different Shopify trust badges, it’s important to know why you need to establish trust in the first place.

Customers are what makes businesses work. Without them, your business would be non-existent. It would just burn cash and not give any revenue. It wouldn’t flourish and do what it’s set out to be.  

And a way to avoid these unfortunate scenarios would be to establish trust between you and your customers.

Trust is the core foundation of any relationship. And in business, your relationship with your client is one of the most important things to nourish and keep.

But trust isn’t easily given when money is involved. Whether you’re an online business or a brick-and-mortar store, gaining your customers’ trust is vital to growing your business.

Trust Badges On Shopify

Customers are more cautious than ever when spending money online. How many times have we read people that have worked hard to make money only to be scammed?

These malicious acts that have happened online have made consumers wary of their transactions on the internet. A lot of data breaches have happened throughout the years and a lot of scams have been experienced by people. 

In the online world, SEO and digital marketing can only do so much for a store when it comes to gaining trust and building brand familiarity.

This is why an e-commerce store needs to double its effort in establishing trust between them and its customers. 

In the e-commerce space, trust is a hard thing to establish when you don’t physically see the customers. The same goes for the POV of your clients, they can’t hold the products and see who’s behind the business.

So how does an e-commerce store present trust? In Shopify, they use trust badges. Trust badges are icons you place on your store to make the customer feel confident in buying from you.

Other than gaining trust, these badges also help with your sales and marketing numbers. Tools like predictive dialers, email software, and the likes need a bit of your effort to see changes in your numbers. While trust badges are effortless ways to see an increase in marketing conversion and store sales.

You usually see these badges on the checkout page and landing pages. Because these are parts of the store where the business needs to convert. That’s where people decide to pay money and give more information about themselves.

Other badges also signify the post-check-out experience. Some of them display guarantees and warranties that the store allows.

Successful e-commerce websites have gotten everything down to a tee. Everything you see on their website is strategically placed for a customer to convert. And you can do this for your store as well.

For you to know which trust badge to use, you first need to understand each of their functions. 

Types Of Trust Badges To Add To Your Store

If you don’t know what trust badges are, these are sticker-looking icons or seals that e-commerce stores place on their websites.

It’s not placed there to brag that they are certified but they are plastered for customers to have more faith in the business.

Since trust badges help you in converting more prospects to customers, it’s only important that you know the different types.

Payment Badges

This is the most common badge you’ll see in an e-commerce store. In most cases, you’ll see this badge on the checkout page.

Payment badges are the most widely used because cart abandonment usually happens at this stage. Check-out pages are the last page before a customer releases the payment to the seller. 

This is where all the doubt comes in. All the bad things that have happened to them online usually goes back to their minds at this page.

All of the scam stories they’ve heard from their friends and family are recalled and will cause them to think twice about the decision they’re going to make.

But if you add the logos of the payment providers you accept in your store, it will make your customers be more at ease. Plus it also makes your business more reputable.

By adding familiar brand names like Visa, Mastercard, or Paypal on your checkout page, it gives the customers a sense of safety and trust. It makes your business look like it’s associated with these multinational companies and homegrown names.

Studies showed that if you use familiar names on your checkout page, conversions will be a lot higher and can greatly help in scaling your e-commerce store.

Security Badges

These badges address all the website security concerns of your customers. 

With phishing websites and hacks being still prevalent in today’s online world, customers like to know whether they’re shopping on a safe website or platform.

Luckily, you have these security badges that you can display. 

Any smart shopper knows that an e-commerce store should have an SSL certification. Every top online business has this for its website.

This prevents any leak of information between the customer and the store – making every exchanged information safe. 

With Shopify, every store has this certification.

Other than SSL certification, those McAfee and Norton icons mean that customers are assured that the checkout process will be safe. Seeing those icons is like an indirect way of saying to your customers that their money is safe here.

Security badges go beyond the security protocols of a website. These badges also cover whether your product is 100% organic, baby-safe, made out of pure cotton, etc. 

You’re making your customers know that you’re staying true to what you’re advertising – that your products are indeed made out of specific materials.

Money-back Guarantees

A major roadblock when a customer buys is the possibility of the product not working. This is a very understandable problem since they don’t get to see the product physically. 

And if there’s one thing that makes shoppers at rest, it’s money-back guarantees. As soon as they see this, it can erase 50% of the doubts they have in their minds.

A common question that’s in their head would be “What if the product won’t work? Will I be refunded if that happens?”

Just by showing your money-back guarantee badge, it makes your customers clear out half of their doubts.

It reassures your customers that they don’t have anything to fear when buying from your store. If the product is defective, they know they’ll get refunded.

Some would even say that having a money-back guarantee makes the business more legitimate. It also conveys confidence from the business that their products work.

Free Shipping and Return Badges

These badges are in line with money-back guarantees. Stores use these seals to further push the customer to buy from them. 

Return badges give additional confidence for customers to buy since they are protected in case the product isn’t working. It’s much like a money-back guarantee.

With free shipping badges, these are for customers who are very keen on shipping fees.

Sometimes these customers don’t continue buying the products when they see that the shipping fee exceeds their estimated value.

Having a free shipping badge on your check-out or product page can play an important factor when you’re looking to convert customers.

Take 3wishes for example. They’ve utilized their checkout page to display their hassle-free return process and shipping badges.

Endorsement Badges

This badge shows customers the groups and organizations that your business belongs to. When you belong to third-party organizations or associations that are seen as credible and have high member standards, make sure to ask for a badge from them.

When people see that a credible organization has validated your business as part of their group, customers will be more confident in buying from your store.

That’s why some businesses try to get verified from organizations like Better Business Bureau and Google Customer Reviews. If they have badges from these groups, it solidifies the legitimacy of their store.

In order to be part of the Beter Business Bureau, you need to comply with their accreditation standards which is not an easy task to do.

As for Google Customer Reviews, you’ll need to have at least 100 reviews. This badge displays the store’s rating score of 1-5 stars.

This badge is good for any business. Whether you’re in the reselling business, the service industry, or you’re a business with your own products, having these badges makes your customers feel more at ease when doing business with you.

An example of a business that has greatly leveraged a Google badge would be Reliablesoft. The business gives out SEO certification when customers finish its SEO course. One of the company’s unique selling propositions is that they are a Google Partner.

Of course, people who want to know how to rank in Google would prefer to learn from an accredited Google partner. 

But these badges are not limited to those companies alone. When you’re an Amazon Partner like Aura, you need to display that too.

Endorsement badges are not only limited to the likes of Google and Amazon. As mentioned earlier, if you’re part of a group that has high standards, you can include that as well. 

This is what Paperstreet did with their website. Paperstreet is a company that does digital marketing for law firms.  With this, not only do they have a Google Partner badge but they also have trust badges from different legal marketing groups which shows that they’re fit to be in their niche.

Doing business with big companies and organizations helps boost your company’s reputation and trust factor. So make sure to display yours.

Studies On Trust Badges

When people want to know whether you’re a business that’s worth spending money on, they usually look for online reviews and read what people have to say about you. If they’re not convinced with this, this is where your trust badges can enter the picture.

Sometimes when owners want to prove the legitimacy of their store, they’d use all of the trust badges available. But this just causes confusion for their customers. Some would even think that they are overdoing it.

So to know which trust badge to use, I’ve gathered all relevant data and conclusions from different studies done on these badges. We will see in an objective manner what really matters to people.

Let’s see the effect of trust badges and how they can help with your marketing goals.

In a study done by Blue Fountain Media, it showed that when you place trust badges where they matter the most, it can drastically increase your conversions.

In their experiment, they tested two Request a Quote forms. One had a privacy note while the other had a VeriSign trust seal minus the privacy note.

As you can see the change was very minimal – it’s just the addition of one trust badge. 

But by simply adding this VeriSign Trusted seal, Blue Fountain Media reported that their conversion rate blew up. Their conversion rate has increased by a whopping 42%.

This can mean that customers would rather see a trust badge than a note from the company itself.

Next is a survey by Baymard Institute. They questioned people on what badge gives them the best sense of trust when paying online. 

After filtering the responses and running the survey for three days, they got this result:

Data shows that when customers see Norton and McAfee badges on the store, they’d be more comfortable transacting with that business.

So it’s a good idea to use these badges on store pages where they matter the most.

Another study done by Baymard showed this result when consumers were asked for their reasons for abandonment during checkout:

As you can see, the top reason for checkout abandonment was because of extra costs being too high. These extra costs are the store’s shipping and tax fees. 

With this data alone, we can address the issue by placing a free shipping badge on the checkout. Just like the 3wishes example mentioned earlier.

Statista has also done their research on the top reasons for cart abandonment. They found out that the top reasons were still because of unexpected high shipping fees. This was the same results with their 2015 study on the same topic:

Lastly, a study done by Conversion XL showed that when you use trust badges that come from Paypal, Norton, VeriSign, Google, BBB, Mastercard, and Visa, customers feel more secure when they shop online.

This just shows how familiarity with brands can gain trust from your customers. And using their brand as trust badges for your store can lower cart abandonment rates, increase conversions, increase trust, and sales.

So by analyzing the data from these studies, we can conclude three things:

1. Proper usage of trust badges is important for conversion.

2. High extra fees on shipping and taxes make customers back out from purchase.

3. Familiarity breeds consumer trust and confidence.

Where To Place Your Trust Badges?

Now that you know the importance of trust badges and how they can affect customer conversion, it’s time to understand where to properly place them in your store.

When you have trust badges scattered all over your website, they won’t be as effective as they should be. Certain badges should be strategically placed on each page of your store.

For example, when a customer is skimming through your product page, it makes no sense that you place a VeriSign badge there. It will be more effective to place that badge when you ask for information about them.

Remember each badge addresses a certain issue that your customer might think.

A Mastercard or Visa badge must be used on checkout pages to let the customers know that the payment process is safe. The same thing for free shipping badges, it makes customers see that they have fewer fees to worry about.

Your home page could be plastered with Google verified, BBB accreditation, and Paypal verified. This lets your customers know immediately that your store is legitimate and safe.

Badges that act as seals of security can be used when you ask for their emails or names for your lead generation. This tells them that their information would be kept private between them and your business.

If you want to know where to effectively put your badges, asking your customers directly isn’t a bad idea. It’s the easiest way for you to know how to address their pain points. 

You can do this through paid online surveys, feedback forms, and suggestion forms. This allows you to know directly how you can make your customer experience better.

Gaining Customers’ Trust Beyond The Badges

Gaining customers’ trust shouldn’t be dependent on badges alone. There are a lot of ways to gain customer trust beyond using seals. 

Another way of gaining trust would be asking brands that have used your service if you can use their name and logo to serve as social trust and proof.

An example of this would be Preply. They used these major companies that have used their service to convince prospects that they are legitimate and trustworthy.

The same thing for iNecta. To convince food companies that their food ERP system works wonders, they’ve displayed the different food services that have used it:

Another way to gain trust would be to mention where you’ve been featured. When big publications like Forbes, CNN, CNBC, and ABC have featured your brand, it’s an advantage to display them on your website – just like what Finli did.

Being featured by such big companies is a reputation booster for any business. It will definitely help you increase the percentage of landing a client or customer since they’ve seen that these major corporations have worked with your product. 

Other ways to effectively gain trust from your customers would be to:

• Display honest reviews on your store
• Hold online events to show expertise in your field
• Create a strong social media presence
• Produce quality online content
• Offer excellent customer service
• Telling your brand story
• Be honest and transparent with your business processes
• Know your customers

Conclusion

Trust badges increase the value of your online store. It makes your store look professional, legitimate, and trustworthy.

But when you use these trust badges, make sure you honor them. When you say a 30-day money-back guarantee, make sure to do everything you can to make that true. Because remember that trust is a hard thing to build and an easy thing to break. 

Also, gaining trust from customers should be beyond badges. Showing where you’ve been featured, displaying what companies have used your services, and sharing reviews are just some of the ways to let your customers know more about you.

As mentioned earlier, trust is the core foundation of any relationship. And the same thing applies to the relationship that businesses have with their customers. When a store establishes trust with its customers, lots of positive things can come from it.

Author Bio
Burkhard Berger is the founder of awesomex. You can follow him on his journey from 0 to 100,000 monthly visitors on www.awesomex.com. His articles include some of the best growth hacking strategies and digital scaling tactics that he has learned from his own successes and failures.