EcommercePlatforms.io

Category: Ecommerce

  • 10 eCommerce Hacks to Grow Your Business in a Few Months

    10 eCommerce Hacks to Grow Your Business in a Few Months

    Merchantry estimates that there are over 4.2 million eCommerce brands in Canada and the US. So yes, there’s no better time to be an online seller than now.

    But considering the massive competition, running an ecommerce store is not an easy feat. The good news is that you’re here. That means you have the drive to stand out.

    So, how can you boost growth in the vast sea of eCommerce? Let’s find out! Below, you’ll find 10 quick eCommerce hacks that’ll help you drive your success in months.

    Note that these are only the tip of the iceberg. There are many more growth hacks for ecommerce you can look for. But the following tactics will help you set up a solid ecommerce growth strategy.

    Let’s dive right in.

     1. Go into Speed Mode

    You don’t want your sales to suffer from Slow page loading for even 1 second. Here’s why, according to Envisage Digital:

    • 1 second delay in page load drops views by 11%;
    • Cuts down conversion rates by 7%; and
    • Drops customer satisfaction by 16%.

    Imagine what a 2- or 3-second bounce rate could do to your revenue! Here are a few things you can use to boost page loading:

    • Run a test using Google Page Speed. This tool can determine your speed performance. It also suggests how to decrease page loading time.
    • Invest in a CDN, or Content Delivery Network. A CDN allows you to use different servers to drive data transfer and cut down content latency.
    • Update your hosting plan. Work with a website host that offers high performance and fast speed. You can also upgrade to VPS or cloud hosting to boost page loading.

    Here are more tips to increase page loading speed.

    2. Make Yourself Easy to Find

    The trick is to stay at the top of the heap. But how to stand out among the sea of eCommerce sellers? That’s where SEO comes in.

    SEO is about driving organic traffic using relevant terms. These are words and phrases users type in a search browser to find web pages.

    You should focus on researching 3 types of search terms:

    • The first is frontend, which is directly related to your business. You’ll find them in titles, descriptions and blog posts.
    • The second type are backend keywords. Customers won’t see these terms, but they can help you widen your online reach.
    • Lastly, use transactional keywords to convert users. These are terms used when a customer is ready to buy a product. Think of brand names, or words like “purchase” and “order now”.

    But great traffic also requires great content that delights audiences. That’s On-Page SEO, and it is what will drive both traffic and conversions.

    3. Inform Your Customers

    Any eCommerce site should work on creating in-depth product descriptions. Users want to learn what a product can do for them.

    So, it’s not enough to name the item and its general features. Tell your audience how it’s built, and what its purpose is. In short, share the product’s story with the audience.

    You should apply these same principles to your videos and images. Always include high-quality visuals that showcase your offers as much as possible.

    You can also include tutorials or how-to videos that display the product in action. Shoppers need to see what they’ll buy, and how it actually works, whenever possible.

    4. Long-form Content

    Blog posts are an excellent way to keep customers informed and interested in your expertise. They promote engagement and customer retention.

    However, you need to go outside your own blog to attract new traffic. The best way to do so is by writing guest posts.

    Guest posts are content that you can publish on an ally’s website to build brand awareness. They are also a great feature to show that you are an authority within your market base.

    Plus, guest posts give you the chance to set up backlinks into your own website. This means new customers will have a better chance of finding you.

    5. The Magic of A/B Testing

    This is one of the most used eCommerce growth hacking tactics. A/B testing can help you compare similar products, and see which has better images, layout and copy.

    An A/B test is a key ecommerce hack you need to optimize conversions. It can let you know which assets benefit your sales, and which are hurting growth.

    You can run A/B testing using Google Optimize. This tool can pinpoint the changes that should be made to product listings to drive conversions. For example:

    • Image location, quality and size.
    • Color, size and location changes to action buttons, like “Add to cart”.
    • Stating product supply and free shipping offers.
    • Including trust badges in prominent areas.

    Make sure you A/B test on a regular basis. That way, you’ll soon find the best adjustments that can boost sales.

    6. Include Trust Badges

    Customers value secure purchases. The thing is, ecommerce has little room for face-to-face sales. So, how can you show buyers that you are a trustful seller?

    It’s easy: showcase trust badges. These are the logos of the software you rely on to make every sale as trustworthy as possible.

    You can also feature the authorized payment methods available. Chances are customers will feel safe knowing their data is well protected.

    Place trust badges in visible places. For example, right next to the Add To Cart button, or at the checkout page. This will boost your seller credibility, and also promote conversions.

    7. Responsive Design

    This is about device adaptability and personalized storefronts. And these are not only ecommerce conversion hacks, but a must-do for all sellers.

    Responsive design means setting up your site, so that it fits the device customers use to visit. This means ensuring a great UX on desktop, smartphones and tablets, separately.

    Users are increasingly browsing via mobile devices. And once they know what to buy, they’ll use a desktop or laptop to make the purchase.

    So, it’s crucial that sellers adopt a mobile-first, desktop-second approach to their online storefronts.

    8. Custom User Navigation

    The second key to responsive design is to adapt your webpage to the user’s habits. This means tracking users, so they can find what they need each time they log into your store. For example:

    • Set your store to showcase the specific products a recurring user was looking at the last time they logged in.
    • Use the homepage to feature offers related to the common items they look or buy for.
    • Save their search queries so they don’t waste time typing the products they want to review.

    Here are a few more tips to enhance this eCommerce growth strategy:

    • Visible search bar. Most customers will already know what they want. So, they’ll go to the search bar to find it. Make sure your search bar is in a prominent place on your website.
    • Homepage simplicity. State your value proposition and selling points, but copy and video should be at a minimum here.
    • Menu navigation. Keep a visible and simple menu on top. This is a compass to user search. The idea is to let users navigate smoothly, and go back and forth across your store.
    • Product tags. This tool can help users find specific product categories. Plus, tags are also a great tool to customize URLs to improve SEO, both internally and on SERPs like Google.

    9. Checkout Simplicity

    Almost 70% of users abandon the shopping cart without making a purchase, according to the Bayard Institute.

    The checkout process can actually make or break conversions. It can’t be overly complicated or else your bounce rate will suffer for it. So, how can you push it along?

    • Offer guest checkouts. Not all buyers want to create an account to buy a single product. So, don’t force users to register. Let them make the choice for themselves.
    • Provide multiple payment options. Many users are still wary of sharing their credit card info online. So, give them the choice to buy using PayPal or Amazon Pay, for example.
    • Keep the account registry simple. Don’t ask too much info from users who do want to create an account.

    10. Involve the End User

    Let people know users are buying your products. And better yet, let your customers announce it themselves.

    Customers need more than great content to buy a product. They also want to learn what other users think about the product.

    That’s where social proof comes in. This means sharing customer ratings and testimonials via your website and social media.

    But social proof can go beyond testimonials. A great strategy is to share user generated content.

    For example, encourage users to post their purchases on social media. Then, take those posts and share them across your own channels.

    Learning about other buyers’ experience gives new users confidence to buy a product.

    Final Thoughts

    None of these tips are complicated nor expensive. In fact, you can start using them almost immediately!

    As a rule of thumb, take the time to experiment, or partner up with an expert. This means working on a few ecommerce growth tactics first.

    For example, start off by boosting your page speed. Then, check if your bounce rate decreases. Afterwards, you can revamp your content to boost user retention.

    Test, analyze, and build upon the results. Take a slow, strategic approach to test your eCommerce growth hacks. This will let you see which tips are actually boosting growth.

    And if one tactic is not working, then change it. With time and work, you’ll soon find the formula that works best for your eCommerce store. The results are worth it.

    Best of luck!

    Author

    Esteban Muñoz is a content writer at AMZ Advisers, with several years’ experience in digital marketing and e-commerce. Esteban and the AMZ Advisers team have been able to achieve incredible growth on Amazon for their clients by optimizing and managing their accounts, and creating in-depth content marketing strategies.
  • Small Business Management: How to Build Strong Employee Relationships

    Small Business Management: How to Build Strong Employee Relationships

    You may be familiar with the seeing-employees-as-investments approach to business, and for good reason. It leads to sensible decisions with long-term implications. The problem with that stance, though, is the sense of personal detachment that it cultivates. You can obsess over returned value from a lofty perspective, remaining indifferent in an effort to stay rational.

    That approach, then, isn’t enough in its classic form. It requires expansion. You need to focus on the fundamental exchange of the working relationship, accepting that the best way to get people to work hard for you is to work hard for them in return. And that hard work has to take place in the trenches, so to speak. If you want loyalty (the key to small business growth, particularly in a fast-moving industry like ecommerce), you need to earn it through your personal involvement.

    One often-overlooked key to getting things right is having candid and productive conversations with your employees. Communication is the lifeblood of business, but it’s often below par. In this post, we’re going to consider how you can prepare for discussions with your employees, how you should address them, and how your follow-up actions will shape your success. Let’s begin.

    Preparation: what you first need to do and know

    It isn’t a good idea to go into staff conversations cold, assuming that you can simply pick things up as you go. Would you accept one of your workers going into a client interview with no talking points and little awareness of the agenda? No, of course you wouldn’t — and your attitude when speaking to your team will set the tone for how they approach their work.

    Research is a must here, then. Before you engage with someone, familiarize yourself with their company history: this should be easy in a small business, but if you’ve been distracted and don’t talk to them very often then you may have forgotten some key details. What are they like personally? What kind of track record do they have? Assuming you’ve previously held discussions and performance reviews, what came of them?

    Remember that a core component of radical candor is caring personally: when you care about someone, you take the time to learn things about them and demonstrate that you see their importance. If you don’t arm yourself with relevant details, any effort to evince a personal connection will ring hollow and likely worsen your relationship rather than improve it.

    You need to keep all of this in mind when you schedule your staff conversations. If you know that one of your employees is somewhat anxious, don’t let them know a week in advance that you want to have an in-depth discussion: no matter how you frame it, they’ll end up worrying that it’ll turn negative. Your feedback should concern performance, not personality. Instead, find time to engage in light ad-hoc conversation, then build up from there in a natural way that doesn’t put pressure on them.

    Conversation: how to get your attitude right

    When you get to the point of conversation, your focus (as noted in the title) should be on finding out what they need to be happier and more productive. Done right, this will benefit everyone. The important thing here is to be direct with your employees: you might instinctively feel the desire to talk around issues in the hope that you can avoid awkwardness, but that tactic will only add awkwardness by engendering misunderstandings and causing the conversation to drag on.

    If you’ve noticed that a particular employee’s productivity has dropped massively in recent weeks, your job is to be both blunt and compassionate. Say something like this: “I can see that you’ve been struggling to work productively in recent weeks. It’s alright, I’m not angry, but we do need to fix it — so how can I help you get back up to speed?”

    The sooner you note the fundamental issue, the sooner you can get to resolving it, so the lack of buildup is a good thing. Fearing for their job could prevent them from thinking clearly, so reassuring them — and using “we” to share responsibility — will make a huge difference. There’s also a fundamental positivity in the question since it assumes that they can get back up to speed, and your focus is on how you can help make that happen.

    On the other hand, you might see that an employee has been performing extremely well, in which case you could approach them from a totally different angle: “You’ve been doing a fantastic job recently, and I really appreciate your efforts, so I want to ensure that you’re not bored. Are you enjoying what you do? How could I mix things up to make your workday more interesting? If you have greater aspirations, I’d love to help with them.”

    You might want to simply leave them to their work and reap the benefits, but maybe they could do more for the business — and maybe they’ll look elsewhere if they’ve mastered their current role and see nowhere to go with it. Whether you’re addressing a negative or a positive, you should focus on coming away with a clear idea of how things can be better.

    Reaction: how to follow up in a positive way

    All the goodwill in the world can amount to nothing if it isn’t properly harnessed. Having a solid conversation with an employee is just the start: what really matters is that you actually deliver on the identified need (or needs) to whatever extent is practical. If a high-flying salesperson asks for their salary to be tripled, you probably can’t accommodate their request — but you can give them a raise of some kind, making it as generous as you can afford.

    Very often, you’ll find that employee needs concern businesswide services and working conditions, so you should look for the recurring themes and use them to derive an order of priority. Pay close attention to the broad context of your industry, and decide how far you’re willing to go to improve things. If you can’t take action immediately, you can at least report to the relevant employees that you’re conducting useful research, and even get them involved in the process as a way to show them that they’re important to your business.

    And with working conditions, you should strive to be as flexible as possible with a focus on productivity. If the remote-working revolution stemming from the COVID-19 outbreak has taught us anything, it’s that companies can survive massive operational changes if they trust their employees to get their work done in unusual circumstances. Don’t cling to ceremony for the sake of it. If people want to work in different conditions (as is heavily the case), let them.

    Consider, though, that employees might not know exactly what they want. To some extent, this will be because they won’t fully know what options and avenues are available to them. If you suspect that an employee might benefit from a major change even though they’ve never requested done, pitch it to them, explaining as you do so how you can help them. Suggest a research trip, or a training course. If you’re willing to use an employer of record service, let them know that they can even move overseas and keep their job if they want a fresh start in other aspects of their life. If you end up changing someone’s life, they’ll forever be grateful to you.

    Lastly, when you’ve implemented changes, keep asking questions. Attitudes and requirements change over time. Even your best employee might suddenly think of something else that could help them work effectively, and continued engagement is the best way to show them that your mind is always open. You should be so communicative that your staff members start to reach out to you directly instead of waiting for you to ask. That is the endgame.

  • 8 Best WooCommerce Filter Plugins for Better Website User Experience

    8 Best WooCommerce Filter Plugins for Better Website User Experience

    As your WooCommerce store grows, it is common to add more items to your product list. However, letting your customers comb through it can be daunting for them. 

    According to Sytian IT Productions (web design philippines), making your user shopping experience as smooth as possible is key to success. This may include adding sorting and filtering functions to help customers find what they are looking for.

    You would not want to overwhelm your customers to the point that they would want to leave your online store. As such, you need to add filtering options.

    Luckily, you can add this feature through WooCommerce filter plugins.

    YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter

    Image source: https://wordpress.org/plugins/yith-woocommerce-ajax-navigation/

    The YITH Ajax Product Filter is probably one of the most installed WooCommerce product filter plugins in the market. That’s because this plugin allows your customers to quickly sort through products to find what they’re searching for. 

    Customers can easily filter through products based on categories, color, size, and more. 

    This plugin also allows you to develop a variety of filter presets that display them on a page built by Gutenberg Blocks or Elementor. 

    Features:

    • An option to filter through products based on color, label, tags, etc. 
    • Filter-based price range.
    • Ajax-powered filtering system. (Premium)
    • Ajax-powered sorting that’s based on price, popularity, ratings, and recently added. (Premium)
    • Customized filtering table that can match your website’s aesthetics. (Premium)

    WOOF – Products Filter for WooCommerce

    Image source: https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-products-filter/

    The WOOF WooCommerce plugin gives customers a more convenient way to search for products based on attributes. This includes categories, tags, price, and more. 

    It has both shortcode and widget support that lets you insert product filters anywhere on the site. It also comes with infinite scrolling support. That way, users can quickly scroll through all of the products without jumping between various pages. 

    Features:

    • Various filtering options based on color, image, price, etc. 
    • Option in filtering WooCommerce products by metadata.
    • Ajax-powered product searching.
    • Infinite scrolling. 
    • Detailed stats that lets you analyze and understand search data. 
    • Shortcode and widget support. 

    Advanced AJAX Product Filters

    Image source: https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-ajax-filters/

    This can be an excellent choice if you’re looking for a WooCommerce product filter plugin. That’s because it lets you filter products by attributes, prices, taxes, taxonomies, etc.

    This ajax based plugin lets you immediately show the search results without refreshing the page. It also boasts an intuitive drag and drop builder that lets beginners place the filter anywhere on the site. You can also place unlimited filter options on a single widget.

    It also provides you pagination, which visitors can easily navigate on the next or previous page. You can also use this plugin on multilingual online store, both on WPML and Polylang.

    It also comes with several widget options such as radio buttons, dropdown menus, checkboxes, range sliders, tag clouds, and more. This can be customized further by placing a custom CSS via the admin page and manually setting values for the price slider.

    Features:

    • Ajax-based search result
    • Various layout options for filters.
    • Many filter combinations.
    • Pagination and sorting without page reloading.
    • Filter by product tags
    • Color and image type filters
    • Drag and drop filter building
    • Search box widget (for pro)
    • The slider can utilize strings as a value (pro)
    • Price as a checkbox with minimum and maximum values (pro)

    Themify WooCommerce Product Filter

    Image source: https://wordpress.org/plugins/themify-wc-product-filter/

    Another great WooCommerce product filter on our list, Themify, is pretty much the same as the other tools we’ve mentioned. It allows you to come up with filters for price, attributes, brand, color, range, etc. 

    It also comes with attractive filters that complement the overall look of your site. 

    The plugin has a drag and drop builder that allows you to create new filters and immediately apply them without reloading the page. The filters can also be used both on horizontal and vertical layouts and a live search results feature. 

    Customers can also choose queries and then check their search results on a new page. This filter plugin works well with Divi and Elementor, an excellent option for those who use it as a famous page builder. 

    What’s awesome about this plugin is free. Therefore, one can enjoy all of its features for no cost. 

    Features: 

    • Great drag and drop builder
    • Horizontal and vertical filters layout
    • Search widget to give live results
    • Compatible with Divi, Elementor, and Themify builders. 
    • Stunning design and excellent customizability. 

    WooCommerce Grid Display AJAX Filter

    Image source: https://codecanyon.net/item/woocommerce-grid-display-product-ajax-filter/9936306

    This filter is free and works well with WooCommerce. You can easily organize filters according to color, size, brand, style, and any other filter that you want to use. You can also use product tags to make sure customers can easily find what they’re looking for. 

    If you like to change the background’s color or style, you can change it anytime. You can also use the filter plugin to help your customers easily find what they’re looking for. 

    There’s also an autocomplete option for particular product tags. The autocomplete also lets customers choose a specific type of search that they usually use. With just a couple of automatic searches, customers can easily find popular products. 

    Filter Everything

    Image source: https://codecanyon.net/item/filter-everything-wordpress-woocommerce-filter/

    This premium filter plugin comes with a lot of advanced features. For instance, it allows users to sort through the stock list using colors, price, tags, and more. 

    It also takes a couple of seconds to find the products they want in just a few clicks. This makes searching for products as straightforward as can be for your customers. 

    Features: 

    • Works well with page builders like Divi and Elementor.
    • SEO features that make pages ready for indexing by search engines. 
    • Sort out things by images, sale prices, views, etc. 

    Jet Smart Filters

    This is a great tool that works exceptionally well with the Elementor page builder and the Butterberg editor. It comes with 17 different filter types and a couple of additional widgets to showcase active filters, apply button, reset button, and a lot more. 

    You can also build and modify filters and show them anywhere on your site. It’s also highly customizable, letting you create elegant filters that match your site’s overall look and feel. 

    Features: 

    • Compatible with Elementor and Guttenberg page builders. 
    • Indexer that shows the number of results against every filter
    • Hierarchical filter system
    • Dynamic search system
    • Extremely customizable

    Product Filter by XforWooCommerce

    Image source: https://codecanyon.net/item/woocommerce-product-filter/8514038

    If you’re looking for a great all-in-one filtering plugin, then Product Filter by XforWooCommerce is an excellent choice. Its advanced customization feature lets you easily position and optimizes your product filter widget experience. It provides seamless navigation and a smooth experience to shoppers.

    Features:

    • Lets shoppers filter through products based on price, attribute, rating, etc.
    • Filter analytics that lets you know what your customers are checking
    • Ajax-powered filtering system
    • Great customization features

    To sum it up, product filters allow you to enhance your ecommerce website’s customer experience. By using filters, customers can easily get rid of unwanted product search results and quickly find what they want to buy. Doing so can also help boost your online store’s conversion.

  • Top 10 B2B China Sourcing Websites to Find Wholesale Suppliers

    Top 10 B2B China Sourcing Websites to Find Wholesale Suppliers

    Are you hunting for the best Chinese sourcing websites to find wholesale suppliers? With numerous Chinese sourcing websites out there, you might be wondering which one you should trust. If so, you’ve found the right post.

    Starting a B2B business online always takes time and investment to ensure you don’t get scammed by the sellers. Every buyer wants to receive their goods on time with a smooth delivery process. They also want to ensure the products they buy are of premium quality.

    When business owners are planning to connect with the best B2B China sources, several questions appear in their minds. Will they be meeting with certified wholesale suppliers? Are the prospective platforms secure and reliable? Can they use multiple payment methods? Will they get deals and discounts on bulk purchases?

    In short, every supplier and wholesaler is looking for a secure and comprehensive B2B supplier website to use. This post lists the top 10 B2B China sourcing websites to help you find cost-effective wholesale suppliers with minimal effort.

    The Boom in B2B Marketplaces

    B2B eCommerce becomes has become a huge digital frontier in recent years, with the global pandemic causing a significant uplift in interest. In fact, B2B marketplaces have attracted much more attention and investment than their B2C counterparts. It’s been estimated that the B2B eCommerce industry has reached USD 149 trillion, which is 5x more than B2C.

    A recent survey showed that B2B eCommerce sales reached $7.35 trillion in 2021, and this amount is expected to grow 70% in upcoming years. It’s actually projected to reach $18.75 billion US dollars by 2026.

    List of Top B2B China Sourcing Websites 

    If you are wondering how to find wholesale suppliers, let’s dig into it!

    1.eWorldTrade

    Everyone is familiar with this B2B platform that is eWorldTrade. This global and comprehensive B2B platform offers unparalleled eCommerce solutions for small to medium-sized businesses. It operates its services for more than a decade, and it becomes the leading B2B China sourcing website.

    This digital trading platform aims to help businesses to accomplish a commercial competitive edge. It has an interactive user interface, so customers can enjoy the fastest and most secure trading. It even has AI-integrated chatbots to solve any customer query. Once you join this platform, you have ample space to highlight your brand information. It permits you to get free quotes, offers multiple payment methods, and has reordered policy.

    eWorldTrade is a good choice if you are looking for the best B2B China sourcing website to find wholesalers.

    2. Amazon 

    Amazon is no doubt a leading B2B Chinese sourcing website. This platform helps buyers to find the most reliable wholesaler suppliers from every corner of the world. It aims to build strong relationships among them. So, trading internationally is not a challenging thing for them. Amazon help businesses to grow their horizon, whether they belong to the food manufacturing industry or operating in the automobile industry.

    Once you connect with Amazon, you can access millions of products belonging to every category. It allows minimum order quantity with automated pricing. It even allows reordering your previous purchase.

    3. Alibaba

    Does Alibaba sound familiar? Yes, it is, right! This is also the world’s greatest and largest B2B platform with a huge directory of wholesale suppliers and buyers. It is even known as the pioneer of B2B wholesale eCommerce. It is open the gateways for Chinese factories to perform business activities worldwide.

    Alibaba becomes the top B2B China sourcing website, where you meet with thousands of merchants and buyers from every corner of the world. For buyers, it is the best marketplace that offers trade assurance, multiple payment channels, etc.

    4. AliExpress

    Looking for the biggest name in B2B China sourcing website to find wholesale suppliers? Then AliExpress will be another marketplace to choose from. This B2B website is the subsidiary of Alibaba. It has now built into the largest online retail store where you can easily hook up with the Chinese and international wholesale suppliers.

    AliExpress also has an incredible product catalog of premium quality products. Whether you want to buy books, electronic items, kid toys, or furniture, everything is available on this platform. It has a comprehensive incentive and discount policy as well.

    5. DHgate

    DHgate is another top name among B2B China sourcing websites. If you are new to this industry, then DHgate will be a better choice. It is highly recommended for newbies, as it offers the fastest and most simple wholesale buying experience. This retail hub offers high-quality goods and services at cost-effective rates.

    At this platform, you meet with trustable wholesale suppliers and retailers from every industry. Regardless of any industry you belong join DHgate today. It has perfect product listing, offers sophisticated search, in-depth product information, etc.

    6. Global Sources

    Are you hunting for the one-stop-shop B2B China sourcing websites? Global sources is another prominent name. This B2B platform is considered the oldest platform that was launched in 1971 and has experience of 51 years of operating businesses online. It has millions of trustworthy sellers and buyers and consistently increasing.

    Global sources have an optimized storefront and a user-friendly interface. It follows a customer-centric approach to allow buyers to get premium quality products easily. It offers the fastest and most secure payment and delivery methods.

    7. HKTDC (Hong Kong Trade Development Council)

    HKTDC is one of the most trusted B2B China sourcing websites to find wholesale suppliers. Here you find 130,000 Chinese suppliers. This platform is an organization dedicated to the economic growth of the Hong Kong Traders, and gradually, it becomes the leading online marketplace to sell goods worldwide.

    HKTDC has a directory of trusted and reliable suppliers from Asia, Hong Kong, and China. You can connect with certified suppliers who offer high-quality products at reasonable rates. This platform gains popularity due to the potential buyer journey.

    8. DIYTrade

    DIYTrade has described itself as the leading B2B trading platform and has a huge directory of Chinese products. This B2B China sourcing website claims to have 5 million products on this platform. This retail hub was inaugurated in 1999, and its headquartered was in Shenzhen, China.

    DIYTrade has an interactive and engaging user interface that encourages visitors to buy products from certified wholesale suppliers. It has a huge product listing with a massive catalog. It even offers a customer support system to help out buyers to solve problems. You can choose a payment method after connecting with the supplier.

    9. EC21

    EC21 is the most authentic B2B China sourcing website where you find thousands of reputable wholesale suppliers across the world. It has a highly interactive, flexible, and easy-to-use interface that engages buyers to make a purchase.

    If you are looking for a supplier on a regional basis, it distributes visitors by the country. It even has an outstanding product catalog. It has a huge directory of 3.5 million visitors every month.

    10. Lovely Wholesale

    The lovely wholesale market is popular for offering products for females’ clothing and garment items. This Chinese wholesale website claims to have almost 6000 products with a unique style that have to listen on their platform. This platform is highly focused on considering buyer safety; if you get damaged products, they offer a return policy and even discounts on your next purchase.

    Lovely wholesale has a robust refund policy, so they make sure to consider quality assurance and offer products at reasonable rates.

    Guest Author: Ali Hasnain is a trend researcher by passion, senior digital marketing expert, and SEO consultant. He leverages his experience to help SaaS products, influencers, local businesses, and eCommerce brands grow their traffic, leads, sales, and authority. Follow him on LinkedIn.

  • How To Increase eCommerce Traffic With Long-Tail Content

    How To Increase eCommerce Traffic With Long-Tail Content

    Competing for high search volume keywords is often the most sought-after route to get traffic and convert. However, using high search volume keywords in a highly competitive USD 5.5 Trillion eCommerce industry is often a long-drawn effort where you spend more time trying to rank higher instead of getting traffic and conversions.

    A simpler way is to focus on a select group of people/buyer personas searching precisely for your product and service with long-tail keywords. This way, you spend your resources, making your keyword search more profitable. 

    Another benefit of this approach is that once you choose the long-tail keywords, you can use them in your content marketing by building on FAQs, using tools, and scaling your business. 

    But first, let us take a look at why it’s worth targeting long-tail keywords.

    Why Should You Target Long-Tail Keywords?

    Most popular eCommerce categories are saturated with content. This makes content marketing less appealing to eCommerce store owners. They resort to social media and PPC for eCommerce marketing, both of which are more expensive and less reliable than organic content traffic in the long term.

    Social media algorithms change all the time. With Facebook and Instagram reducing their visibility, you end up spending on paid ads, thereby impacting your bottom line. PPC pipeline dries up the moment you turn off advertising. It also eats up margins, forcing you to increase prices and become less competitive. And if you are a sole owner, you may have to rely on hiring someone to get PPC working for you, adding to your costs.

    Are Long-Tail Keywords Profitable? 

    Long-term keywords, by nature, cater to a tiny subset of the topic. As such, they have a low search volume. But what works in its favor is that it is highly targeted, so when you use the correct terms, it can reach a high converting audience.

    Another benefit is that it is very specific, making it easy for your customers to receive their answers when they land on your page, reducing the bounce rate. Since long-tail keywords account for as much as 70% of web searches, you’ll likely rank faster than short-tail keywords considering most eCommerce users are active users looking to educate themselves before buying.

    Use Long-Tail Keywords to Educate Your Readers 

    Long-tail keywords can help you get traffic and direct the traffic to the correct funnels to convert. However, long-tail keywords need not necessarily mean blog traffic. Some ways to use it are in your video, infographic, or product FAQs. 

    ASOS does a great job of having their long-term keywords as part of their FAQs pages. All the FAQ pages are interlinked, giving users a seamless experience across their site.

    Source: Asos

    This way, it makes it easy for their users to get the information quickly, improve trust and build confidence in their brand, likely leading users to other pages on the site.

    Lyft follows a similar pattern of putting its best resources as a cluster on its Help page. 

    Source: Lyft

    The clean look makes it easy for the driver or rider to seek help without spending another minute navigating elsewhere on the website.

    Niche Tools to Build on Long-Tail Keywords 

    Create niche tools that do not exist for your category. For example, a ‘cm to EU size converter’ if you are selling fashion items. Or a mileage to monthly fuel expense calculator for someone selling auto parts.

    The fees in an eCommerce store can quickly add up. 

    Source: TheFeeCalculator

    With the help of TheFeeCalculator, users can quickly calculate and manage margins without racking their brains on the merchant account fees. This way, users save time and costs considerably without relying on manual calculations, which can have errors. This develops trust, and users will repeatedly use it as a convenient tool, thereby building credible traffic to your store.

    These tools are part of what is called interactive content, increasing engagement. Other forms of interactive content include surveys, polls, etc., that you can use if you already have an email list that you want to drive traffic from.  

    How to Scale Your eCommerce Business

    By design, long-tail caters to a very small target group. So the only way to get meaningful results is by scaling up.

    Once you choose your long-tail keywords, determine the number of articles you need to attract quality traffic. Then scale up your content creation by hiring freelancers to build long-tail content. 

    Include long-tail keywords in different ways on your site so your users feel that their answers are addressed in various ways. Use blog posts and videos and link them to other related content pieces so it’s a natural fit when users search for it on your site or your social channels.

    Ensure you put out quality content to address the user intent and drive conversions. Quality content will also attract quality backlinks to your site, building authority and helping scale faster.

    Automate processes wherever possible to reduce churn and improve customer service. Identify content gaps and plug them with the necessary content that addresses user pain points. This way, your product or service naturally fits in as an ideal solution.

    Repeat this process until you have fine-tuned your content for conversions.

    Final Thoughts

    Your eCommerce store may have the best products in the market. But unless you attract the right traffic to it, you could be leaving money on the table. 

    While short-tail keywords have a high volume, they are tough to rank. Instead, focus your attention on long-tail keywords to narrow your focus on a niche audience to serve. Pick a few long-tail keywords and use them in blog posts, product FAQs, or the help page. Cluster your resources together to give a great user experience. You can also try interactive content like free calculators, surveys, and others to boost engagement. 

    And once your content is aligned to your users, scale your business to reach out to a broad audience with more relevant content. Use freelancers to create high-volume content, attract quality backlinks and build your authority to price your products competitively and reduce customer acquisition costs.

  • Tips on Cost-Effective International Shipping For Any Business

    Tips on Cost-Effective International Shipping For Any Business

    Shipping is one of the main expenses for any online business. You can have great products at the lowest price out there, but it’s shipping that enables customers to try the products you offer.

    Inaccurate shipping rates, high real-time rates, lack of delivery options are some of the key factors shaping why your customers might abandon their shopping carts instead of proceeding to checkout. To achieve cost-effective shipping, retailers might want to consider matching products dimensions with the dimensions of the package, use dimensional weight shipping, apply landed cost when needed, and more.

    To find out about all tips on cost-effective shipping, have a look at these steps and factors influencing shipping costs directly.

    Package characteristics

    The more precise package parameters you send to the carriers, the more accurate real-time rates you will receive. In some cases, this means saving extra money on shipping. Carriers charge more for bigger packages even if they are lightweight because they take extra space in the transportation vehicles. Retailers ship packages wrapped in filling and packaging materials that take 70% of the whole package. Not only is this unprofitable for all parties, but it is also harmful to the environment.

    As a retailer, it is important to match the dimensions of the product with the dimensions of the package. This is called Smart Packaging. Smart Packaging is a shipping feature that automatically pre-packs each order into the optimal package and requests real-time rates directly from the carriers based on these specific parameters. Smart Packaging feature is very similar to what many might know as Dimensional Weight Shipping.

    Unlike Smart Packaging, when using Dimensional Weight Shipping there are only the product’s dimensions taken into consideration which are length, width, and height of the product. Both methods are cost-effective, however, the accuracy of real-time rates is higher when using Smart Packaging.

    Landed cost

    Landed cost is a sum of all costs it takes to ship a package abroad. These costs include value-added taxes, insurance fees, shipping costs, import licenses, customs duties, and similar. Some of the costs like import license or insurance fees are not obligatory and depend on the nature of the product or the country the package is going to be shipped to.

    It is crucial to keep in mind that accounting for shipping and manufacturing is not enough. The formula for calculating landed cost should include profit margin as well. Profit might be completely wiped out altogether by the landed cost if the retailer miscalculates how much it will cost to ship a package abroad.

    Additionally, surprising your customers with unexpected shipping costs after receiving packages from abroad is not professional and might lead to dissatisfied customers.

    Rate shopping

    Rate shopping is a comparison between carriers’ service and their corresponding real-time shipping rates. This comparison serves to find the cheapest or the fastest real-time rates. The process of rate shopping can be fully automated, saving a lot of time. Overall, the automated rate shopping process creates a better and simpler checkout experience, as only the best shipping rates are visible for your customers.

    Limit return shipping policy

    Offering a return policy is nothing new and unique these days. The majority of retailers use quick and free returns as a competitive advantage. However, what will be the influence on your business if you offer a zero return policy?

    The point of limiting the return policy is to make your customers aware of what they shop for. The drawback of the return policy is that any product can be returned quickly and easily.

    Customers do not pause about the necessity of the product and online shopping becomes very impulsive. It became easier and cheaper for retailers to dispose of faulty products rather than repair them. Limiting return policies might save you as much shipping cost as any other factor mentioned above.

    Shipping destination

    The destination is another factor influencing the cost-effectiveness of your shipping. The farther away the destination is, the more expensive and slower it is to deliver the products. The problem with international shipping is that often carriers delegate shipments to one another once they reach the international borders. For example, for some ground shipping services UPS delegates shipping to Canada Post as soon as it reaches the Canadian border. This process is slow and requires one unified shipping rate from both carriers.

    If you are shipping from the United States, check out the list of the countries which are in a free trade agreement with the US. Free trade agreement allows you to ship with lower shipping rates, but it does not guarantee lower tariffs for each type of product shipped. Still, it makes moving goods around the world more cost-effective and easier.

    Conclusion

    Here are summarized the main factors that are necessary to achieve cost-effective international shipping. Some additional factors might be the inclusion of delivery dates at the checkout to avoid paying for re-routing or rescheduling of the package. Some of these factors are not only helping you to achieve cost-effective shipping but also increasing the accuracy of real-time rates as in the case of Smart Packaging and Dimensional Weight Shipping.

    Author’s Bio

    Lucia Liskova is Marketing Manager at Calcurates by Amasty shipping SaaS for e-commerce.

  • Preparing Your Online Store for 2022 – Top 7 Ecommerce Trends

    Preparing Your Online Store for 2022 – Top 7 Ecommerce Trends

    Making purchases online is gradually gaining momentum amongst all age groups now, partially due to COVID accelerating its adoption. Since last year, people have adopted the online route to buy goods as opposed to buying at retail stores only.

    But somewhere this implies that retailers need to be more alert while setting up their online store. In this article, we will put light on the finer details of the most in-demand ecommerce trends for 2022.

    We can say that ecommerce has been optimized over these years for better reach and consumer ease. We have witnessed some high-impact transitions from email alerts to pop-up notifications; tiring sign-ups to OTP logins; lengthy menu items to categorize products, etc.

    Trends change every year and so does selling through ecommerce. In the last few years, there have been transformations through improvisations in user experience, payment methods, cloud services, etc. All of these have brought in a significant rise in overall online sales and will continue to do so.

    Ecommerce trends for 2022

    1. Responsive search

    From the perspective of a shopper, have you ever noticed that the time taken to locate the product of your choice is greater than the time taken to make the actual purchase? Searching across vendors, products, the related comparisons, etc. is indeed quite a long process. On the contrary, think of it from a retailer’s perspective. He would eventually want the lead to travel down the funnel in order to meet his targeted sales metric.

    Consumers navigating through a large e-Store is a cumbersome process. Even today, 61% of ecommerce sites have weak support for search synonyms that make navigation easy for online shoppers. With the rising intervention of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) into eCommerce, customers are expecting their product search to find an exact match in the least possible time.

    Hence, a quick and relevant search is a must-have for all shopping platforms. Customer Experience is amongst the top priorities of online businesses, adapting the search for a better fit is eventually going to fine-tune this experience. Leveraging AI for making the search more responsive is an easy way to understand your consumer better.

    With the use of AI, the search box pre-populates with the customer query and minimizes the customer effort to type in the entire product. To make it more efficient, try feeding in product codes, color variants, sizes etc. into the AI model to display some of the more relevant results and eliminate broad search results. By virtue of an intelligent search, consumers will feel good about choosing your platform over others.

    2. Omni-channel selling

    Simply put, Omni-channel refers to selling products through both offline and online channels. This strategy is focused on making the customer’s experience seamless by virtue of comfort buying. It provides the flexibility of reviewing the product in-person while making the purchase online.

    Going by a report from the National Retail Federation, online and other non-store sales have increased by 20% as compared to last year. There is no denying the fact that COVID did accelerate the online transition for both businesses and customers. However, customers are now on the lookout for an optimal mix of an offline and an online store. This allows more flexibility and gives the customer a superior buying experience.

    So, if you haven’t already, activate all your channels for showcasing your products and get exposed to a wider audience. Social platforms such as Instagram, Facebook have also rapidly paced and are helping businesses promote their products through their platform. Hence, be ready with all your online storefronts while keeping your offline store intact to expand our audience as well as business revenue. It’s time for a transition!

    3. Online marketplaces

    With an improving ecommerce environment, shoppers are getting used to friendlier and more valuable platforms. Gone are the days of one platform, one product, being surpassed for the good by the multi-utility marketplaces. Consumers find marketplaces more time-consuming as well, for the simple reason that they get product details, price comparison, multiple vendors to choose from, etc. through a single channel.

    If you study the trends, you’ll understand that getting into the business of an online marketplace is a safe bet and is only expected to grow tremendously. If you’re a seller, you can get yourself listed on any of the popular marketplace in your region. For e.g. eBay, Walmart, etc. But if you’re an entrepreneur, you can expect to maximize revenue if you create a marketplace instead of a simple online store.

    Hence, we can expect marketplaces to become even more rewarding for consumers, sellers as well as entrepreneurs in the coming days.

    4. Headless stores

    Surrounded by a mix of reviews during the initial days of release, the headless technology is gradually gaining momentum, especially in the ecommerce industry. To decode this, in simple terms it means moving away from a centralized management system and adopting separate management of the backend and frontend of websites. Frontend is what the consumers experience while backend is for the tech related management and upgrades.

    Keeping ecommerce stores headless, i.e. detached, businesses have been able to considerably improve the UI. Also, there has been a constant struggle amongst businesses to reduce the customer acquisition cost (CAC). Well, going headless has responded well and has helped in majorly lowering the CAC. Amongst the available frameworks in the market, Magento has rapidly progressed to overcome the initial challenges and believes that this technology is here to stay for the long term. With Progressive Web Apps on Magento, merchants get the choice to go headless and get better results in a short time span.

    Since the technology is relatively new as compared to other innovations, constant updates keep happening to make this better. This means that you can expect it to bring even better results in the coming days. Talking about the improvisations it has already brought for merchants, loading time comes down to approx. 2 seconds with this. Which, I believe, is good enough for any online store!

    5. Sustainable selling

    Environmentalists have focused their strategies also around the ecommerce industry. There is no denying the fact that there is a tremendous amount of damage being caused to the environment at various stages of an online order. And hence, there is a rising concern that needs to be addressed promptly by decision-makers.

    Moreover, millennials or the gen Z, being more alert and aware about the ecological aspect are also more attracted to brands that are conscious about reducing the environmental damage. Any business can do their bit by adopting methods more environmentally friendly. This can be achieved at various levels of a business model depending on the interest level in promoting the message.

    For e.g DHL’s GoGreen is an attempt to reduce the CO2 emissions caused by transport, as prescribed by the Kyoto Protocol. Similarly, what entrepreneurs can do is-

    • Design products that are sustainable and not made up of raw materials that will eventually pose a threat.
    • Adopt sustainable packaging instead of relying on plastic. There are alternatives available in the market that are equivalent to plastic in terms of usability but cause no harm.
    • Avoid using multiple layers of packaging for all their products. This can be restricted to deliverables that need more care instead of a universal packaging pattern.
    • Reuse any available boards or cartons stored in their inventories or planned for disposal.

    6. D2C ecommerce

    The future of online selling is definitely a direct-to-consumer model. EMarketer estimates that 103.4 million consumers in the US would buy from a D2C business. This indicates that the trend is moving upwards from 2022 onwards. And why not? It bridges the gap tremendously while making the transactions easier and more direct.

    This model boasts of sharing an experience and not selling a product. Since this model focuses on reducing the barriers between companies and consumers, the key lies in keeping the communication transparent. With an engagement strategy in place, the model can be leveraged to make better revenue by gaining customer trust.

    A D2C business model brings in ample no. of benefits since it is cost-effective at multiple stages. Tuning it for eCommerce is what the new-age shoppers need. Millennials are dominating online sales since they are the decision-makers for their respective communities. This will not just save input cost for a business but will also help companies to create better relationships with their customers. Thus, D2C is not one of the passing trends but is here to stay for longer.

    7. Social commerce

    It would not be wrong to say that social media has captured our lives. There’s no denying the fact that it is ruling most of our lives and is making us rely on it more and more with each passing day. Though these started with the idea of networking channels, if we look at it today, these channels have also become search engines, marketplaces, influential platforms, and whatnot.

    Channels like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok introduced their shopping a couple of years back. Brands are using these channels not to sell their products directly, but to understand the lives of their consumers and make their brand more visible and popular eventually. With social media, consumers get to make better decisions based on experience sharing within the community.

    Looking at the average screen time of Gen-Z or every second person, the maximum time spent would be on either Instagram or Facebook, or any such app. Because we love scrolling! Don’t we? Hold on till we get used to the upcoming Live Search.

    Concluding thoughts

    Looking at all the above trends, we can say 2022 is expected to become more consumer-friendly in every possible way. It can be said that ecommerce is bound to get better by adding personalization for buyers. All these trends are an attempt to simplify the overall shopping experience, not just buying and selling.

    It is time to transform ecommerce stores into more appealing and immersive storefronts. Gone are the days when ecommerce was confined to the mere selling of products. Today, there are multiple strategies that businesses need to adopt that can streamline and scale online sales. So focus more on creating better experiences that save time, sharing real-time reviews, engaging with your customers on the channels where they’re most active, offering prompt and personalized responses, and providing innovative solutions that work for your audience.

    About CedCommerce

    CedCommerce is making ecommerce more accessible for online businesses. It is supporting businesses across geographies to share better online experiences with their consumers. The team has solutions for Online Marketplaces – B2B & B2C, Progressive Web Applications, Magento extensions, and designs ecommerce stores on the latest Magento 2. They also have Magento certified experts that can be reached out directly as well. So reach out to them if you need any help!

  • Is The Ecommerce Subscription Model The Future Of Online Retail?

    Is The Ecommerce Subscription Model The Future Of Online Retail?

    Charting the growth and development of ecommerce is an awkward task indeed. The industry hasn’t actually been around for that long, yet the core process settled into a comfortable groove around the time Amazon rolled out the model that has kept it in a position of global dominance. Since then, you might think that little has changed — but is that really so?

    Consider the key area of shipping, for instance. The fundamental mechanisms are the same as ever, but the notion of supporting various pick-up locations is relatively recent, and there are still plenty of sellers getting to grips with it. And then there’s the matter of on-site marketing. Product preview tools are vastly better than ever before, with many companies taking advantage of AR technology to encourage prospective buyers over the conversion line.

    In fact, when you pick through all the elements, it’s clear that ecommerce is always changing — just in an evolutionary way. The basics are cast, just as the basics of traditional retail were long ago, but the use of those basics is incrementally being subjected to experimentation. New approaches come along, fly high or fall short, and change how things are viewed.

    One approach that’s clearly flown high is that of bringing the subscription model to ecommerce. You can’t have escaped the rise of this business model — but is it the future of online retail, just another option, or a tactic with a limited shelf life? In all likelihood, it’s somewhere between the first two. Allow me to explain why.

    Consistency provides a steady revenue

    When you rely on subscriptions, you know that any given purchase isn’t a one-off payment: it’s a gateway to enduring payment. This makes it so much easier to predict how much revenue you’ll bring in each month, providing you with a level of security that frees you to grow your business without needing to worry so much about financing.

    Your churn rate (the rate at which you lose subscribers) will obviously factor into this, but if you do most things right then you should have a solid base of loyal customers. So what can you do with your steady revenue? Well, you can invest in many ways. You can expand your operation in the most basic sense by scaling up what you’re already doing, or upgrade some aspect of your infrastructure, or even put the money into a secondary business.

    This is also great for maintaining the value of your business for potential investors or buyers. Even if you don’t want more money and have no interest in selling your store, it’s prudent to keep the perceived value high: you never know when a golden opportunity might come along and inspire you to go in a totally fresh direction.

    Simplicity reduces admin complexity

    The process of fielding administrative issues can be tricky in the ecommerce world. With each complaint, you must first determine exactly what product (or products) are involved, how and when the purchase was made, and what communication has already taken place — and if you want to keep the customer happy, you must then take some relevant actions.

    If you sell a hundred products, that holds you to assisting with the use of each and every one of them, even though it may not technically be your responsibility. Some customers will never accept the need to go to a manufacturer for assistance. Updating orders, offering deals: it’s a complicated process. And then there’s the matter of getting your pricing right. Imagine regularly monitoring a hundred price tags, ensuring that they stay in line with market averages.

    Using the subscription model takes away a lot of this work. When you offer a small selection of subscriptions, your work is similarly stripped back (customization options won’t be too problematic since most people will go without them). You’ll end up getting the same questions over and over again, making it easy to answer them, particularly with a knowledge base.

    The pricing too gets much simpler. You can use a dynamic pricing tool if you’d like, with Prisync being the classic example, or make manual tweaks using subscription management software such as Chargebee. You can alter the fundamentals of your subscription tiers, see how it impacts your results, and proceed accordingly.

    Larger commitments allow for discounts

    Another great thing about subscriptions for products is that buying in bulk makes it possible to offer discounts that wouldn’t be viable otherwise — at least, not for individual resellers. Wholesalers have always been able to lower prices in that way, but chiefly within the world of B2B retail. And making your products cheaper will obviously help you to sell more subscriptions.

    Bundling products together also gives you the freedom to maximize profit margins for crucial products by balancing them with narrow profit margins on others, and even offload items that wouldn’t ordinarily sell. Indeed, the point of many subscription boxes is to invite mystery, with subscribers not knowing exactly what they’ll get each month.

    Subscriptions will never suit everyone

    Despite those advantages, of course, it’s hard to describe the ecommerce subscription model as the future of online retail. Why? Because it doesn’t suit every situation. Just as there are products that don’t really fit the subscription model (think of expensive and rarely-purchased items, for instance), there are people who’ll never want to subscribe to receive products.

    Merely being part of the future of online retail is nothing to be sniffed at, though. It’s quite clear by now that the subscription model is a rousing success that only stands to get bigger in the coming years, so it’ll be interesting to see which niches it infiltrates next.

  • Best Dropshipping Products: 10 Things To Sell In 2021

    Best Dropshipping Products: 10 Things To Sell In 2021

    Dropshipping is one of the most exciting, lucrative and accessible entrepreneurial ventures of the last few years. 

    The advent of services such as AliExpress and dropshipping add-ons to popular store builders such as WordPress has allowed people all over the world to set up sites and watch the passive income roll in.

    While it’s obviously a little harder than it sounds to run a successful dropshipping business, it offers significant time and financial benefits over managing a traditional ecommerce store. 

    But how do you find the best dropshipping products to sell online? 

    In this article we’ll provide you with the most important piece of the ecommerce puzzle with a list of the 10 best dropshipping products you should consider selling on your store, from trending products you have to take advantage of to evergreen favourites with high seasonal value. 

    A brief introduction to dropshipping 

    Considering that you’re reading this article for product inspiration, we’re going to assume you’re fairly familiar with the concept of dropshipping. 

    To give you a little refresher we’ll just cover the basic points of this ecommerce model: 

    • Dropshipping is an ecommerce fulfilment method where the store do not stock the products they sell
    • The online store purchases products from third-party suppliers and have them shipped directly to the customers
    • Dropshipping is the best way to test out entrepreneurial business ideas in a low-risk environment 
    • A dropshipping enterprise requires less overhead and location investment than a standard ecommerce business
    • Dropshipping add-ons are available for a range of leading ecommerce platforms  

    To learn more about the ins and outs of managing your own dropshipping business, check out our full guide to the best dropshipping tools for ecommerce businesses. 

    The 10 best dropshipping products

    While useability, design and marketing are all important in dropshipping, the best stores are built on a foundation of adaptability and awareness towards emerging product trends. 

    The majority of successful stores either sell useful products at budget prices (generally under £10), products currently experiencing a boom period, or products that are rare or difficult to find. 

    Below, we’ve put together a list of 10 of the most profitable dropshipping products to sell through your store, grouped into simple categories both prospective store owners and customers can understand. 

    This list was built using a combination of research into trend data, product useability and social media research, giving you the best overview of the types of products to invest in today and the best dropshipping niches.

    Let’s get started. 

    Clothing

    While dropshipping is built on the success of particular trends, like all forms of ecommerce, it’s important to find some products with universal and evergreen value. 

    Other than food, water and shelter, is there anything people need more than clothes? 

    While fashion retail is a highly competitive market to enter as a first-time store owner, the past few years have shown clothes to be highly versatile additions to a successful business, whether you’re stocking a trending product or leaning into a more stable trend in fashion. 

    One challenge stores owners must consider when moving into this dropshipping niche is the ethical standards and product production methods of your suppliers. Buying products of higher ethical quality can put some strain on your financial margins, but it’ll also give you a unique edge in an increasingly saturated market. 

    Start dropshipping clothing with these items: 

    • Graphic t-shirts (particularly those featuring designs of popular trends and phrases)
    • Exercise and outdoor wear
    • Jackets 

    Everyday accessories 

    Consumers are always looking for cheap alternatives of their favourite accessories and the top-selling items of the day. 

    While it’s hard to find top of the range watches and bracelets for bargain prices online, dropshipping is a great way to fill out a collection or pick up a stop-gap replacement ready for a new job, first date or even as a cheap gift. 

    Many dropshipping suppliers have begun to stock these products en masse as demand rises for them amongst consumers on popular social media platforms and dropshipping stores are targeted by consumers looking to hop on a new trend at a lower investment. 

    Start dropshipping everyday accessories with these items: 

    • Wallets 
    • Smartwatches 
    • Minimalist jewellery

    Baby products

    Focusing your business model around baby-centric products can be risky if you’re not familiar with the niche, but if you’re up to the challenge these can be some of the best-selling dropshipping items. 

    New store owners will appreciate the high demand that exists for baby products online and the widespread availability of these products through suppliers such as AliExpress. Meanwhile experienced dropshippers will see the benefit of a niche they can count on for continued popularity and promotional potential for new parents who have grown up familiar with social media and online shopping. 

    What do you get when you combine high search volume with new parents looking to cut costs? The perfect dropshipping product. 

    Start dropshipping baby products with these items: 

    • Every-day infants wear
    • Winter-wear for children
    • Spill-proof bowls and other feeding materials 

    Fashion and beauty products

    With many average consumers deeming fashion and beauty products overpriced through their suppliers or in brick and mortar retail stores, it makes sense that they would become brilliant dropshipping products. 

    The necessity of these items makes them one of the most profitable dropshipping niches, but it’s their potential for advertising alongside influencers and across social media (such as Instagram and Tik Tok) that really sends them over the edge. 

    Nifty solutions to minor cosmetic issues and great ways to cut down the cost of their daily skin routine make your dropshipping store an attractive destination for consumers of all ages. 

    Start dropshipping fashion and beauty products with these items: 

    • Face rollers
    • Electric toothbrushes 
    • Sleep eye masks 

    Fitness gear

    In a post-lockdown world, regular people are more comfortable with the concept of a home workout than ever before. 

    The pandemic saw an almost immediate surge in workout equipment delivered to consumer’s doors, with stores struggling to keep up with demand. This led to people searching for new ways to buy essentials to keep them in shape at home. They turned to dropshipping, ordering generic weights, yoga mats and resistance bands. 

    While fitness fanatics may be concerned with having a particular brand of fitness gear, the average consumer isn’t as willing to make a huge investment, and is more than likely just looking for a sport or routine that suits them. This makes them ideal customers for dropshipping stores. 

    Start dropshipping fitness gear with these items:

    • Yoga mats
    • Leggings
    • Post-workout massage guns 

    Pet toys and accessories

    The business of pets is booming, with pet owners helping it grow into an estimated $99 billion industry in the United States alone at the end of 2020. 

    It’s safe to say people are very passionate about their pets. Whether they have dogs, cats, snakes or rats, all these animal lovers are eager to lavish their furry (or scaly) friends with treats (of both the edible and non-edible kind).

    Dropshipping is also a brilliant place for pet lovers to pick up the essential pet gear and specialist equipment they might need. Best of all for store owners, these products are engagement magnets on social media, helping new stores to get off the ground with original and fun products. 

    Some pet supplies dropshipping products we recommend looking into include: 

    • Outdoor equipment (leashes, jackets)
    • Toys of all shapes and sizes
    • Novelty beds 

    Travel and camping gear

    Many of the best selling dropshipping products climb the charts by offering luxury or specialist equipment at cut-rate prices. 

    For people looking to explore the wilderness for the first time and enjoy a new hobby, travel and camping gear can get quite expensive, especially when you’re looking at major brands. Dropshipping gives you the opportunity to cut into this growing market and appeal to first-time hikers with white-label fishing, trekking and survival equipment. 

    In season, stocking hiking backpacks on your site allows you to appeal to a wide range of different customer types, from avid explorers to festival-goers to families on their first staycation. These products are highly adaptable and generally available at high-margin prices, so give this sector some serious thought. 

    Some travel and camping dropshipping products we recommend looking into include: 

    • Hiking backpacks
    • Sleeping equipment
    • Water bottles

    Kitchenware 

    Everyone loves food, and anything that can improve people’s experience of preparing or enjoying a meal in their kitchen has the potential to be a winning dropshipping product. 

    Much like everyday accessories, the beauty of this category is how broad it is. Whether you choose to sell high-grade kitchen appliances or little accoutrements to make people feel more at home while preparing a home-cooked meal, there will always be an audience. 

    From full-time parents to eager millennials looking for a new hobby, kitchenware has fascinated consumers for years. Best of all, suppliers all over the world are dealing in these products, making it easy to find the next big niche Tupperware or that essential bit of equipment needed to make that trending desert. 

    Some kitchenware dropshipping products we recommend looking into include: 

    • Tupperware boxes
    • Organic tea strainers
    • Dining equipment 

    Home decoration 

    People love their homes and are always looking for new ways to spice them up. After almost an entire year indoors, people are more eager than ever to do something a little different with their homes. 

    Dropshipping provides a great way to offer people the chance to experiment with new styles at a low cost. While it won’t quite give you a window into the interior design business, dropshipping can give entrepreneurs with a passion for particular styles of home decor and an eagerness to learn about the market a great way to indulge themselves in the industry. 

    As more and more people, particularly those with disposable income, find themselves on a constantly rotating cycle of rented homes, the need to add something quintessentially ‘them’ to it at an affordable price becomes all the more important. 

    Some home decoration dropshipping products we recommend looking into include: 

    • Flower hangers
    • Novelty lights and decorations
    • Pillows, throws and sheets

    Office products

    Dropshipping businesses don’t just cater to the most frivolous consumer habits. There are many useful products you can make a good profit selling to both businesses and students alike. 

    Whether it’s offices needing to refill their supplies or academics in need of back-to-school gear, there will always be a constantly eager group of consumers looking for discounts on everything from writing equipment to digital tools. 

    Couple that with the simplicity to manufacture and ship these products and you have a winning dropshipping option with an eye-watering profit margin. 

    Some office dropshipping products we recommend looking into include: 

    • Mechanical Pencils
    • Pencil Cases
    • Mechanical Keyboards (Personalised) 

    How to do market research for your own dropshipping products 

    Not sold on any of these product suggestions? Let us show you how to find your own!

    Dropshipping product research is perhaps too complicated a subject to cover in this section alone, but here are a few tips to get you started setting up your own product research lab and finding your own quality products:

    • Analyse trending and promoted ads on social media channels for what other stores are selling (even traditional ecommerce ones!)
    • Follow pages and accounts that post viral videos for insight into the latest trending dropshipping products and challenges
    • Analyse Google Trends data and Google Analytics for insights into exactly what consumers are talking about online
    • Cross-reference the number of orders through AliExpress
    • See what’s trending on Amazon, eBay and Etsy
    • Find dropshipping suppliers and enquire about product availability (and check their rating)
    • Check what other dropshipping items are selling well 

    These methods and product research tools can be used to find new products or validate a hunch you have about a potential one! You should always believe in the products you sell yourself before you invest. 

    Remember, the best dropshipping products sell through a combination of great marketing and affordable pricing. It’s not quite the same as high-end ecommerce where brand name and product quality will help you through. 

    Even the most experienced store owners still struggle to find the right dropshipping products to sell. 

    Products rarely find instant success and are even less likely to retain their popularity beyond the initial fad. The truth is, dropshipping is about constantly adapting and looking for new ways to appeal to niche audiences and mass-market consumers, so knowing how to complete product research is just as important as any guide to the very best products. 

  • The Best Shopify Plugins For Ecommerce In 2021

    The Best Shopify Plugins For Ecommerce In 2021

    Even in its most basic form, the Shopify ecommerce platform is among the most well-rounded you can use, making it easy to start a Shopify store and get selling without spending a lot of money or needing web-development skills. It’s also hugely scalable: there’s a reason why big brands like Heinz and Bulletproof have retained it as they’ve grown.

    But that core level of functionality is just the starting point. Through the numerous high-quality integrations available through the Shopify App Store, it’s possible to build a store that offers a unique array of features and design elements. In ecommerce, standing out from the crowd is a key objective, so the right plugins (or apps) for your online store can help you reach that point.

    In this post, we’re going to focus on the best Shopify plugins, picking out a selection of apps that have great potential to save you time, get you seen in search engines, increase your revenue, and grow your brand. Some are free, while others will cost you: regardless, they’ll produce outstanding ROI for your Shopify store if you use them properly, and a 14-day-free trial is almost always available. Let’s get started.

    The best Shopify plugins for e-commerce store owners

    There are many ways in which you can improve an ecommerce store, and that’s reflected in the immense range of plugins on offer: the Shopify App Store hosts almost two-and-a-half thousand apps, each of which has been tested to ensure full compatibility. If you commit to trawling through them and painstakingly picking out the apps that catch your eye, you’ll be looking for a long time — so here’s a shortlist of the top picks to help you get started:

    Translate Your Store by Weglot

    A screenshot of the Weglot app available on the Shopify app store

    If you’ve yet to consider selling internationally, you’re leaving money on the table. Through the rich fulfilment networks offered by global brands like Amazon, it’s possible to efficiently and economically move your products into myriad new markets. There are two key challenges, though: understanding those markets, and getting your presentation right.

    The former will require extensive research. What of the latter? Well, you may need to tweak your brand colours and swap out some pop-culture references, but the main obstacle will be language. Most countries have English as a second or third language, yes, but a store that uses the visitor’s first language will inevitably prove more successful.

    Weglot’s Shopify Translation App was designed to make it optimally easy to get your store translated to any language you want to target. In addition to automatically translating every part of your store (including the navigation and the checkout process, of course), this free app (free to install, at least) allows convenient refinement of the automatic translation, making it simple to correct the inevitable errors. It also happens to adhere to best practices for multilingual SEO, ensuring proper regional indexing.

    Printful

    A screenshot of the Printful app available on the Shopify app store

    Modern ecommerce sellers benefit hugely from adding revenue streams, and one of the best ways to do this is to cultivate brands they can subsequently monetize through selling branded merchandise. If you can build up a logo-and-slogan combination that your customers respond to, you can add it to products like shirts and hats that can make you money outright or simply serve as effective purchase incentives (buy today and get a free hat, etc.).

    Printful’s print-on-demand service (which happens to be a 100%-free plan) makes this merchandising effort incredibly simple. You don’t need to stock anything at all, deal with the often-complex printing process, or even deal with the distribution side of things if you’d rather avoid it. All you need to do is choose from a range of generic (but high-quality) items, choose the text and imagery you want to feature, determine the optimal profit margins, and add the custom products to your store through the integration. Just a few clicks can change everything.

    Wishlist Plus

    A screenshot of the Wishlist Plus app available on the Shopify app store When people visit online stores, they don’t always want to buy immediately — or maybe there are certain things they do want immediately, but they’re also open to learning about things they may wish to buy later. It’s massively frustrating to get someone’s attention with a relevant product only to see them forget about it and never return to purchase it. So what can you do?

    With the simple addition of a wishlist function, something you can easily add to your store through the convenient Wishlist Plus app (which does have a free plan), you can allow customers (or prospective customers) to line up items they might want to buy later. Being able to create a wishlist will encourage someone to return, and their interest may grow until they choose to place a large order. Your average order value stands to benefit significantly.

    Note that this app doesn’t require user logins to work, and provides you with options for carrying out personalised targeted email campaigns for wishlist-using visitors who are logged in. If you think it might take just one more prompt to convince someone to buy an item they’ve been eyeing, you can deliver that prompt with great efficiency.

    Referral Candy

    A screenshot of the ReferralCandy app available on the Shopify app storeThere are many ways to grow a store, but none is more powerful than word-of-mouth buzz. Every other form of marketing can feel relatively forced and awkward. If you can impress your customers so much that they start recommending you to their friends and family members, it can build up tremendous momentum for your brand. But even impressed customers won’t inevitably start talking up your business. You need to incentivise referrals.

    That’s where Referral Candy enters the picture. One of the most popular referral systems around, it provides everything you need to prompt, track and value recommendations from your customers. You can create custom pop-up forms to explain what’s on offer for those who send referrals your way, for instance, and offer straightforward recompense: instead of sluggishly gifting discounts, you can send payment immediately following a conversion.

    Recart

    A screenshot of the Recart app available on the Shopify app store

    Smart marketing goes where potential customers can be productively reached, and that currently means taking advantage of social media channels. Facebook has billions of active monthly users, and most of them use Facebook Messenger for everything from keeping up with friends to booking restaurant tables. If you’re not using that channel to prompt some further customer purchases, you should be.

    Hooking into Facebook accounts through social logins or offered incentives (10% off if you connect your Facebook account, etc.), the Recart Facebook messaging app is exceptionally useful for following up on visits that didn’t result in sales. Maybe someone left an item in their cart and forgot to return for it, or maybe they couldn’t find a certain item and gave up. If so, outreach via Facebook Messenger is more likely to be noticed than email outreach.

    Usefully, in addition to chasing these missed sales through targeted prompts, Recart can send receipts, extend review requests, and even provide order updates. Configured smartly, it can produce greatly-enhanced customer experience without needing any ongoing effort from you.

    Whatsapp Chat + Abandoned Cart

    A screenshot of the Whatsapp Chat + Abandoned Cart app available on the Shopify app storeWhatsApp is extremely popular as a messaging platform, yet it hasn’t received as much attention as Facebook Messenger in the ecommerce world. This is a shame because many people would like to get assistance without needing to be logged into social media. With the Whatsapp Chat + Abandoned Cart app, you can support various other chat channels.

    Yes, the name is a misnomer: the WhatsApp support is the star attraction, but you can also use the app to communicate via channels including Instagram Messenger, Tawk, Tidio, Telegram, and WeChat, to name just some. If you only want to use one app for social media support, bear in mind that it does support Facebook Messenger. It just wasn’t designed to do the things that Recart can do, so don’t go in with unrealistic expectations.

    Free Shipping Bar

    A screenshot of the Free Shipping Bar app available on the Shopify app store

     Regardless of the overall cost of an ecommerce transaction, the prospect of free shipping has astonishing power for raising your average order value. Consider the perfectly-plausible scenario of someone adding £30 to their order purely so they can hit a free-shipping threshold and save £5 as a result. Their overall spend is higher by £25, but they feel that they’ve won a contest of sorts.

    The Free Shipping Bar app brings this phenomenon to the forefront of your store by prominently displaying (at the top of the page, no less) a free shipping bar (obviously) stating how close the shopper is to getting free shipping. Each item they add gets them nearer to that much-desired saving. It might sound trivial, but the psychological pressure really adds up — especially if you set custom messages to ramp up the motivation as they add items to their cart.

    Pre-Order Now

    A screenshot of the Pre-Order Now app available on the Shopify app store

    Missing a sale because a product is out of stock is frustrating, as is feeling unable to take advantage of the hype you’re building up for a pending product launch. With Pre-Order Now, you can bring a new dimension to your Shopify store by granting it easy support for pre-orders. Whenever an item is out of stock (or not released yet), you can let the pre-orders gather through automatically-swapped buttons, then fulfil them when you’re ready.

    You can also implement early-bird specials with ease, applying automatic discounts to pre-orders for particular items and rewarding the customers who loyally follow your marketing materials. And to avoid confusion when shoppers mix order types, you can configure pop-up alerts to confirm their understanding before they place their orders: this is vital because people can otherwise get annoyed about their ordered items arriving at different times.

    Socialphotos

    A screenshot of the Socialphotos app available on the Shopify app store UGC, or user-generated content, brings a lot to the table from a promotional standpoint. It’s produced by people who don’t work for your company, making it much more credible, and it shows significant enthusiasm for your brand (leading new prospects to assume that your business must be fairly impressive).

    Socialphotos enables easy visual social proof through curating and displaying social media images that reference your brand. When someone posts on Instagram about the order they just received from you, tagging your account in the process, you can have a tag-based rule pick up on that and seamlessly add it to a social proof panel on your site.

    The key thing here is that you have total control over which posts get pulled through, so you can carefully set the parameters to avoid accidentally displaying photos that are inappropriate for whatever reason (they may simply be somewhat negative about your brand). Showing many people happy with your products is a fantastic way to welcome someone to your Shopify store.

    AfterShip

    A screenshot of the AfterShip app available on the Shopify app store

    Thinking that your work is done once an order has been shipped is a huge mistake, because it’s the entirety of each customer’s experience that will determine whether they’ll return (and certainly whether they’ll recommend your store). Aftership is an app designed to help you enhance the post-purchase experience of your store, working to keep your customers happy.

    It essentially serves as a hub for tracking information. You can provide a link to Aftership tracking at the point of conversion or at any time afterwards (in emails, for instance), bringing all courier types and shipping priorities together in one view that you can customise in accordance with your brand. This makes life easier for the customer because they don’t need to deal with different tracking systems using often-confusing shipping milestones: you can map every step to your core shipping progress system.

    You can also use a drag-and-drop email editor to create high-quality update email templates, keeping your communications strong and thematically consistent across the board. Consistency is a key ingredient for today’s store owners: your customers want to know they can trust you.

    Plug in SEO

    A screenshot of the Plug in SEO app available on the Shopify app store

    Ecommerce success relies heavily on search-engine traffic, with Google being the first stop for most online shoppers (and Google Shopping have a big role to play) — and while Shopify features some solid built-in SEO features, there’s always room for improvement. The Plug in SEO app makes SEO actions easier to implement, provides relevant training (very useful for beginners), and carries out SEO scans to identify potential ranking impediments such as missing meta tags or loading speed issues.

    It also digs into your best-performing keywords, making it easier for you to tell which content areas you should focus on (and which pieces of existing content are worth taking the time to overhaul). If you’re not an avid follower of the SEO industry but won’t want to hire a dedicated agency to work on your site, this app might constitute the ideal middle-ground solution.

    PageSpeed Monitor

    A screenshot of the PageSpeed app available on the Shopify app store  If you’re looking for the best Shopify analytics plugin, you need to come up with a compelling reason to use something other than Google Analytics. Both free and highly functional, GA is an immensely valuable tool, and the need to access most of it through Google’s interface instead of the Shopify dashboard is no great hardship. There are, though, some elements of Google’s services that are worth carrying through directly, and this is a prime example.

    PageSpeed Monitor makes it easy to automate scans of your store’s speed, pulling through the results on an hourly basis. You can also set up scans of rival websites, allowing you to chart the data against search rankings to yield insight into how performance affects your SEO, or set an alert to trigger in the event that a key metric drops below an acceptable level.

    Buy Button Channel

    A screenshot of the Buy Button Channel app available on the Shopify app store

    Promoting your Shopify store through other websites and sales channels is certainly valuable, but that activity doesn’t always pay off. Sometimes the visitors to a site don’t much want to follow links to sites and end up spending time trying to figure out what they have to offer. But what if you could offer them your products directly? They may be sufficiently interested to buy immediately. This is why it’s so useful to have buy buttons that you can place anywhere.

    Buy Button Channel is the top option for generating these direct-to-purchase links. You can customize them to ensure that they match your branding, then place them wherever you want to boost sales. Shoppers can then buy those items where they are without needing to visit your store. You can even use these links for your own website, adding them to your promotional blog posts so your customers can buy from you more expediently.

    One Click Social Login

    A screenshot of the One Click Social Login app available on the Shopify app store

    Among the biggest barriers to ecommerce conversion once you have someone interested is the need to create an account. Most people have experienced the frustration of finding the right product at the right price, deciding to order it, then being tasked with completing a wide range of fields that ask for personal information that doesn’t really seem necessary.

    Where possible, it’s best to allow people to complete the checkout process without logging in: it’s enough to provide a confirmation number, and possibly email it to the customer if they’ve elected to submit an email address. But the issue with that approach is that it misses out on valuable information. The more you know about someone, the better you can market to them.

    One Click Social Login finds the perfect balance between those approaches by allowing shoppers to log in using their already-active social media logins. Someone logged into Facebook, for instance, can share those details in one click, seamlessly moving over all the key pieces of information. It also removes the need to remember passwords when using new stores.

    FreshCredit

    A screenshot of the FreshCredit app available on the Shopify app store

    Dealing with returns is always frustrating for ecommerce merchants. Even if the items are barely used, the buffering they take in transit can leave them difficult to resell — and it doesn’t help that online buyers (being unable to inspect used products) are unable to gauge their quality. But the situation gets even worse when a customer returns an item and stops buying from you. You lose revenue through the return, and you don’t get it back through subsequent purchases.

    So how do you encourage dissatisfied customers to stick around and try again? You make it easy — and FreshCredit might be exactly what you need. It gives each of your customers a credit balance that you can change when needed: after a return, you can add the appropriate amount to that customer’s credit balance so it’s trivial for them to buy from you again. Forget worrying about temporary discount codes: stick with store credit to maximize your sales.

    Wrapping up the best Shopify plugins

    Although there are countless more Shopify plugins that are certainly worth using, the selection we’ve set out here — the best Shopify plugins, in our estimation — can do much to improve your store without requiring you to put in too much effort. And whether you’re using a 30-day free trial, 14-day free trial, or a free plan, you can get to grips with them without spending anything. So why not get started right away?