No control over customer service

When you directly ship to your customers, you have a complete control over your customer service. You can make sure that the products are dispatched and delivered in good packing and are exactly according to the customer’s specifications. If you are short of stock to meet the customer order in time, you re-order at the right time to avoid disappointing your customers. In contrast to that, when some body else on your behalf directly delivers to your customer, you lose control over these aspects of the customer service.

If your wholesale supplier is running out of the inventory and he has scheduled your order, there always remains a risk that he will disappoint your customer by delivering the products late. Moreover, he may not pack the products safely and if they deteriorate in transit, its the dropshippers reputation that is going to spoil in the market. In this way, dropshippers not only compromise on their customer service but the fear of losing customers also hovers over them.

Do your homework to ensure good service!

In order to minimize the inherent risk of losing customer service, you must do proper homework to locate a reliable and honest supplier for your dropshipping business. The two tricks you can use to ensure good customer service are:

1. First, make sure that the supplier or the manufacturer you are dealing with is reliable and legitimate. Those suppliers who show their willingness to serve you without verifying your legal identity are not real. Real suppliers are those, who provide dropshipping as an additional service and never work with you without checking your license. You can also check their authenticity from their website and talking to their previously served customers.
2. Before enlisting the products of the wholesale suppliers on your dropshipping website, always check their products and services by placing real testing orders. You can always ask for the samples to test the quality of the products and other features. For testing the quality of their services, place hidden orders placed by your colleagues and friends and note down if the delivery matches the specifications, products are delivered on time or packaging is safe enough or not.

In UK, people spend billion of dollars every year on this day and that is why this day is known as the fourth most popular shopping day of the year. Dropshippers dealing in clothing, jewellery, bags, shoes, and other accessories can also reap the rewards of this day if they devise and implement right merchandising and promoting strategies at the right time. Some of the tactics that can heat up their sales this time are highlighted below.

Dress up your website!

First, dress up your dropshipping website to add a touch of Valentines Day in it. You can add red splashes on the homepage and can capture visitor’s attention by adding some romantic picture of the couple or love quote at the landing page. Highlight your special valentine’s offers along with the calls to action in special valentine’s themed borders to let the visitors feel the air of romance through your offers.

Provide free valentine’s gift!

Even if you are not from the gift wholesale suppliers, you can always introduce special valentines stock just a month before this day. You can add photo frames, chocolates, candies, perfumes, teddy bears, and other love gifts and can sell them at discounted rates. Moreover, if you deal in clothing and other stuff, you can always provide a free valentine gift on purchase of the specified number of pieces.

Offer discounts on gift bundles!

Valentine’s Day comes soon after New Year and Christmas when people are even not ready again to spend on the gifts. In order to capture those clients who face financial constraints, always make special gift bundles and baskets and offer good discounts on them. Concentrate on the packing of the bundles because they greatly draw customer’s attention and lure them to buy from you.

Use these special merchandising ideas on this Valentines Day and win many customers at your fingertips.

Other marketing strategies work for the short period of time but if you are optimizing your site in search engines, it would benefit you for long period of time. But that does not mean you should practice SEO occasionally, it should be an ongoing process. In fact it is a never ending process, the more you exert your efforts in it, the more visibility your website would get. Moreover, SEO advertisements are free; you just need to pay the salaries of the SEO staff.

SEO is a vast subject and you will find many debates regarding which SEO techniques yield better results and which not. I am recommending below some easy to understand and sure ways that would surely enhance the visibility of your dropshipping website and will improve your chances of success.

1. First of all carefully select the keyword of your HTML title and then select the keywords relevant to your metatags. Be careful in selecting the right keywords and submit your website to all the important search engines like Yahoo, Google and Hotmail.
2. There are various directories focusing on specific niches. Some of them are free and some are not. Choose a directory that matches your niche and submit your website to it. This increases the chances of the customer to land at your home page.
3. Write valuable content for other wholesale suppliers’ websites and directories for creating back links. There are numerous guest blogs, you can write for them. Moreover, you can also submit your content on other directories like Ezine Articles and Article Base.
4. You can also run a blog focusing on the subject related to the nature of your business. Hosting blog posts on it on periodical basis not only creates backlinks but also build your reputation as an industry specialist in the eyes of your customers.

Dropship retailing, in a way is no different than acting as a middleman. This is an increasingly popular mode of business that has opened doors of new opportunities for students and stay at home parents. Dropship retailing, while on one hand provides people with a decent stream of regular income then on the other hand, it also helps people find what they are looking for. The following post presents a whole new light.

Dropship retailing on eBay is quite an unpleasant thing where buyers fancy themselves ‘cheated’ upon discovering that they have bought so and so thing from a seller who in reality was a dropship retailer. So in more than one way, dropship retailers are no different than middlemen.

These retailers, like any other seller, keep their profit margins, just like the middlemen. But in their defence, dropship retailers also make several different products available to people living far and wide. The whole of their business dealing serves two purposes.

One – They bring in more business for the dropshippers. Working in association with a dropship programme does not come free of cost. Suppliers charge a registration as well as a monthly sum to retailers who wish to sell their products. By working for suppliers, dropship retailers bring in a constant stream of income for these programmes.

Two – Since they pay a certain sum in hopes of making substantial profit on suppliers’ products, they work vigilantly to bring in more and more traffic on their stores and enjoy a proportional conversion rate. By making various products available and accessible commoners, these dropshippers help online buyers find things they need.

In the highly competitive environment, relationship building helps to survive in the market. If you have strong relationship with the customers, they place repeated orders. According to an estimate, repeat customers mostly spend 33% more than the customers, who purchase only one time. Some tips to build ties with the customers are given below:

1. Customers are human beings with all the feelings and emotions and establishing a bond with them is just a matter of courtesy and personalized treatment. Consider every individual customer important for you and be respectful and sincere to him in all the matters.
2. Help the customers in making a careful buying decision that goes in the favour of their business. If they are newbies, dropshippers should share knowledgeable advice with them. If they intend to buy anything that, will boost your income but will not be fruitful to the customers, just give them the fair advice and do not run after your profits.
3. Do not let customers go away in disgust. If something has disappointed them, identify the real cause of the problem and try to sort it out. Make your every effort to win back their trust. Even if you had to replace the goods for free, or offer something free for the next time, don’t avoid it.
4. If customers ask any questions, your answer should be prompt. Mostly customers like if you respond to their questions quickly. Moreover, being courteous and fast does not work all the time. Make special offers to them by offering special discounts rates. If you are going to launch your new collection, loyal customers should be informed first.
5. Dropshippers have online wholesale businesses, so their work on computer is more. They can easily manage to set up their business pages in social media websites like Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter. Not only you can stay in touch with them through these platforms but can also measure arouse their interest in your business. You can also measure how much do they like or appreciate you by post liking and commenting.

Dropshippers spend day and night to use different tools of SEO like article marketing, taking part in forums and discussions, link building, blogging and generating content etc to enhance the visibility of their websites in search engines. However, dropshippers mostly claim that they invest a lot on SEO still are not getting the required output. The fact is we can never say we are successful in SEO because if your B2B trade website is making the top result of an important search then there is a possibility the other day your competitor may take the lead.

The fact is SEO is an ongoing process, which takes lot of patience, time and skills to keep it on track. What SEO requires to be successful is mentioned below:

Due Diligence

If you are going to outsource your SEO practices, make sure you know the vendor, his record of accomplishment, methods used in SEO, and the results of the previous served clients. Be aware of the SEO scammers who confiscate your money and just pretend as if they are deriving traffic to your website. Keep a check on their performance and brief them what results you actually want from them.

Measurement

SEO is an ongoing process so monitoring of its results should also be an ongoing process. Tracking of results allow you to know which practices are working and which are not working so that you may devote your efforts to the activities, which are more fruitful. Test landing pages, links and keywords to explore the right direction of your SEO program.

Patience

SEO is not a magical wand that brings your website on the first page in a night or two. SEO requires great time and efforts based on the type of keywords being used, size of website etc. Some dropshippers lose their patience and stop monitoring or changing their policies from time to time. This is the biggest mistake indeed. Have patience, give your best, and wait for the success

Expertise

Those who say SEO does not require skill or expertise are wrong. SEO is a broad umbrella under which it’s numerous practices work. As a SEO expert, you need to know all the practices and should have their in-depth knowledge. New SEO practices are introduced from time to time, keep your knowledge updated because higher level of expertise in SEO brings better and early results.

Always try to specialize in couple of products or the products of the same category in the start. For instance if you are planning to sell sports equipment, it is better to focus on one single sport type like basketball and its accessories. You can also provide related products like football and baseball equipments. However, before deciding what you should sell in your dropshipping business, consider following two factors in mind.

Listen to your heart voice

Your passion and internal motivation is a key to success in every field of life. This is even true for a dropshipping business. According to a research, businesspersons perform well in the areas of business for which they have an inborn passion. Before deciding which products, you should dropship, always listen to the voice of your heart, and try to figure out your direction of passion.

For instance, if you truly have a passion for adopting new and unique fashions, you should start selling fashion accessories. Besides designing your dropshipping website, you can also run your fashion blog to share your ideas and strategies with your customers. In addition to this, dropshipping takes time and efforts and if you are not enjoying your work, you can loose your interest that can result in closure of your business. Passion is a driving force that provokes persistence and keeps your interest maintained in your business.

Research your competitors

There is a hell of competition in dropshipping business. You can search on the internet to see how many suppliers are dealing in all the categories and sub categories of thousands of products beyond your imagination. Selling the same old products, which already many dropshippers are selling, will not do any good to you. Try to be some unique and sell some rare products for which there are less competitors in the market.

Conduct market research to know, which products are in great demand in the market or which products have lesser time to the market. Even if you decide to deal in products having great competition, study your competitors thoroughly and try to offer something greater in value than them.