Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Logistics and Transportation Value Chain (31-slide PowerPoint presentation). An Industry Value Chain is a visual representation of the series of steps an organization in a specific industry takes to deliver a product or service to the market. It captures the main business functions and processes that are involved in delivering the end product or service, illustrating how [read more]
Also, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Supply Chain Management (SCM), take a look at Flevy's Supply Chain Management (SCM) Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.
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Dropshipping is a great way of selling products online without needing to store or maintain any stock. When you use the dropshipping business model for your eCommerce store, you sell products from a third party, such as a manufacturer or wholesaler.
When a customer places an order, the order fulfillment and shipping are handled by the third party and you take a cut of the profit
Without having to spend valuable time handling order fulfillment and shipping, you can focus on marketing and branding to increase your web presence and gain more customers. To make things even easier, you can use various dropshipping tools.
Dropship Management Software
When you automate elements of your eCommerce store and dropshipping model, you make everything run smoother and more effectively. So, one tool you should most certainly be using is dropship management software.
It enables automatic uploading of full product data from suppliers into your online store, synchronizes your inventory with that of your suppliers for seamless integration, connects your store with multiple suppliers that carry the same product to ensure you never run out of stock, and are always offering the product at the best price, provides tracking updates, and more.
Use better automated dropshipping tools & software, they streamline the online retail process by performing tasks such as sourcing items, managing inventory, and fulfilling orders. They provide real-time updates, ensure competitive pricing, and streamline order processing, reducing manual labor and minimizing errors. These tools allow retailers to focus on business growth and customer satisfaction, improving operational efficiency and accuracy.
eCommerce Platforms
While you should set up an online store on your own website, you also need to have your store on multiple platforms if you want to reach a wider audience and sell more products. So, make use of well-known eCommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce. Such sites have numerous tools that can help you to market your store and products.
Analytics Tools
There are numerous ways of reviewing the analytics for your dropshipping store. Many automated software options and eCommerce platforms have their own analytics tools. You may find analytics tools offered by the platform you use to build your own website too.
But you should use additional tools like Google Analytics to get a good understanding of your business’s overall online performance. When you can track your visitors, know where the traffic is mostly coming from, and what content has the most views, you can make use of that data to boost your business’s performance.
Zapier
When you use numerous apps for your dropshipping business, coordinating all of them can become complex. But Zapier can help. It enables you to integrate the web applications you use by automating workflows across the different apps.
For instance, if a customer places an order on your Shopify store, Zapier can instruct a platform like MailChimp to add the customer’s details to the list of addresses for your monthly newsletter.
Title Builder
While automated dropshipping software can integrate product descriptions and titles from the supplier into your eCommerce stores, if you want your products to stand out against the competition, you need to make sure your product descriptions and titles use appropriate keywords for successful SEO.
One great tool is Title Builder. You can feed it the name of the product you are going to sell and it will come up with the best and most trending keywords to create a product title. In turn, your product will have a much better chance of improving its ranking and being visible on search engine results.
Canva
Just as important as unique and keyword-relevant product titles and descriptions is having bespoke photos. Yes, you can integrate photos into your store from your supplier. But, again, if you want to offer something different to the competition, you need distinct product photos.
Quality images play an important role in boosting your product listings, so use a platform like Canva. It has some great image editing tools to customize many elements of your images. You can also add text from hundreds of font styles.
26-slide PowerPoint presentation
Shortage of labor, intensified demand from e-tailers (online retailers), and technological disruption is forcing many organizations in the Logistics and Warehousing sectors to embrace technology, particularly Automation.
Automation is facilitating Warehouse operations predominantly by
[read more]
Want to Achieve Excellence in Supply Chain Management (SCM)?
Gain the knowledge and develop the expertise to become an expert in Supply Chain Management (SCM). Our frameworks are based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. Click here for full details.
Supply Chain Management (SCM) is the design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of Supply Chain activities. It also captures the management of the flow of goods and services.
In February of 2020, COVID-19 disrupted—and in many cases halted—global Supply Chains, revealing just how fragile they have become. By April, many countries experienced declines of over 40% in domestic and international trade.
COVID-19 has likewise changed how Supply Chain Executives approach and think about SCM. In the pre-COVID-19 era of globalization, the objective was to be Lean and Cost-effective. In the post-COVID-19 world, companies must now focus on making their Supply Chains Resilient, Agile, and Smart. Additional trends include Digitization, Sustainability, and Manufacturing Reshoring.
Learn about our Supply Chain Management (SCM) Best Practice Frameworks here.
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