Dropshipping Shopify:
Ultimate Shopify Dropshipping Guide

Step 1

Shopify Dropshipping Fundamentals

What is Shopify? 

Shopify is the worlds leading E-Commerce platform which allows you to create your online store and sell offline through the Shopify POS. It is quite simple: Normal Websites and bloggers use WordPress and online store owners use Shopify. Shopify is an E-Commerce website builder with literally everything in you need to sell online. Shopify is for everyone at any stage wether you are just a beginner, want to start your Dropshipping business or are an enterprise retail brand.

Shopify has all you need to start, run and scale your E-Commerce business. When you are starting out you would need to open a storefront to showcase your products, engage with your customers by creating blogs, accept payments for your products, work with leading software plugins and so much more. Shopify provides all the tools you need in order to manage all of these activities.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is most probably the easiest way to start your E-Commerce journey and is very attractive for entrepreneurs and especially startups because it does minimize the risk of your business and will allow you to focus more on digital marketing because your money is used for advertisement instead of having it locked in stock at your warehouse.

You can start your E-Commerce Drop Shipping business with other platforms too, the Drop Shipping concept is not exclusive to Shopify only, however Shopify Dropshipping is the most known and best choice to use. If you would like to know more about Dropshipping within UAE and Dubai you can have a look at Dropshipping UAE Dubai.

Shopify Dropshipping meaning: What is Shopify Dropshipping?

So what does Shopify Dropshipping mean? Shopify Dropshipping means that you use Shopify as the E-Commerce platform for your Drop Ship online business, Shopify is the most known platform for Drop Shipping and has the best features for Drop Shipper and integrations too. So the meaning of Shopify Dropshipping is the Dropshipping approach on the Shopify platform.

Why use Shopify for Dropshipping?

But why should I use Shopify for my Dropshipping business? Shopify is extremely user-friendly and has  numerous apps specifically designed for Dropshipping. One Software is called Oberlo which got acquired by Shopify for the perfect Dropshipping software between Aliexpress and Shopify. Shopify has direct sales channels to almost all social platforms. If you want to focus more on your business than on your IT, Shopify is exactly right for you – all the IT stuff is taken care of from Shopify directly. It has never been easier to kick off your Shopify Dropshipping business than now.

Pros of Shopify Dropshipping

• Almost no starting capital is needed. The main benefit of dropshipping is that it almost doesn’t cost anything. You can get started with a very small investment  (less than 1000$) because you don’t need to purchase inventory! You only going to pay for the products once you have already sold it to your buyer.
• Easy Management. Because you don’t need to purchase products you will have it very easy to launch and maintain your online store. This is one important part because exactly this will allow you to spend more time and resources on your store design, digital marketing and all social media.
• Almost no overhead costs. By not having to purchase inventory and not taking care about the Shipping you actually save additionally the inventory storage and fulfillment cost. You basically have a one time investment to get your store ready (which in our case was below 1000$ – Checkout our Drop Shipping Masterclass to know more) and from then onwards it is more about your digital marketing and strategy.
• Large Product selection. Don’t worry about finding products, you have literally access to millions of products directly through Oberlo from Aliexpress. This means you can provide your customers with a wide range of products.
• Easy to expand. It is very easy to expand your Shopify Dropshipping store to other countries as long your suppliers are actually delivering to these countries you a ready to go ahead, this allows you to scale up very fast.

Cons of Shopify Dropshipping

• Low margins. It is very easy to set up a Dropshipping store which means that there is a lot of competition, so you will basically see a lot of retailers offering the same products incredibly low. You would need to find products which are almost not available within the country you want to focus on, if you find these products and additionally build a next level Dropshipping store, you have great chances to have higher margins. Check out our Masterclass for your next level Dropshipping business.
• Inventory or supplier issues. So, with a Shopify Dropshipping store you are not managing and stocking your own inventory, this can be frustrating to ensure that the items are always available especially the ones you run marketing on. If you are working with suppliers that also provide products to your competition this might run out of stock quite fast. However, if you use Shopify APPs like Oberlo – this can help you avoid these issues by seamlessly integrating into suppliers inventory.
• Shipping costs. If you offer a wide range of products you will most probably have products from multiple suppliers which means you will have multiple shipping costs. For example, if a customer orders three items from you it might happen that these are from three different suppliers, which means you would need to pay shipping not for only one but but all three. So you need to calculate the Shipping cost for each item in the product price otherwise you run into shipping cost issues.
• Shipping time. As you are not in control or in ownership of the products, the shipping time might be delayed and cause unexpected issues. Make sure you are realistic on providing approximate Shipping times.
• Customer support. So you need to be prepared for mishaps, you most probably will face these issues – that you sell a product which is out of stock, one of the products ordered might ended up not arriving, your customer will receive the wrong item which he didn’t order. However, your customers ordering from your Shopify Dropshipping site which means you are responsible for the customer communication as well.

Find a lucrative Dropshipping Niche

Before you start with your Shopify Dropshipping store, you would need to find a lucrative Dropshipping Niche, with the below steps you will understand how to find your Shopify Dropshipping Niche.

Aliexpress Categories

You would need to ideally focus on one Niche, if you don’t have a Niche which you personally are interested in or even better which you are passionate about. Simply go to Aliexpress and review the available Categories and sub-categories.

Focus on Niches your Audience is passionate about

The best is to find a Niche in which your target audience is passionate about for example a hobby, if you focus on categories in which your audience is passionate about you will have it a bit easier to create your marketing because you already now very specific the audience.

Focus on Niches you can fix a problem of your audience

If you wouldn’t want to focus on a hobby or passion of your target audience you could focus on something which fixes a problem for your target audience, this could be actually anything which you are able to show what problem you are able to fix and then target this audience. For example providing your customer a product to protect the mobile phone in a nice way.

You can focus on Fashion & Trends as well

If you would like to focus on Fashion and Trends look for a category which can not provide to much of size issues this would reflect into a high returns. Focus on products which are not so sensitive to size selection. For example sport leggings.

Learn more about your selected Audience

It is quite simple, as much more you know about your customer the better you will be in creating the right marketing strategy as well as your Shopify Dropshipping store. So Facebook Audience Insights is a new tool designed to help you learn more about your target audiences additionally provide you information about geography, demographics, purchase behavior and more.

Review if your Niche is growing and in demand

Google Trends offers you information such as: Search interest over time. You will be able to understand if the niche you’re entering is actually growing, Trends can let you know if this is the case. For any given search query, you can see the growth or decline in search volume over time, which means you know if your niche is stable and growing.

Lucrative Dropshipping Niches in 2021

Below is a list of the best drop shipping niches based on a research and information provided from Shopify. We suggest that you do your own research based on the categories or niches you are interested in or simply want to focus on, We just want to help you out if you wouldn’t know how to get started.

• Wardrobe and Accessories
• Kitchen and Grocery
• Health and Personal care
• Car Accessories
• Mobile Accessories
• Home and Bedroom
• Office Products
• Tools and Home improvement
• Camera and Cellphone Accessories
• Gaming

Keyword Research

Once you have done you research on Step 1 and 2, it’s the time to start your keyword research about your Niche, this will allow you to understand the search volume of customers actually searching for your products or Niche.

Google Keyword Planner

With Google Keyword Planner you will be able to review how many people are actually active looking for your niche or products on a search engine like Google. This tool is free of charge and available for you but you would need to have a google account in order to access it.

WordStream Keyword Tool

If you don’t have a Google Account and access to your Google Keyword Planer, you could use WordStream keyword tool. It allows you in the same way as Google Keyword tool to see how many people are actively looking for your niche or products. We recommend to use Google Keyword Planner to double check your results.

Shopify Dropshipping product trends: discover trending products

So far so good, you could evaluate the traffic of how many potential customers are actively looking for your niche, based on the results you confirmed there is enough potential and you decided to go with this niche.

Now its time to to find products which you can sell on your Shopify Dropshipping business, the easiest way to get to know this is by checking out Best Sellers.

Amazon Best Sellers

A very effective way to understand which products to sell is, if you are already looking on what is selling at the moment, we recommend to check the best sellers at Amazon.

Go to Amazon’s best sellers by clicking on the category selector next to the search bar.

Select one category for example Sports. Once on the Sports page scroll down until you will find “Best Sellers”

Once you find the “Best Sellers” click on “See More”

That’s it – now you are on the top 100 Best Seller list of this category. Have fun checking this for your products which you would like to sell 🙂

Shopify Dropshipping suppliers: Find the perfect Shopify Dropshipping Supplier/Wholesale

Congratulations making it to Step5! So you have already a clear vision of your Niche and products, we will provide you here the Shopify Dropshipping Suppliers you can work with, we have tested already a few and will test more to provide you a real feedback and make it easier for you.

Shopify Drop Shipping Supplier in the UAE

Oberlo

Oberlo is not really a Shopify Dropshipping supplier – it is rather the Shopify owned software which is basically sitting between Shopify and the Supplier Aliexpress. Many Dropshippers refer to it as a Supplier however what it actually does is: to provide you already the best rated Supplier and Products from Aliexpress so you can just go ahead and speed up your process. We have a video prepared for you about Oberlo.

AliExpress

I am pretty sure you have heard about AliExpress already, AliExpress is the most known Supplier and is a great fit for Shopify especially du to the Oberlo software as mentioned above. We have actually tested AliExpress, we really wanted to know everything about AliExpress and have documented this for you.

CJDropshipping

I would count CJDropshipping as a direct a competitor for AliExpress, however there is a difference in product assortment, we have thought at first that they might offer just the same products but after an in-depth review and test for our own DropShipping Masterclass project we were amazed to see a different assortment which makes it a very great solution to enrich your own product assortment on your Shopify Dropshipping store. Enjoy our complete review video:

DropnShop

DropnShop is all about the “French product quality”, you will have access to French Suppliers and can be rest assured to have the prestigious “Made in France” product offerings. If you are looking for authentic french products then DropnShop is your Supplier to go to.

CROV

CROV is an E-Commerce platform which provides quality vetted products, the product assortment comes from trusted suppliers only. CROV Drop shipping is committed to serve you with very effective Drop Shipping solutions. We have not yet done our own order to really test this Supplier but its on our To-Do list 🙂

Modalyst

Modalyst is a bit different because their approach is to directly connect you to suppliers and brands which are eco-friendly and private label manufacturers. You can review the product assortment we actually did this already and found a few pieces in the sport industry which are very unique. Fashionistas.. attention! Check out Modalyst!

PlusBuyer

If you are interested in the electronics industry, you’ll definitely need to check out PlusBuyer, they are one of the leading electronic wholesalers. You will find thousands of products in stock and this to very attractive prices.

Printful

You want to sell custom products online with a print on demand model, then Printful is the supplier you should go to, a direct integration into Shopify will assure a very easy management. If you are fancy about custom print on demand products go for it.

Name your Shopify Dropshipping Store

We are going to create and name your Shopify Store… wuhuuuu! Well done, now its getting very interesting and you can celebrate yourself to be already at this Step.

Create your Dropshipping store name

First go to Shopify and click on “Start free trial”

You will come to the below screen, here you would need to enter your E-Mail address, create a password and select a unique name, this name will have the .myshopify.com address to have an unique identifier and you will be able to login to your store anytime anywhere.

You would need to implement a unique name here and do this until Shopify accepts the name, please do not enter here your, E-Mail, Password or any private information. Once completed click on “Create your Store”

Create a Shopify Account

After you have selected an available name and clicked on “Create your store” we will start actually with creating your Shopify Dropshipping account. We have to provide a few information before we can get started with the set up. You will see below how easy it is 🙂 follow our guide.

Get started with your Shopify Account

Once you have clicked on “Create your store” on Step 7 and you see the below screen you are in the process of getting your Shopify account created! Exciting! Just Imagine every single Shopify store went through this process and always keep in mind 🙂 A journey of a 1000 sales begins with a single Shopify store.

Congratulations! Your account got created, Shopify would like to know some information about you and your journey so far, if you are starting out fresh simply use the same answers as we have used for this guide.

Before you can enter the world of Shopify you would need to fill in your details and address (you can change this anytime in your Settings later one) simply go ahead and fill it in and you are completed with the Shopify account creation! Huurraayyyy!!!

Build a Shopify site: Step by Step Guide

Now its the time to give yourself praise! You came already further than most of the entrepreneurs who only have an idea or talk about it but never even come to this step!

Step by Step to your Shopify Site

I want to show you with the below steps how easy it actually is to get you started.

Select a paid plan for your Shopify Dropshipping Store

At the beginning you can Select the Basic Shopify Plan, once you launch and have your first sales this can be adjusted anytime later, these are monthly plans which means you can anytime up or downgrade 🙂

Pick a theme

Now its the time to look at Shopify Themes, It is very important to provide a great Store Appearance to your customers based on the VISA UAE E-Commerce Country Report 2020 – you will see that 81% of customers in the UAE are willing to pay more for a great User Experience.

Checkout my Video about Store Appearance (UI)

Checkout my Video about User Experience (UX).

Now you know how important it is, if you don’t know which Shopify Theme to purchase and use, you can go ahead and have a look at our Drop Shipping Masterclass – I have build a next level Shopify Dropshipping store which provides all my experience and knowledge hands on!

Create a Logo

Once you have your Shopify Theme you would understand the touch and feel as well as which logo would suite it the best. You can create free logos directly with Shopify’s free logo creator Hatchful.

You simple click on “Get Started” select your preferred choices and you will receive free Logo Examples, you will see the red marked one below, this looks very neat and professional.

Add Products

You will be able to manage your Products and it is super easy to get them created, you could manually do this, but if you want to build your Shopify Drop Shipping store, you will use for example Oberlo, Oberlo will directly import the Products from AliExpress and it will allow you to then edit them under Products as well 🙂

Checkout my Oberlo video below, If you have not watched it yet.

You can manage your Products after import directly in Shopify.

You can additionally add & change pictures, details, prices, discounts and much more, simply explore the possibilities.

Set up your Collections

Okay, you have your Products imported, now you would need to create Collections “Collections are your Categories – just Shopify calls it “Collection” 🙂 You will be able to create Collections for anything and it will be very easy to link them to your Menu Navigation.

If you click on one Collection you will be able to change the title, write a small introduction and even implement a collection preview image.

Add Pages

If you head over to “Pages” you will be able to create your Shopify Dropshipping stores pages, for example all your policies, contact us, about us and any other page you would like to create and or talk about your Drop Shipping business.

Set up your Navigation

Once you have your Products, Collections & Pages created, you would need to head over to Navigation, under Navigation you will be able to create multiple menus for example one for your Main Menu in the Header and one for your Footer.

You can build your own Menu Navigation structure with a simply drag and drop approach, you will be able to link your Pages, Collections and Products directly.

Edit general preferences

Under preferences you will be able to provide your Shopify Dropshipping site the main title which will be the headline and then description, this will be visible in the search engines as well.  You see below how it would be displayed. Additionally you can enter your “thumbnail” for social sharing – ideally your logo.

You will see the “Red” is your title and the “Blue” your description.

Add a domain

So far you still have your pferde-loewen.myshopify.com domain, we are going to change this right now to your dream domain. For example we have purchased pferdeloewen.com and want to connect this now to Shopify. You see below the options on how to do this.

Connect a third party domain to Shopify

In our example we have purchased our pferdeloewen.com domain from Godaddy, this means we need to connect a third party domain to Shopify. If you have purchased it from Godaddy or another domain hosting just follow the same. Simply click to “connect existing domain”.

Purchase a new domain

If you have not purchased your dream domain yet, you can simply do it directly through Shopify by clicking on “Buy new domain”.

Transfer a domain to Shopify

If you have purchased your domain from a third party host but you would like to transfer you domain to Shopify you could do this as well, it is not mandatory and you can do it if you want – For all my Drop Ship business I have them all at Godaddy myself.

Optimize Settings for your Dropshipping account

Okay so far so good, now we need to jump into the Shopify Settings and I will show you what to set up over there.

Shopify Store Settings

Under Settings you will find all the Shopify Settings for your operations for example to set up your Shipping, Payment Gateway, Tax, Legal etc.. I will explain you below each of the points.

General Settings

In General Settings you will be able to implement your Store name, E-Mail communication:

The left E-Mail: Is your account admin E-Mail – you will receive the information from Shopify from your store this includes contact form submits.

The right E-Mail: Is the E-Mail your customer receives any kind of Notifications from you store, this is customer facing. You could even implement an E-Mail here which does not exist for example no-reply@pferdeloewen.com but we would suggest you use your main general E-Mail like info@

Payment Information: Correct Payment set up

Under Payments you will be able to connect your Payment Gateway in order to provide your customer the option to pay via card. For Dropshipping you only want to offer pre-paid payment options, do not offer Cash on Delivery – You will risk that the customer does reject the order and you don’t get paid.

Stripe is in the UAE! So we recommend that you sign up to Stripe and offer card payments pre-paid only for your Dropshipping store. Go to Third-party payment providers and select Stripe.

Checkout

You will find some very important settings under checkout, one of them is your customer accounts, by default Shopify disables them.. so if you want to offer your customers (and you should do this) the option to create a customer account with you for faster checkout -> Activate “Accounts are optional” which means you are not forcing your customer to register with you to Checkout but give the him the option.

Shipping rates

Under Shipping rates you will be able to set up the countries you would like to ship too, you could further create zones to combine countries to have the same shipping rate or create for each country its own price based on the Shopify Dropshipping supplier shipping price.

Notifications

Go to Notifications and click on “customize” there are so many Shopify Dropshipping stores which are not even personalizing the notifications please do personalize it – it literally takes 1 min. Implement your logo and adjust the color to your brand color thats it.

Notifications are E-Mails which will be automatically send to your Customer based on the actions taken of the customer or you as Admin. For example if your customer purchases a product he will receive an order confirmation Notification.

Sales Channels

Under Sales Channels you will be able to add connections to other channels for example Google & Facebook. Once you have connected these sales channels you will be able to sell through google and your facebook shop and all your orders do get consolidated at Shopify dashboard and processed from there as well. It is super easy and powerful! Connect your Facebook Messenger as well.

Legal

So here you would need to copy paste your policies and terms, you would need to them as Pages which you can connect to your footer menu but at the same time you need to copy paste them into the “Legal” settings because then you will have them visible in the Shopify Checkout as well!

Explore Shopify Dropshipping Apps

The below Shopify Dropshipping APP’s can be used and we recommend to use them.

Shopify Dropshipping AliExpress: AliExpress Dropshipping

To connect Shopify with AliExpress you would need to use the Oberlo APP which belongs to Shopify and is the perfect connection to Oberlo. Please have a look at the below Video to get to know more about Oberlo.

Features

Shopify Dropshipping comes with many features especially in Oberlo, you will have a wide set of automations which literally allow you to keep up to date with all the price and inventory changes of AliExpress.

AliExpress Pricing

If you would like to understand more about the product prices you could review AliExpress yourself and checkout your category and niche so you will see the prices of multiple suppliers. It is usually in AliExpress that you find the same product but offered from multiple suppliers for different prices, so a research will help to find the best deals.

Pricing: How to find the right Prices for your Products

Another important part is to find the right pricing for your product, hence you are Dropshipping you would need to do a research in order to assure your pricing is in a similar range.

The right product pricing

Go to Google and search for the products with a) the similar title values than in AliExpress b) similar synonyms. Once you searched for this, checkout the featured Shopping Ads as well as click on the Shopping tab next to Images to explore more.

Do your research in your target country, it is important to know the competition as well as to evaluate the pricing structure you should go for, Ideal is to find products which are not yet listed at your competition.

Launch your Shopify Dropshipping Store

Launching your Shopify store, so it is finally time to launch your Shopify Drop Shipping Store and it is quite easy to do so.

Head over to “Online Store” and go to “Preferences”.

To launch your store, you would simply need to “untick” the password protect page and you will be live 🙂 Congratulations launching your own Drop Shipping store on Shopify.

Marketing

One of the most important parts is your Marketing you need to run Marketing so your potential customers will be able to see you and buy from you.

Shopify Marketing

Just imagine, you pay your retail store rent based on the location and traffic of people. Meaning, in a good location you pay more because more potential customers might see your retail store, so your digital marketing ad spent is like your “rent” you simply need to do it and invest in it, in order to receive traffic and customers.

Google Ads for Shopify

Google Ads are perfect to reach customers who are actively looking for your products and you need to make sure that these people will see your ads and will visit your store, ideally converting into a sale.

Google Shopping Ads are working quite well as well, however make sure that your pricing is similar or is possible even cheaper compared to your competition.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is very important and you definitely want to do it, however the key behind all the advertisement is more about the content, words, videos, emotions, insights, you can create in order to have your audience attention.. We will work on a full Guide about Social Media Marketing for you 🙂

Influencer Marketing

Hence you are starting out with your Drop Shipping business nothing can be more powerful than recommendations / reviews. The advice to go for in this case would be to find social influencer with less than  10,000 followers. You will be able to work out a deal where you don’t end up paying anything and both of you will have a benefit.

For example if the social influencer fits perfectly in to you target audience you can cross promote him on your site which means in return you provide relevant traffic to your influencer as well which promotes them.

Content Marketing

Content Marketing is very powerful especially if you provide answers to specific questions people have and provide them with something which they haven’t seen from your. Content Marketing includes things like educational articles, guides, e-books, videos, webinars.. Content Marketing is the best way to leaven an impact on your audience.. even with a common Drop Shipping product.

Example, I am talking about the full breakdown of a real AliExpress order to my Dubai private address to replicate and document the experience your Drop Ship customer will have.

E-Mail Marketing

E-Mail marketing does work, however you would rather need to do personalized E-Mail marketing to start focusing on your customers interest instead of bulk sending only a store discount or generic advertisement. So, If you are planning to do E-Mail marketing then please do it in the right way and personalize it. Example customers who spend on “dog toys” should receive “dog content” 🙂

SEO for Shopify

What is SEO? It’s quite simple:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is basically the process of defining your online content in a way that search engines like the most in order to show you as a top result for searchers of the keyword you want to rank for.

You would need to work on your E-Commerce content, for example collection description, product description, additional pages talking about the services products you offer and explore the relevant and required “keywords” in order to bring them into your content naturally. You would need to bring these keywords up multiple times in the text. We can help you out with SEO requirements on Shopify as well.

Conversion rate optimization

This Step is quite interesting because it depends on multiple factors, so I will break them down and explain you what you could implement in order to understand what hinders your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) to increase 🙂

What is Conversion Rate Optimization?

It is quite simple, every visitor to your Shopify site is tracked and based on the desired action (a sale for example) we calculate the ratio in % to understand the conversion rate. For example: you have 100 visitors to your site and two of them purchase – you will have a 2% CR (Conversion Rate).

How can I increase my Conversion Rate on Shopify?

First you need to have data in order to understand how to increase it, you should assure on step one that your Shopify site Desktop & Mobile is on point and does not leave the customer anyhow confused or stuck – loading time and performance of the site is important too.

To know this you could use a Shopify Heat Map App such as: Lucky Orange Shopify APP

As second point you would need to know where to optimize, what to optimize and who to optimize it for. This sounds quiet confusing does it? Let me explain:

In order to review and understand the below you would need to have your conversion tracking on Shopify and Google Analytics / Google Ads activated.

• Where does your Shopper enter your Shopify site (What’s the first page your customer lands on)
• Which features does your Shopper engage with (Where on the site do they spend their time)
• What channel did bring the Shopper (Where did they find your site link)
• What devices and browser your Shopper uses
• Who is your Shopper? (age, interest, demographic)
• Where does your Shopper abandon your funnel (where do your Shoppers leave your site)

Once you have and know the above information you will be able to work on the. Ideally start with the highest traffic generating source.

Improve your offering constantly

It is important that you do regularly product market checks, to understand what your competition does as well as read out your Google Ads search terms in order to understand what your potential customers searching for. Keep always up to date with your niche to act fast in case you find products which are not in your market yet.

How to search for new Drop Shipping products?

It is quite simple 🙂 as everything just someone needs to show you, check out one of the ways below.

Go to AliExpress and search for your category which you are selling on your Shopify Dropshipping store.

Click to “Newest” and you will be able to search for the new incomers which might help you to find new products.

Additional Information

How to craft a value proposition

Your value proposition gives your customers a reason to buy from you as well as showing them why they actually need you.

It is important to build an advantage and with a strong value proposition in Drop Shipping stores you will be able to:

• Attract and get more customers
• You will have more loyal customer
• Sell your products for higher prices
• You will stand out in your Industry

Manage relationship with your suppliers and dropship vendors

How to handle returns

How to provide a good customer support

The 6 best Dropshipping Suppliers

Drop shipping fulfillment

Best dropshipping products to sell for a profit