17 Dropshipping Tips That Actually Increase Sales (2024)
The most important thing to increase sales for your dropshipping business is to focus on marketing efforts.
Since the business model is largely hands-off, this is one of the areas where you can differentiate yourself from your competition.
However, there are many more dropshipping tips that we will discuss below to help you move your business forward.
Dropshipping Tips
1. Pick High Margin Products
Picking products to sell that generate high profit margins is a crucial factor in running a dropshipping business successfully. A great margin rate to aim for is about 200-300%, or 2-3x the product cost.
You will have a lot of additional costs that will eat into your margins, so selling products with low margins can harm your profitability. Plus, it takes the same amount of effort to sell small-margin products as it is with high-margin products.
How to Do It
One dropshipping business tip is to do thorough research to identify products that you can source at low prices but sell at a good markup. Not all cheap goods can be sold for a sizable profit.
Compare suppliers to ensure you’re sourcing goods at the most competitive prices, and make sure you don’t compromise the quality of your goods just because they’re cheap, either.
2. Filter Out Reliable Suppliers
The most important thing when finding good suppliers to succeed in dropshipping business is top-notch communication and quality of service. Whenever you have an issue, you should be able to get assistance quickly.
This is especially important to keep your customers happy since you run a dropshipping business and the suppliers are the ones directly involved in fulfilling customer orders.
Thus, you need suppliers you can rely on and will help you troubleshoot problems when something adverse occurs.
How to Do It
Call vendors directly to request information and see how they approach you and any questions you may have. Or, you can send an email and see how quickly they respond, how they respond to you, and how structured or clear their responses are.
Contact as many suppliers as you can to collect this data, and show preferences for suppliers who offer real-time data feeds, which is essential for order management software.
3. Use Order Management Software
Good order management will help to grow a dropshipping store by automating order processing. This is especially great if you have multiple suppliers, which is a highly recommended dropshipping beginner tip.
This software will help you sync inventory in multiple locations and track data with vendors so you can be as nimble and responsive to customer orders as possible.
Apps like DuoPlan, Syncee, or a web-based service like Ordoro can help you sync inventory seamlessly.
How to Do It
Make sure to vet software programs with existing customer reviews and references to ensure the platforms actually do what they say they do. Check to see if the software will support the types of inventory management that you utilize.
The goal of software programs like these is to make your life easier and automate more of the business. So, see all the different processes they can streamline for your dropshipping business, like order fulfillment, supplier management, and more.
4. Always Order Product Samples First
To drive more sales for your dropshipping business and earn repeat sales, you need to ensure you’re selling quality products. Order product samples first from your suppliers to check out the quality of the goods for yourself.
Plus, having a sample will allow you to take quality product photos for your website, and help you write more accurate product descriptions.
How to Do It
Order samples from a few different suppliers in order to test them out to see which one is best.
Try the products out on a couple of different days or occasions to make sure they hold up and use this data to help you select the best supplier for your business.
5. Conduct Continuous Quality Control
Even after you’ve tested out the samples from your suppliers and chosen the best ones to do business with, you’re not fully done.
On an ongoing basis, you need to keep requesting samples to ensure the products your customers are getting are still of the same or better quality than you found originally.
Since you’re not handling each product as a dropshipper, the suppliers could easily be letting their quality slip without you knowing until you receive a customer complaint.
How to Do It
Communicate with your suppliers to let them know that you will continue to monitor the products over time. This will signal that you prioritize quality and keeps them accountable.
Set up a schedule for yourself to order your products as a customer to ensure you’re getting a randomized sample like what customers would receive.
6. Embrace Your Supplier’s Errors
Sometimes even the best suppliers will make mistakes, and that’s okay. It’s best to expect some mistakes to occur and be prepared to deal with them.
Always take the blame with your customers, and don’t point fingers at anyone else. Make it up to the customer so they feel they’re being taken care of. This can earn you return customers even when a mistake is made.
How to Do It
Have clear expectations between yourself and your suppliers to understand the responsibilities of both parties.
If a supplier falters on one of their duties, remember that you are the face of the brand and will face the repercussions with customers, even if the supplier made the mistake.
Follow up with the supplier to ensure the mistake won’t happen again, and investigate how it happened in the first place.
7. Upsell and Cross-Sell
Another way to grow dropshipping sales is to utilize upselling and cross-selling tactics. This helps you earn more money from a customer on a given sale simply by recommending them complementary or better products.
This is a useful tip for dropshipping store owners and can easily be implemented onto your website in a number of ways to help boost sales.
How to Do It
You can upsell in your checkout cart by introducing a better product that brings more value than what they already have in their cart.
Or, you can cross-sell by recommending a related product that goes well with the item they’re purchasing that they should also buy for better value. You can also follow up after the sale through email marketing to lure them into buying a complementary product after the fact.
8. Be Ready to Pivot When Needed
The great part about dropshipping is that you can run a nimble online store that doesn’t hold inventory. So, be prepared to pivot products, markets, or target audiences as needed to increase sales.
There is no need to continue selling a product in a certain market that isn’t driving the results you need, especially when you recognize the opportunity somewhere else.
How to Do It
Monitor your sales data and take note when trends slow down, which could be seasonal or changing consumer preferences. So, notice if you need to cut back on marketing efforts during a certain time or introduce new products to meet your audience’s needs.
Always check the demographics and regions where your customers reside to see if you should direct your marketing efforts to a new area or segment of the population than what you’re doing currently.
9. Handle All Support Cases Quickly
Successful dropshippers address customer issues and handle support cases in a timely fashion. This means that customers aren’t left hanging if they have a problem with your website, chargebacks, order processing, or product malfunctions.
Even if customers have an issue, you can still keep them as a loyal patron if you show little friction in providing them with a solution and a willingness to be flexible to meet their needs.
How to Do It
Have a process in place for dealing with customer issues and concerns within your support team. Prioritize clear and transparent communication with customers to explain exactly what’s occurring and what you’re doing to help.
You can outsource this to chatbots or have a dedicated team who will answer their questions and problems. Either way, this process needs to be laid out clearly so customers get prompt support and solutions.
10. Sell Benefits, Not Features
On the homepage of your store you should clearly state the solution you offer to customers with the goods you sell, and what specific problems they address.
Online stores have a tendency to list all the features of their products, but this doesn’t provide an emotional impact or buy-in like describing solutions does.
Think of a kitchen knife. You could describe the type of metal it’s made out of and the process of how it’s made, but most customers won’t care.
Customers want to know that:
- the blade is sharp to help them cut faster and easier
- the grip is ergonomic so they can comfortably slice and dice with precision
- there is a blade cover to help keep people safe when it’s not in use.
How to Do It
List out all the ways that your products help customers or make their lives easier so you can communicate them on your website. Request feedback from customers to see what they have to say firsthand to see what’s most relevant to actual buyers.
Think of how your products rise above those of your competitors, and where the value of your products comes from. Each of the ideas you come up with during this step can be utilized in your marketing materials to help boost sales.
11. Send Abandoned Cart Emails
You can also grow your dropshipping store through abandoned cart emails to help bring in lost sales.
Customers may abandon carts for a number of reasons, not always because they change their minds about your products. They may have gotten distracted, interrupted, or simply forgotten to finish their order.
Over half of all carts online are abandoned, so think of all the times you’re leaving money on the table by not following up with customers.
How to Do It
One tip for dropshipping is to send an email with a reminder and optional discount after a customer has abandoned their cart. Remind them that they have free shipping since high shipping costs are a common reason why carts get abandoned.
You can also add a ‘continue shopping’ button in the cart so they don’t feel pressured to finalize the purchase right away.
12. Add User Reviews
Adding user reviews to your site is a good way to utilize social proof on potential customers. Customer reviews have been shown to increase conversion rates for online stores, so it can be highly worthwhile for dropshippers.
Customers of online stores may have a hard time trying out new stores or products since they can’t touch, feel, and revise the products before buying, so social proof is very effective.
How to Do It
Have a process in place to collect customer reviews and feedback after they make a purchase. This will give you good data that you can share in follow-up emails, ads, and more.
Also, have a space for reviews on product pages that are fully transparent and public to potential buyers. Don’t remove negative reviews, as that could harm your reputation, and shows buyers that you’re honest and open to making improvements.
13. Implement Retargeting Ads
This isn’t necessarily a dropshipping store tip for beginners, though retargeting ads are one of the most profitable and cheap ads you can do to boost sales.
These ads are made to customers who have made a purchase from you, have visited your site a certain number of times, or a number of other parameters. This ensures that you’re reaching customers who have shown genuine interest in your store, and are likely to purchase.
How to Do It
You need a CRM that tracks customer interactions on your site and segments them into relevant categories when marketing a dropshipping store effectively. How you approach customers who have made orders from your store will differ from ones who have simply abandoned their cart.
Invest in the copy and design of your ad to make it personal and customized to their experience and buying journey with you, which will make them feel understood and connected to your brand.
14. Add Live Chat Support
Another dropshipping tip to support business growth is to add live chat support to your website. Live chat can increase sales conversions and build trust with your customers.
Even if you don’t have someone live on the other end of the chat and you’re using a chat bot instead, you can still direct customers in the right direction to get them the help they need.
How to Do It
You’ll need to add a live chat feature to your website using your existing web builder platform, or find a third-party tool that you can plug in externally.
Decide if you’ll have an actual team member responding, or if you will connect it to an AI-powered chatbot that can ask and answer pre-loaded prompts.
Strategically place the chat box on each page so customers can easily request help no matter where they’re at on your site.
15. Offer All Popular Payment Methods
One of the best dropshipping business tips is to accept popular payment methods like credit and debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and others. If you don’t support multiple payment methods, you could turn away interested customers and lose future sales from them.
You don’t have to offer dozens of payment options. But, you do need to do research and pay attention to support the popular methods with your target audience.
How to Do It
See the types of payment methods that your website builder will support, and consider if this is sufficient for your customer base.
Monitor client requests and complaints specifically related to this topic, and see if there’s a payment method that is consistently requested that you could add to your store to bring in more sales.
16. Create Product Videos
A dropshipping website tip is to add videos to product pages to show potential buyers how to use the product in the real world and display its quality and functionality.
Since customers can’t try out goods from an online store firsthand before buying, this will help show some important information and details that they’d like to see ahead of purchasing.
So, adding product videos to your site is great dropshipping advice because it can help boost sales conversions, build trust with customers, and reduce returns and refund requests.
How to Do It
Once you have requested samples from potential vendors and know which suppliers you’ll move forward with, you can use their provided product to take high quality videos and photos.
Make sure you provide some reference for how big the product is, show how it can practically be used, or any other important information you think customers should know before buying.
Prioritize the quality of the video above all else so customers can clearly see how great the product is.
17. Make Shipping and Return Policies Clear
Returns and refund requests are inevitable when you run an online store, so you need to make sure the policies are clear.
Even if customers are dissatisfied with an order, you don’t have to lose them as a customer forever if your shipping and returns processes are straightforward and handled well.
Avoid leaving customers guessing about shipping options, product availability, and return policies. Make sure everything is easily accessible on product pages, and always be transparent with your policies.
How to Do It
Communicate with your suppliers to see what they will support with returns processing. Use this information to inform customers with what your policies are.
One of the tips for ecommerce sellers is to not overpromise because it sounds good. Dropshippers are at the mercy of what suppliers can support and handle. So, it’s best to be upfront and clear about what your shipping and returns policies are.
