Shopify is a popular multinational e-commerce Canadian platform for online stores, drop shippers and retailers. Shopify has numerous integrations with a broad set of commerce ecosystems. This platform is an ideal start for startups in the entrepreneur business. You can create your store on this platform without any technical background. 

Dropshipping on Shopify is the same as on other platforms – a drop shipper sells goods that are produced, stored, and delivered by manufacturers, wholesalers, or importers. This e-commerce business has fewer financial risks and expenditures as you do not need to pre-buy and store any goods or materials, and you can set any price of the target marketplace. 

The only requirement for a drop shipper is to have a working place with a stable internet connection; the profit only depends on the online store traffic.

Shopify dropshipping order workflow

Order fulfilment in dropshipping combines manufacturers’ and suppliers’ management with meeting customers’ expectations. Positive reviews and the number of repeated visits are essential in all online businesses. 

For sure, before order fulfilment, you need to perform some preparation steps. First, you must find the goods to sell and trustworthy suppliers (your own niche). Secondly, you must create a Shopify account and an online store. And on the very last step after order fulfilment, after the customer receives the goods, some questions/refunds/problems can occur. The drop shipper should know how to manage all problems that can occur during order fulfilment and preparation steps.

The order fulfilment starts after the customer places the order on your target marketplace (Shopify) and includes four steps:

1. The customer places the order and makes the payment to your Shopify dropshipping store. Shopify helps to create a catching e-commerce store with the store builder; you need only attract customers and take care of product lists there. Usually, the price in Shopify online stores includes the manufacturers’ price plus the drop shipper’s commission; you can set the commission as a percentage of the manufacturer’s price or as a pre-set value. The main drop shipper task is to check the competitor prices. 
2. You contact your supplier and transfer the order to him. You should check the possibility of order execution; otherwise, you need to contact another supplier. It is recommended to have several suppliers with equal or similar quality of goods always to have items in stock. Moreover, if suppliers are located in different geographical locations, you can decrease transportation costs and terms.
3. After confirmation from the supplier that the goods can be produced, the drop shipper pays the supplier. Based on your preliminary negotiations, the invoicing process can be organized regularly – every 30, 60, or 90 days. Regular invoicing to your supplier gives the opportunity to consolidate several orders in one and reduce accounting papers. Also, one invoice with one number to be paid is much easier to handle than hundreds or thousands.
4. The supplier produces the goods or takes them from his storage, packs it, and organizes delivery directly to the customer. In some cases, the goods can be sent to the drop shipper, where they can be consolidated for further shipment to the customer. With this solution, you can save some expenses on shipment costs and organize delivery in your branded packing. 

The drop shipper should manage the overall process with minimal effort and mistakes to leave time for an advertisement campaign for new customer attractions. There are several ways to improve order fulfilment. 

Ways to improve order fulfillment

The best solution to improve order fulfilment is to use software to automate the process. The routine business should be performed timely and without mistakes with the possibility to track the money and goods. 

Some automation features are available in numerous Shopify dropshipping apps and extensions – Oberlo, DSers, Printful, Easync, Zendrop, etc. Each application can automate various areas of drop shipper activities. Some can find the best-seller products for dropshipping, some can help to create product lists, some can track changes in prices and product availability in stocks, and some can perform order fulfillment. For example, fulfillment by Easync even takes care of returns and cancellations. With automation tools, you can fulfill multiple stores with thousands of goods, but manually tracking such numbers is impossible.

Another type of automated software recommended for drop shippers with multiple stores is automated accounting software (Synder, Xero, QuickBooks Online, etc.). These tools take care of your taxes, synchronize all transactions (multicurrency is possible), and create accounting reports. 

As said earlier, it is essential to meet customers’ expectations and to answer all related questions and claims to receive good reviews. Therefore, many positive reviews on successful order fulfilment are the most effective tools for site promotion. In addition, several software tools deal with customer issues (Help Scout, Zendesk, HelpCenter, Richpanel, etc.). All these tools support correspondence and email claims; you can also add FAQ articles and blogs.  

All these tools give you the time you need to promote your website. With website marketing, you will have customers. You can also find some automatic tools for marketing, for SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, or email marketing. The drop shipper business is not about goods production; it is about marketing. Shopify analytic tools help to analyze customers’ behaviour to increase conversion rate, but to increase your profit; it is recommended to use all marketing resources.

Conclusion

Dropshipping has many advantages but also gives a hard time for beginners. The drop shipper cannot control the production and packing process, so you should choose reliable suppliers. All problems occur during order fulfilment mainly related to the production site, but the drop shipper should resolve all claims, including returns and refunds. It is essential to conduct agreements with detailed return policies with suppliers. All other problems during order fulfilment can be transferred to the software. 

But despite all the complications, dropshipping business with Shopify is the best platform for beginners. It is one of the best ways to sell goods without expenses for production and delivery. The preliminary investments are minimal. Further, after the first successful order fulfilment, you can invest money in online store marketing.

Suggested:

How to Start Building a Shopify App?

Best Shopify Apps for Dropshipping from Shopify App Store.

Best Shopify themes for eCommerce stores.

The post How to Fulfill Orders on Shopify Dropshipping? appeared first on Tricky Enough.

If this happens to your site, then let’s figure it out together why this is happening.

Also, this article may be useful to you if you just want to evaluate the quality of traffic to the site and improve conversion.

How to assess the quality of traffic to a website?

Let’s remember what types of traffic to the site are.

I. Information traffic

This traffic is brought to the site by information materials – articles, news, reviews, etc. If your site has popular materials that rank well for informational queries in your topic (for example, “how to take care of a tattoo in the early days”), then they can bring the lion’s share of traffic.

II. Brand traffic

These are any referrals for queries containing your company name. It can also be contacts, phone numbers, addresses, email, names of managers, etc.

III. Targeted traffic

Most valuable traffic. These are referrals for commercial requests directly related to your products or services.

“Buy a Samsung washing machine”, “SPB family lawyer”, “custom-made furniture” are examples of requests that make up targeted traffic. As a rule, it is this traffic that brings the largest number of orders, which is why it is so appreciated.

How to determine which traffic is dominating your site?

Determining the “composition” of traffic is quite simple. Yandex. Metrica will help us with this.

To begin with, it’s worth looking at which pages give the most clicks.
To do this, go to Reports-Standard reports-Contents-Login pages:

Determine the composition of traffic and see which pages bring more conversions.

If this is the main page, catalog sections, or services, then your site is dominated by commercial traffic:

Determining the composition of traffic

If these are pages of an information block, accordingly, the information traffic prevails:

The predominance of information traffic

If there is more commercial traffic on the site, then you need to determine whether it is targeted or branded.
To do this, go to Reports-Standard reports-Sources-Search engines:

Commercial traffic analysis

Choose a longer period, quarterly or yearly:

Commercial traffic analysis

Remember the figure of the total number of visitors for requests:

Commercial traffic analysis

Now we need to filter out branded traffic. That is, for a company called “Horns and Hooves” we need to exclude all queries where these words appear, as well as queries with a domain name. Let our domain be called rogaikopyta.ru.

Go to Visits – Sources – Last Significant Source – Search Phrase

Brand traffic analysis

Fill out the form:

Brand traffic analysis

The exclamation point at the beginning is the negation of the condition.

The asterisk matches any number of any characters, case sensitive.

For correct filtering, you need to select “all conditions”.

Thus, we exclude all phrases where the name of the company and site is found in any form:

hooves and horns
company of horns and hooves
Ru official site, etc.
Now, look at the number of visitors after you have eliminated all brand queries. If there is less than half of the original number left, then obviously branded traffic on your site predominates.

So, you have found out what traffic to the site you have the most. Now it remains to develop a strategy that will help convert visitors to orders.

Brand traffic analysis

Before we move on to the recommendations, we want to remind you of an important rule: collect all requests from the site in CRM or a specially created email box. This will help to clearly track and analyze incoming applications.

If there is more brand traffic to the site

Having a lot of brand traffic to your site is good. If a large number of people are looking for your company, then this is considered a positive signal for the search engines when ranking sites.

However, the optimal ratio of branded to non-branded traffic will be approximately 30/70. Since if the site is dominated by branded traffic or the ratio is approximately 50/50, then most likely the site has very low visibility for requests.

You can evaluate this yourself by collecting key queries and checking the positions using special services or manually.

If the majority of positions are below the TOP-20, then visitors often simply do not reach your site in search.

Optimal solution

In this case, complex internal and external website optimization will help you, aimed at increasing positions and, accordingly, attracting more traffic.

If the site is dominated by information traffic

Typically, this traffic is considered “empty” because it rarely brings the desired leads. The visitor goes from search to your article, gets the necessary information, perhaps looks at 2-3 more articles – and leaves the site.

Converting information traffic is difficult, but possible.

Optimal solution

There is no universal solution in this case. For each specific topic, you need to select your own “key” for converting articles. However, there are several common options that you can test and evaluate.

1. Write articles to help sell your product or service

What is the scheme for writing articles on the site? wordstat.yandex.com opens, a key request is entered, and all suitable information semantics with high and medium frequency plus low-frequency tails are searched for.

Now try to move away from the standards and put yourself in the shoes of your website visitor. Think about what topics could help you convert a regular visitor into a customer? What problem can you help someone who clicked on your article from search to solve?

For example, you have an online store of inexpensive furniture. And in the information section, you write articles on the topic “Furniture in the loft-style” or “How to care for natural wood furniture”.

If your assortment includes goods of a medium/low price category, then there is no point in writing about expensive furniture. Cover topics that are close to your potential buyers. For example, “Kitchens made of MDF: pros and cons”, “How to place shoes in a small hallway”, etc.

In such articles, it is easier to hook the visitor with conversion elements.

Placement of conversion items

Conversion elements are very important for a website as they encourage the visitor to make a purchase. There are a lot of such elements: from catchy headlines to time counters showing the end date of a profitable promotion.

What elements can be used in articles? Let’s consider the most popular options.

The simplest element is contextual linking. In the text of the article, you provide a link to your product or service page.

A very old method that is still in use, but not the most efficient one. Contextual links are often simply ignored. It is better to combine such links with other elements.

Blocks with product examples

A great option for online stores. Such an element attracts attention and helps to interest the buyer. You can place such blocks after each paragraph or at the end of the article

Feedback forms

More suitable for sites selling services. But online stores can also be used as an additional element of interaction with the visitor.
The site is dominated by organic traffic, but there are no orders
Finally, let’s take a look at the reasons organic traffic might not be converting.

Problems with commercial factors

Prices, delivery terms, assortment, even the location of an office or an offline store influence the decision to purchase your product or service.

For example, a very common problem: the lack of prices on the site. Instead of indicating the cost of a product or service, the visitor is invited to call or send a request for a price calculation.

Lack of prices on the site

If your topic is not extremely narrow and there are enough similar offers on the market, then the visitor with a high degree of probability will leave your site and go to the competitor’s site, which has the cost of goods/services. That is why it is so important to indicate prices, at least in the format “from so many rubles.” or average cost. In addition to having a positive effect on conversion, it also contributes to a better ranking of the site as a whole.

We recommend that you conduct an in-depth analysis of the behavior of visitors on the site using Yandex.Metrica tools (click maps, webviewer, bounce rate). It will help you understand at what stage the visitor leaves the site, which influences the decision to abandon the purchase and take measures to improve the conversion.

Also, carefully and regularly study the sites of the main competitors and use good solutions.

2. Technical problems of the site

What to check first:
The correctness of the feedback forms and the shopping cart. It is possible that customer requests simply do not reach you. Check all forms, place a test order. This will help identify and fix the problem.
Site availability. You may not notice this, but during the day your site can constantly “crash” for a period of several minutes to an hour or more. There are special services with which you can collect website availability statistics. In case of problems, a special bot will signal problems. For example, there is such a bot in Telegram: @SiteKnockerBot
If you notice problems with site accessibility, analyze the reasons. It may be worth changing hosting, expanding the tariff, or switching to a different content management system.

Technical problems of the site

Website loading speed. Especially on mobile devices. It’s important to check not only the home page but also the main landing pages. The download speed issue is often underestimated. But it can cause the visitor to leave your site, simply without waiting for the page to load.
Adaptive layout. In the age of smartphones, it is especially important to pay attention to the display of the site on mobile devices.
Judge for yourself, which site is more convenient if you have a smartphone in your hands?

Therefore, check the site on devices with different screen sizes and fix the main problems.

Problems in the work of employees

A rather rare situation, but it is worth checking this version if you are absolutely sure that you are fine with the commercial factors and the operation of the site. For example, you see a steady stream of requests in CRM or e-mail, but they do not bring requests

Perhaps a visitor orders a callback, and your employees call back late? Or visitors write to the chat, but the operator is constantly offline?

Place some test orders and evaluate the performance of your staff. You may have identified serious problems that you need to fix.

Make your website better

We have listed only 3 possible groups of problems that can cause conversions to suffer.

In practice, there can be many more reasons why traffic does not bring orders: this is seasonality, and the economic situation in the country, and even a sharp increase in negative reviews for the goods or services that you sell.

But it is worth starting all the same by analyzing the first two possible problems: technical and commercial.

And remember that the work on the site must be constant. Analyze user behavior, fix problems, improve your site as much as possible – and you will definitely get a positive effect.

We hope our article was useful to you, and now it will be easier for you to understand the reasons why traffic does not bring orders. And, most importantly, to convert visitors to customers. The article was prepared by the best editor service company.

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