9 Not-So-Obvious Ways to Improve Your Dropshipping Store

The time of easy profits in dropshipping has passed. There was a time when any foot with which you started was the right one, but alas, it is no longer so. Today, in order to compete successfully in a rapidly changing and growing market, the key is a number of actionable aspects, that may seem insignificant at the first glance. However, it is these little things, that ultimately define the success of the business as a whole. The saying ‘devil is in the details’ has never rung so true.

For new entrepreneurs selecting right strategies can be rather intimidating. Internet is overflown with various suggestions and recommendations and many of them contradict each other. So, how to make certain that your dropshipping business will be successful, taking into account a cutthroat competition and the ever demanding and always complaining online shoppers?

Answer is tailoring. Read below the expert tips that we’ve collected for you, and think of them in terms of wild mix of ingredients that you have at hand for preparing a gourmet dish for the cooking competition. All those components are tasty and there’s a lot of possible end results, but only you can be the chief referee that can decide what will be stored for later and what will go into cooking pan today. Look at your store and decide what is applicable as it is, and what has to be amended and corrected before it can be put into practice.

Thankfully, the dropshipping tips we’ll talk about below will let you significantly improve all kinds of facets, from sales to conversion with only a little time worth of work. And without a spending a dime too.

Let’s look closely at how to become seasoned merchant with big sales while staying on a shoestring budget.

1. Choosing the right first impression

Marketing statistics shows that the most ‘productive’ storefront pages exactly correspond to the motivation of visitors. According to the study, the shoppers can be divided into two categories:

  • Hunters
    They already know what they want and are looking for the fastest, easiest and most reliable way to get it and move on.
  • Browsers
    They may have ideas, sometimes rather vague, about the intended purchase, but they are uncertain about the details (style, color, brand, etc.) or they are simply engaged in window shopping. Which means that they are not really contemplating purchasing but looking at the products in your store for entertainment.

Consider the specifics of each category of visitors before proceeding with the changes. For ‘hunters’ quickly redirect them to the pages with products, streamline the purchasing process as much as possible and get rid of the page elements that distract their eyes from the goal. The shorter the path to purchase, the better.

If the visitor belongs to the category of browsers, pile up ‘attractiveness factors’ and put emphasis on most popular products. Highlight the navigation panel and make upsell features and recommendations of similar and related products noticeable instantly. To engage browsers better, create a lot of clear categories, but arrange them separately. Show them the lowest prices and best-selling products. Also turn browsers into buyers, engaging them in great deals.

2. In reviews veritas

Today shoppers are spoiled with a multitude of choices and all kinds of ads, that attack them as soon as they leave their homes. For you it means that new visitors won’t automatically become customers after the first time in your store. It’s not enough to capture their attention and lure them in, you have to earn their trust and convince them that your store and your products are worthy of their $$$.

Reviews is your best weapon in overcoming their initial skepticism. Social proof is one of the most efficient levers for building trust, and as you grow it becomes more and more powerful. Genuine and positive reviews will encourage customers to perceive you as a reliable source of the needed products and services, to appreciate your caring about their opinions and value your willingness of walking an extra mile for making customer experience outstanding.

With time building up your own reviews, ratings, and testimonials will become more and more critical, since it proves that people are so impressed with you that they want to share their opinions with the rest of us.

When facing a negative comment or review we highly recommend to deal with them as soon as possible. Do not leave them unattended! Study confirm that after getting a feedback on their negative reviews, a third of those customers either deleted the initial negative review or changed to the positive. People like to be heard.

Some numbers to illustrate out point: for almost 90% of consumers an online review is as important as a personal recommendation, customers are likely to spend 31% more on a business with “excellent” reviews, 72% attend that positive reviews make them trust a company more, 72% of consumers will take action only after reading a positive review. Do we need say more?

3. Specifics win the day

We’re sure, that sometimes endless questions (some of them rather ahem strange, to say the least) of shoppers irritate you to no end. And it’s not just another time-consuming and tedious aspect of running a e-store, it’s also a clear indicator of the long distance two important points. Namely, having a visitor looking at your products and a paying customer.

To save time on answering query after query and increase conversion we recommend critically reviewing your products or services and ruthlessly removing all vague phrases and expressions.

If, for example, you sell sunglasses, then include in the description as many answers to potential questions as possible. Include the name of manufacturer, product weight, material of which the frame is made, type (sports, glam), and other features concerning quality, convenience and safety. Specify the actual advantages of the product because buyers care for those, and not for the empty praises about ‘joy of having gorgeous protection against the dazzle of winter sunrays’.

4. Wonders of retargeting

A lot of newcomers to the site won’t buy anything on their first visit. That’s a sad fact. Fortunately, there’s cure for that which is called retargeting. This powerful marketing technique lets you recapture lost opportunities and take advantages of seemingly futile visits to your store.

The beauty of retargeting is that you don’t have to engage all the visitors, but only those who came in, looked around but didn’t buy. You can configure relevant ads, which will be displayed to the folks that have completed certain task or visited a certain page. That will give those leavers a little push towards coming back and becoming buyers.

Try different approaches, like couple retargeting with standard advertising methods, use brief and clear text or try more creative and engaging texts and animations and use social networks, since Facebook and Twitter can greatly improve conversion. As to the tools, we especially like RetargetApp with its free plan and ads manager.

5. Blogging and vlogging

The importance of social videos is continuously growing and marketing forecasts hint that it will become in the nearest feature the most popular form of marketing. Even today the research indicates that 63% of people aged 18-34 regularly watch live-streaming content. Sneak peeks of new products, instructional how-tos and features by Internet influencers on this or that product are all very efficient tools of amplifying brand awareness and recall.

The creation of social videos can be difficult for those starting entrepreneurs but nothing stops them from using existing viral videos on such sites as BuzzFeed and sharing them on their pages.

Did you know that blogs are considered to be the 5th most trustworthy source of information, right behind news sites, Facebook, retail sites and YouTube? This form of marketing is a budget-friendly method of reaching out to your target audience. The main advantage of blogging is building up your audience base and increasing both sales and traffic.

However, there’s another facet of blog material that is often overlooked and that is boosting your SEO results. How your blog is optimized for SEO is directly correlates to the rankings on a search engine’s results page. Even if you’re not so great at writing and don’t really have much time that can be devoted to creating regular posts, surely you can keep it brief and to the point. Just think of it as a more elaborate form of posting in the social networks and post every two or three days a new piece of content to let more people discover your store and become aware of your drop shipping business.

6. OMG, It’s free!

If there’s a hard proven selling strategy that delivers solid guaranteed results, it’s offering free gifts to the shoppers. The word FREE acts like a detonator and triggers a specific response from all of us, drawing our eyes to a specific page and nudging us to move forward. Why? Because the desire to get something for free is embedded in our psyche. So, as soon as you can afford it, use one of the following strategies:

  • Offer a free gift in the listing (if shopper buys the product he’ll also gets a gift)
  • Include a free item in the package (makes for a sweet surprise for a recipient)
  • Offer a free gift conditionally (say, when buyer makes a number of purchases)

When choosing an item for a free gift think about something inexpensive that customer want or need. Maybe smaller accessories, like a phone case, scarf or a cufflink. Marketing experts state again and again that advertising a freebie can actually act as a sales booster.

7. Get creative

Today memes are an inherent part of Internet culture and a great marketing tool as well. They let marketers engage an audience of any generation, gender and social standing because they use something that everybody understands and loves. Humor. You can create new memes or use existing popular ones.

Creating new memes from zero can be risky, since no one knows for sure which memes will go viral and which will die tomorrow, but if people will like it, it will be a jackpot. Clever and funny meme can get you thousands of followers on social networks and increase search traffic for your company dramatically.

Second approach may seem a bit dry and unoriginal, but if it’s already proven as catchy and attractive, it makes for an easy marketing template. Also use your creativity on the pages that get lots of visits but are not involved in the actual purchasing process. ‘About us’, ‘FAQ’, and even ‘Contact us’ can be a perfect venue to show off your company and be goofy and funny without diverting the focus of visitors from your offers.

8. Everyone likes pictures better than letters

As a store owner, you absolutely have to make a saying ‘picture is worth a thousand words’ your daily mantra. People are much more likely to click on links and read through content, if it’s accompanied by photographs, so pack visuals into everything.

Research indicates that visual elements increase people’s willingness to read content by an amazing 80%. Which means that attractive pictures can make even driest and most tedious texts more palatable. Visuals are great influencers on our emotions and no matter how hard we try to purchase something on a rational basis, we often get carried away looking at some especially moving pictures.

So let captivating photographs be a drive behind emotional responses about your products. High-quality photographs are widely used by marketers to increase sales. Such photos let clients visualize themselves using a product or a service and allows them to imagine it improving their life.

However, people tend to get tired from looking at the same generic looking stock photos, so it’s a reason enough to consider getting interested into photography and using your own professional photos to attract and keep people interested in your content.

Another option that may work is asking your supplier for unique photos and getting ahead of competition in the visual attractiveness department.

9. Wishlists

Wishlists are very underused tools, but they are great indicators of what people consider to be worthy of enough attention to consider buying. Because wishlist is, in essence, a personalized collection of desirable items and a signifier of a customer interest in a product or a service, it can be used for a number of things.

  • Easy identification of trends and optimization of merchandising strategies according to the received insight. * Quick and easy analysis of the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns and best-working tactics.
  • Efficient analysis of overall marketing strategy.
  • Traffic generating. Making wishlists shareable will inevitably lead to attracting new visitors. Besides raising awareness about your offers, it also promotes them as well.
  • Improving your store catalogue structure (look at what people bundle together).

And to conclude…

Do you like having fun? Of course. Do you detest being pressured into doing something? Absolutely. Your clients are wired just same way. Shopping should be gratifying and shoppers shouldn’t feel themselves the objects of your merchandising efforts. Too forceful marketing makes people edgy and reluctant to proceed, and no wonder, since the average person sees over 5000 ads every day according to the statistics. Ugh, poor us.

Care about your clientele and use only moderate portion of your content for a direct promotion, and make the rest interesting and entertaining. Blogs, videos and pictures can make your store an appealing place to hang at. Use such metrics as likes, views, feedbacks, reposts and retweets to create content, that your visitors will love, and continue working on perfecting it.

The possibilities for improvement are endless, so just make your store a little better-looking today, a little more amusing tomorrow, a bit more elegant next week and think fondly of us, while looking at increased sales, better conversion and glowing reviews.

Open a Shopify Online Store For Free!

Sign up for a free Shopify 14-day trial and start selling today.

Start your 14-day free trial Try Shopify for free. No credit card required.