How to set profitable worldwide shipping prices in ecommerce?

[infinityh]

Hello,

I am trying to create a ecommerce website, but I've come to a dilemma.

I mainly work with CJ dropshipping, as well as AliExpress, and when listing a product they get me to choose where I'm shipping to, or mainly shipping to, to get an idea of shipping times and prices. 

However, my store offers worldwide shipping.

How can I know whether the price i am setting for my product will give me a profit when shipping to another country, and how can I change shipping prices based on where the customer wants me to ship their product to.

Also, how can I know that the supplier 100% ships to where the customer is?

Thanks

[Victor]

Hi @infinityh,

Thank you for getting in touch. The short answer is that if you're dropshipping and selling worldwide, then you're going to have to put in a lot of time and research getting a grasp on how much it will cost to ship products to customers in different countries. Suppliers will have varying shipping options that come with a varied cost depending on where their products are being shipped to, and without this information you won't be able to offer your own shipping rates with confidence.

For this reason, it is recommend you spend the time better understanding the shipping costs associated with your products. It might well be advisable to only offer shipping to selected countries and key markets first before expanding to others, which will make the task of researching shipping costs a bit less daunting and time-consuming.

If you're dropshipping with AliExpress, suppliers do provide shipping information on the product page for different locations. There's also an option at the top of the website to change your shipping location:

On the product page, you'll see an option to change the country being shipped to and view all of the shipping options available along with their costs:

Once you have checked these prices and shipping options for the countries you wish to sell to, you can set your own shipping rates for these countries on a more informed basis.

You can set shipping rates based on the customer's country and region using shipping zones, and use shipping profiles to set shipping rates and rules for specific products and collections. 

If you're new to dropshipping, I'd also recommend checking out our Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping which covers this topic and other considerations when selling this way. 

I hope this has helped but please let me know if you have more questions.

[infinityh]

Thank you for your reply,

I would like to ship to the UK and the USA for now.

However, sites like CJ dropshipping have various shipping methods, some which may only ship to the UK and not to the USA or vice versa. 

I would like to be able to attach two different shipping methods to one product: one if the user selects shipping to the USA and one if the user selects shipping to the UK.

Is that possible?

Thanks

[Victor · Accepted solution]

Hi @infinityh,

You can use shipping zones to set different shipping rates based on the customer's location. This would allow you to set shipping rates for US customers and different rates for customers based in the UK. You can also use shipping profiles to set shipping rates on a product-by-product basis.

As an example, if you have products that can only be shipped to the US, then you could create a shipping profile containing only those products and then only add rates for the US. If a customer from the UK added one of these products to their cart, they would not be able to complete checkout as there would be no applicable shipping rates for that product. Products that can be shipped to both the US and the UK could then be added to a seperate profile where there are available shipping rates to both countries.

This YouTube video on the Shopify Help Center channel explains how shipping profiles work in more detail. I'd also recommend checking out this article on international shipping on the Shopify Blog to learn more about how you can set up your shipping strategy using Shopify when selling to multiple countries.