How does dropshipping and order fulfillment work on Shopify?

[AccZ]

Hi all,

I am new here. I am reaching out for help as my last resort to save my store from closing down! Almost 2 months back, I had registered for the basic plan on free trial of 14 days. We are a jobless family and after much research and self study on ecommerce and drop shipping, I mustered the courage in taking the leap to do an online business. Dropshipping has been promoted extensively on the net as the way to go for startups. Those like us with no possibility to invest big on storing inventory, I found it very tempting and simplified. I am a non-techie, but a good learner. Before starting, I did all possible research on the shipping aspect of dropshipping and thought I understood it as Shopify would take care of it all. But all throughout the 2 months I have been struggling to make sense of how the shipping part works. I even made a sample order to know it first hand. But even after 2 weeks later when my order showed up as not fulfilled, I made a refund and now I am back to square one, having no idea what to expect from the customers' side of experience on shipping! I really dont want any kind of problems arising because of my faulty configuration. But now I am starting to get overwhelmed with all the info out there about shipping and its complexities. 

1. Can anyone out here explain to me simply how does shopify handle shipping?
2. How can I offer the customers a collective shipping rate to reflect all their orders into one?
3. How and when do I to get a tracking number to send to the buyer, should I have to manually do it or will shopify do it once it generates?
4. I would like to automate order fulfillment, how can I achieve it through Oberlo? If not, which other app is good to do all of the fulfillment work, all the way from sourcing to shipping on a fixed monthly rate or per order?
5. Is it better to automate all the order process or do it manually when I have about 150 products, will I be able to do it on time if there are many orders daily?

If I will not get the proper guidance to have the confidence to promote my store products on facebook, then I will be left with no choice but to give up on building it anymore. I know I sound like a noob who shouldn't have stepped into this venture in the first place, but our desperate situation made me take up this challenge. Someone kind, pls help review my store and answer my above queries on shipping. 

my store : https://accessoryz.com

Thankyou.

[Trevor · Accepted solution]

@AccZ 

Thank you for the detailed explanation of your situation. Happy to help give some guidance on the questions you've asked. 

1. Shopify does not have a hand in your business. We do not provide the products, nor ship the products on your behalf. If you're dropshipping your products, then your suppliers would be responsible for shipping the products you offer. You mentioned you're using Oberlo in your later questions. You would need to manually process the order within Oberlo to make sure the product is shipped to your customer. More information on the ordering process for Oberlo can be found here. 

2. If you're dropshipping, it wouldn't be possible to offer collective shipping. Your suppliers will be located in different regions of the world and the shipping rates aren't synced with Shopify, so combining the rates wouldn't be possible. You can include the cost of shipping in the price of the products or charge standard shipping based on price. More information on shipping can be found here. 

3. Tracking information is supplied after you've placed the order and the supplier has shipped the product. More information sending tracking information via Oberlo can be found here. 

4. Order fulfillment can't be automated if you're dropshipping as the payment information can't be securely transferred from Oberlo/Shopify to Ali Express. 

5. Only you can answer this question as you know how much time you're able to invest in your business and whether or not you'll need to hire someone to help with the fulfillment process once orders start coming in. 

I would recommend signing up for our free Shopify Dropshipping courses to learn more about the dropshipping process. 

[Trevor · Accepted solution]

@AccZ 

Thank you for the detailed explanation of your situation. Happy to help give some guidance on the questions you've asked. 

1. Shopify does not have a hand in your business. We do not provide the products, nor ship the products on your behalf. If you're dropshipping your products, then your suppliers would be responsible for shipping the products you offer. You mentioned you're using Oberlo in your later questions. You would need to manually process the order within Oberlo to make sure the product is shipped to your customer. More information on the ordering process for Oberlo can be found here. 

2. If you're dropshipping, it wouldn't be possible to offer collective shipping. Your suppliers will be located in different regions of the world and the shipping rates aren't synced with Shopify, so combining the rates wouldn't be possible. You can include the cost of shipping in the price of the products or charge standard shipping based on price. More information on shipping can be found here. 

3. Tracking information is supplied after you've placed the order and the supplier has shipped the product. More information sending tracking information via Oberlo can be found here. 

4. Order fulfillment can't be automated if you're dropshipping as the payment information can't be securely transferred from Oberlo/Shopify to Ali Express. 

5. Only you can answer this question as you know how much time you're able to invest in your business and whether or not you'll need to hire someone to help with the fulfillment process once orders start coming in. 

I would recommend signing up for our free Shopify Dropshipping courses to learn more about the dropshipping process. 

[JoesIdeas · Accepted solution]

Good tips from Trevor, I'd also like to add that when customers interact with your store, they do not know what dropshipping is, they are buying a product from you and your brand, so it's important to get quality dropshipping partners. Treat your dropshipping suppliers like partners - know them, find and choose only those with quality products and a reliable reputation. A good exercise is to imagine your customers are your friends and family, would you sell your friends and families products from questionable suppliers? No, you would find the best possible suppliers and sell those products.

When building a brand and an online store, think about what the customer wants. When doing a generic store like yours, a thought experiment that may help is answering this hypothetical question from customers: "why should I buy this thing from this site instead of Amazon?"

That may help get the brain juices going on how you can differentiate.

Another question I like to have clients ask themselves is, "What value does my business bring to my customers?" or "Why does my business exist?"

If the value or reason for existing is that this is your job for you to make money, it's unlikely the business will be sustainable.

If that's the case, think about what you can do to be different or offer value that doesn't currently exist. With dropshipping you're selling the same products as XX other brands, but that doesn't mean it's not doable, think about niching down, and how you can serve an audience. For example, instead of a store dropshipping everything, you can focus on camping gear, or car washing accessories, or baseball equipment... whatever it is, you can build a brand around that, and create guides and blog posts to serve your target customer, the key in any business is providing value. If you provide true value, you will succeed.

[AccZ]

Thanks to you too JoesIdeas for your valuable advice. I will surely look into niching down with a category or a product.

[AccZ]

Thanks Trevor for clarifying, I'll checkout all of those links you sent me.