When you own or operate an eCommerce business, you’re always looking for ways to grow your company, taking it to higher levels year after year. In most cases, this involves figuring out how to improve the quality of your products or considering various options for enhancing customer service. With any luck, you can do these types of things without dramatically increasing your costs.
Though there are a few ways to reach these types of goals, dropshipping—a method of shipping which involves sending consumers their desired products direct from the manufacturer or wholesaler—is one option that can potentially help you reach this goal. And it comes with a number of benefits.
Benefit #1: Fewer Product-Related Risks
Have you ever purchased products because you knew they would sell well, only to learn that you were wrong and now you’re left with shelves full of unsold items, wondering what you can do to recoup even a portion of your original costs? Though Vend suggests that a few ways to deal with overstocked items include remarketing, discounting, and bundling them, when you dropship you don’t have this issue. You never have to worry about buying the right products in the right amounts because you don’t purchase anything you choose to sell until you have an order on hand.
Benefit #2: No Storage Fees
Storing the products you sell in your business can really impact your bottom line. Not only do you have to pay for a storage facility, but there are also costs associated with getting the items to the storage center in the first place, as well as paying someone to put the products on the shelves, inventory them, and retrieve them once they’re ready to be shipped out. All of this goes away when you dropship, saving you a number of different storage-related costs.
Benefit #3: Better Customer Service via Faster Delivery
Because dropshipping involves shipping products directly from the manufacturer or wholesaler, you’re able to get your customers their items quicker than if you have them sent to you first. This is critical as one survey of 2,815 consumers found that, in almost all product categories, shipping times of 3-5 days was about as long as they were willing to wait. Some respondents felt that even that was too much and wanted their goods in 1-2 days, if not within 24 hours.
Making Dropshipping Work for You
If you already have a relationship established with product suppliers, contact them and ask if dropshipping is an option they offer. If it is, great. You can work out the details together.
If not, you may have to search out other vendors to find one that will enable you to ship directly to your consumer. In this case, the key is to select the right dropshipping suppliers for your particular business. To do this, you want to ask potential vendors about:
- Shipping times
- Product tracking options
- Whether they offer custom labelling
- How they deal with returns or refunds
Call a few dropshippers and compare each one in all of these areas. This enables you to choose the company that will not only offer you the best service, but will also provide your consumers the products they want (and need) in the fastest, most affordable way.
Dropshipping offers a number of benefits for eCommerce companies looking to grow their businesses without having to drain their bank accounts to do it. As long as you do your due diligence and research dropshipping suppliers based on the factors most detrimental to the shipping process, you’ll be able to select the one that serves you and your consumer best.