For many entrepreneurs, launching a Shopify dropshipping store is a splendid way to set a foot into the e-commerce industry. While setting up a business spending time and investing money to manage inventory are major stumbling blocks but launching an e-commerce store that uses a dropshipping business model is an excellent option, you don’t have to fret about the inventory but can freely or unrestrictedly devote your precious time, resources on expanding your store and multiplying your sales.

So as a businessman you can be a go-getter without being worried about resources, managing manufacturing, supply chains and its fulfilment so it is an absolute solution for people deprived of these elements.

Before we get into the complete guide of dropshipping on Shopify let us know what exactly is dropshipping and Shopify

What is Shopify Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a flexible business model or a retail fulfilment method that allows entrepreneurs to commence an online business by establishing a store and without stocking the products they sell through the platform. Instead, when a store on the platform sells a product using the dropshipping model, it purchases or acquires the item from a third party (supplier) and has it shipped directly to the customer or shopper. As a result, the seller doesn’t have to handle the entire hectic process or the product directly.

The biggest difference between dropshipping and the standard retail model is that the selling merchant doesn’t store or accumulate or own inventory. Instead, the seller procures the inventory as needed from a third party—usually a wholesaler or manufacturer—to accomplish its order. So as a drop shipper, you are liberated from the headache of inventory management and storage, you only pay for what you sell.

Starting a dropshipping website is unexpectedly easy and uncomplicated. Thanks to solutions like Shopify; it only takes a few days to establish a website, source products, and sell them directly to the audience around the world. From there, you can experiment with different marketing methods and see which tactics successfully drive traffic and sales for you, don’t worry it is super easy even if it sounds complex!

Don’t believe me? Keep reading

Dropshipping through Shopify is favourable and liked due to its negligible approach for individual businesses to examine, review and latest product lines without even owning and paying for them. It is an inspirational business model that encourages more and more people to participate in start-ups or entrepreneurship.

Costing or spending money on the inventory is a major impediment for most sellers as these costs make them restrictive with the choice or products and limit their potential of becoming a successful businessman. 

Services like Shopify Capital are being introduced that can help businesses get the money they need whereas dropshipping remains a highly approachable way for enterprising founders to connect clients with products on-request without the need to stockpile inventory. It’s like retail’s version of cloud computing.

In this comprehensive dropshipping guide we have explained how dropshipping actually works and how you can increase sales, earn profits and mega-bucks.

What is Shopify?

So, when a customer places an order in your store, you purchase the products from the supplier and select how to ship the product directly to your customer. You don't need to hold any inventory or ship items yourself. All is managed and done by the supplier on your behalf, isn’t that interesting?

Despite all this, you still get the benefit of making a pile of cash for yourself!

It is imperative to mention that the most crucial aspect of this business model are products. Your choice of products will shape or determine your business’s growth or progress of your online store along with the market and audience you cater to.

However, the model keeps on bewildering numerous individuals. That is the reason we composed this far-reaching guide.

Why Should You Choose Shopify?

Why choose Shopify for your dropshipping business?

While there are a myriad of e-commerce solutions that can strengthen and power your dropshipping business, Shopify continues to be one of the most favourite platforms for merchants. Have you wondered why? Let’s dive into its advantages;

Dropshipper-friendly 

One of the incredible things about Shopify is the e-commerce platform is amiable with solutions that are explicitly made for dropshipping. 

Packed with great features 

Shopify offers a host of features that let you create an e-commerce business. In addition to its online store builder, which enables you to create, design and establish a site, Shopify also has elements to handle your sales, marketing, and payments.

Easy to use –Shopify, with one of the most user-friendly solutions, it is packed with features and functionalities, but it doesn’t get overpowering. The company does a commendable job of guiding businessmen on how to use its software.

Now that you have a better understanding of the advantages of dropshipping with Shopify, let’s explore the process of building a drop shipping business using the platform.

How to Begin Shopify Dropshipping 

Find your niche

The first major step in fabricating a dropshipping business is to identify the target audience and the products that you will be selling in your online store. i.e., your niche. 

With advice galore, some people recommend shifting to your passion and interests to categorise the correct product to sell, while others say it’s perfect to look specifically for profitable and trendy niches to guarantee that you actually make money.

Ideal Way To Run Your Shopify Store

Well, definitely choose a niche that you’re genuinely interested in, but also make sure that there are demand and profit to be made in that market so choosing profitable and trendy products or niche is equally important.

Do some rigorous research into the merchandise demand, look for popularity, and profitability, and don’t forget your interests.

For example, as someone who works out and does yoga, can commence their research in the health and fitness space to see the ideal item to sell in the online store. 

Struggling with your niche? Don’t worry we’ll help you and provide you with an ideal way to validate your niche;

1. Do Keyword Research For Your Shopify Store!

Begin with making a list of product keywords in your potential markets. For example, if you are focused on the health and fitness market, try and brainstorm relevant and helpful keywords that can give your search a boost and make it more visible to the audience. Some examples of health and fitness can be “yoga mats,” “gym clothes,” leggings,” “workout clothes,” “yoga pants,” etc.

You can always use Google’s Keyword Planner which is the best choice to get a better idea and understanding of the search volume and its relevance. You will always find a few keywords that will be searched more and will get you more volume and traffic.

Do something similar when you’re discovering and finalising your niche. Set the things in motion by identifying possible markets, target audience and then brainstorm keywords for those markets and audience. Take the most popular, trending keywords, and dig deeper to get more insights into their progress and performance over time.

2. Determine product trends

Getting keyword data is great, but there is more that will need your focus and attention. You also need to merge your keyword with trend data to figure out the product or item that is gaining popularity at a warp speed. or it in its way of becoming a trend. The most helpful in this case can be Google Trends, you can always enter both keywords to figure out their search popularity over the last several years and even days and months.

This will give you more confidence about your idea, product and business, it will make you more reliable and trustworthy.

Remember this search is only for your product’s trend and not about the dropshipping ideas. This is one of the most vital steps that will help you determine your profitability.

3. Figure out if your niche is profitable

Once you have successfully discovered your product’s popularity, it’s time to focus on profitability. Afterall the idea behind the business is sales, profits and money. It not only keeps you motivated and striving to do better but also instill confidence in you. So, before you launch your dropshipping business, run the numbers to gauge the profitability of the product.

Between the cost of doing business, shipping fees, marketing, remember to deduct your supplier's commission or cost, running a profitable dropshipping business requires wide and healthy margins (usually 40-70 per cent if not higher).

This means you want to look for low-cost or economical products that you can easily sell at a premium price.

Try to follow a similar process when you’re authenticating your idea and determining profitability. Make sure to do your thorough research on the costs and retail prices of your products. From there, you can simply calculate your profits using a tool like Shopify’s Gross Profit Margin Calculator.

Let’s get started with setting up the guide; We will give you a walkthrough or a step-by-step guide commencing with a Shopify dropshipping website. You’ll learn all about finding a niche, sourcing products for your market, and opening a virtual storefront.

Let’s dive in.

Building a Shopify dropshipping site [step-by-step guide]

So, you already have a product or niche in mind and you’re ready, prepared and available to start building your Shopify store. To help you do this, here’s a detailed review of the steps you should take to get your dropshipping website up and running.

1. Create a Shopify account

First and foremost, you need to register an account with Shopify. Head to their website, and simply register and it’s best to have a store name in mind before you begin the registration process because that’s one of the first things required to set up an account.

From there, Shopify will ask for a bit more information about the products you wish to sell along with your physical address and other necessary information. Once you’ve entered your details, you’ll be taken to your store’s backend.

2. Add products

Once you’ve set up your account, the next important thing to do is add products to your store; you’ll be taken to your Shopify dashboard. While on your dashboard you have an option to do a couple of things — you can choose to design your store, set up your domain, or add products, among other things. It is advisable, to begin with, the listing of products before designing and getting into other detailing.

We believe adding products gets you into the process of store creation. When you’re dropshipping with Shopify, adding products can take minutes and can be done with a few mouse clicks, and the simplicity of the whole experience eases you into the process/pathway of building your store and builds your momentum.

3.Design after adding the products

Trust us, adding the products simplifies the process and designing as it is far easier to build a site around existing products in contrast to starting from scratch. When it’s time to pick themes and templates, you won’t have to imagine what your store would look like with products in it, because you already took the time to add items to your shop.

Set Pricing and Shipping Cost is another important step in this. Then on the product page, you’ll see the supply and shipping cost, along with a pricing field in which you need to enter your retail price. 

Set up your collections for your products. Think of collections as product groups that allow your customers to find items according to their type, category, and more.

4.Set up and design your store

Once you’ve set up all your products, you can move on to designing your store. Depending on your budget, you can pick and choose one of Shopify’s free themes or explore their marketplace. You can make your choice of theme and design, after selecting the theme you can customise with your logo, layout, colours, add images and header. Play around with different options and see what works best for you. The next thing you need to do is to create pages for your site. These could include your: About page, contact page, Shipping & Returns and FAQ

5.Add a domain

Got your store ready? Great. At this point, you should consider adding a domain name. Without a proper domain set up having your own domain name will help your store appear much more professional, proficient and enchanting.

6.Set up payments

The next step is setting up payments. Shopify Payments and PayPal are enabled by default, but if you want to use other payment providers or accept other modes of payment you can go ahead and set up that too.

7.Explore Dropshipping Shopify Apps

Congratulations, you now have a nearly working website for your Shopify dropshipping business! At the moment your site is a bit bare-bones at the moment, so it’s highly recommended that you add embellish and emblaze via the Shopify app store. Some of the amazing apps for this are Oberlo, Printful and so on

8.Select a paid plan for your Shopify dropshipping store

Shopify’s free trial allows you to explore and discover most of the platform's features, and lets you do things like add products, design a store, install Shopify apps, and more. However, you won’t be able to sell products or services until you choose a paid monthly plan.

If you’re ready to open your site to the world and millions of people and actually earn revenue, just select a plan of your choice and you are good to go!

Starting a dropshipping business and running one successfully are completely different things. You can start and build a dropshipping website on Shopify in a few minutes. But persistence and consistency helps in driving traffic and sales.

While the dropshipping business model allows you to outsource inventory management and fulfilment, you still need to deal with customer service yourself. Be prepared to answer product questions, and make sure you’re ready to deal with order issues (e.g., damaged products, delayed shipments, unsatisfied shoppers, etc.). Don’t forget to have an email address that shoppers can use for their inquiries.  Having a FAQ section, a presence on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, respond to comments and direct messages promptly can make you more popular and visible.

Marketing

One of the advantages of dropshipping is that it takes stock control off your plate, so you can focus on marketing your business. Here is a list of marketing tactics and tricks that can help you marketize your store and have a global reach;

Facebook advertising – No matter what you’re selling, there’s a fairly good chance that your customers are on Facebook so you can use Facebook’s advertiser solutions to get in front of your audience.

Google AdWords – As the go-to search engine for most consumers, Google’s advertising solutions help you to reach people who are vigorously searching for your products. You can place ads on search engine results pages by bidding on relevant keywords and creating ads to match the intent of the searcher.

SEO – It is another great way to market your business. It enhances rankings and thereby engagement and presence.

Influencer marketing - Influencers can be a big boon for e-commerce merchants. Working with individuals who have amassed numerous followers can put your products and brands in front of new audiences.

Email marketing – Not everyone who lands on your site will make a purchase, which is why it’s important to capture visitor information. In doing so, you can reach out to them with news, updates, promotions.

Content marketing – When implemented correctly, content marketing can do wonders for your e-commerce business. It can help differentiate your brand, position your company as an authority in your space, and boost your SEO rankings.

Final words

Frequently, in light of the fact that business entrepreneurs need to spend a huge whole of their cash on stock before they can begin selling, these costs feel extremely prohibitive but dropshipping with Shopify is a boon for these entrepreneurs. Outsourcing stays an exceptionally open route for ambitious authors to associate clients with items on-request without the need to store stock. It resembles retail's variant of distributed computing. When all these steps are implemented correctly, you’ll be able to run a profitable dropshipping business in a matter of weeks or months.

Good luck!