Building a dropshipping website and managing it successfully is necessary to set up a dropshipping business. The world of e-commerce has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years, and dropshipping sites have gained popularity due to their enormous ability to attract people and generate more sales.

According to Statista, e-commerce accounted for 19.6 percent of global retail sales, with more than 2.14 billion people worldwide looking to buy goods and services online in 2021.

The dropshipping business model, allows you to start your business with limited monetary funds, sell products to customers, set your own prices, and market your own brand without needing to pay for inventory until it is sold to an actual customer.  But knowing where to start, and the best way to set up your dropshipping website for success can be quite tricky.

In this article, you’ll learn what a dropshipping business is and how to create a dropshipping website in 10 steps.

First, let’s start by looking at what dropshipping is.

What Is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a business model in which you as a retailer do not have physical products and you do not manufacture items or manage inventory. Instead, when someone buys something through your online store, you buy that product that you don’t actually have at a lower price from the owner who then processes, packages, and ships the product directly to your buyer.

You never have to worry about storing, packing, or shipping your products. This online business model is often seen as a get-rich-quick scheme, but in reality, to succeed in dropshipping, you need to work hard and dedicate time to making your business profitable.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Dropshipping

Before you begin the process of developing a wholesale website, it’s essential to know its main advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages

Creating a dropshipping website is very easy.

It involves creating a website and listing other brands’ products on your site without the need to own them or buy them in batches. When you make a sale, you place the order with the manufacturer of the product you want to sell, then ship the product to your customer and charge the resale price.

And because the customer paid you the retail price, you make a profit. Order processing requires daily work, but most of the steps in processing customer orders are automated and only require the click of a button.

A low-risk business model

Since you don’t need to store or handle the items you sell, it’s possible to start a dropshipping website with limited funds. Since you can sell products without investing your own money until a customer has paid you, the financial risk is very low. You are exempt from the initial investment for product creation, inventory, employee management, packaging, and shipping of products. All of this is managed by your supplier, making it a much more affordable and manageable business model.

No prior product knowledge is required

You don’t have to be an expert on the product you’re selling from day one.  You become an expert in your niche but you can start with very little knowledge.

A flexible business model 

Since you are not tied to an office, your business can be operated from home and managed from a laptop.

Disadvantages

Competitiveness

Since it is very easy to create a dropshipping website without any initial capital, there is a lot of competition, especially if you choose to sell products in popular niches.

Low margins

The manufacturer decides your profit margins and these are often non-negotiable. Typically, gross margins are around 30%, but with payment processing fees and shipping costs, margins can drop to 10%.

In addition, to compete with other brands, you will be forced to undercut them, making margins even lower.

Shipping problems

Shipping issues can arise if you work with multiple suppliers, which often negatively impacts customer satisfaction. Shipping should be fast and reliable, but since most products are shipped from China, it tends to take a long time and you have no control over it, but you have to handle any complaints. This can lead to your customer requesting a refund or return of the product.  Even if it’s not a warehouse, you should be prepared to create a small stockpile to hold the returned products.

No control over the supply chain

Any disruption in production or lack of inventory at manufacturers to ship the products you sell can cause your sales to stop overnight and there is nothing you can do about it.

Why Create a Dropshipping Website?

Here are some reasons why you need a dropshipping website:

To make yourself known to suppliers

Manufacturers and suppliers want to work with someone who already has a website and a consistent customer base. Your e-commerce website can help manufacturers and suppliers get a feel for your business, prove your credibility, and assure the manufacturer that people are looking for their products.

A website is necessary for your digital marketing efforts

You need a website to build pages with search engine optimization in mind to attract customers to your site from search engines or with PPC advertising for e-commerce. Your dropshipping website is also the foundation for all your digital marketing efforts such as email marketing and will serve as a landing page to entice potential customers to view your dropshipping ads. 

The business model

The dropshipping business model is not tailored to the traditional brick-and-mortar business model but rather on your ability to market and sell the best dropshipping products on your own dropshipping website without ever stocking them yourself.

Easy and quick update of your product offerings

Your dropshipping website also serves as an online digital catalog, where customers can see all of your products seamlessly and instantly, giving you the best chance of getting lead conversions. It allows you to update products or remove them from the site instantly if you run into production or lead time issues, unlike traditional catalogs that would continue to show potential customers products you couldn’t sell them.

Helps you compete with other dropshipping operators

If all your competitors have an e-commerce site, you need to have one as well to grow your e-commerce business.

Provide essential information

Your dropshipping website helps you make sales but also serves as a repository of essential customer experience information with pages like shipping policy, frequently asked questions, and more, and reduces the need to contact your customer service department.

How Does the Dropshipping Business Model Work?

The dropshipping business model includes three key players: the manufacturer, the dropshipper, and the customer.

The manufacturer

The manufacturer’s role in a dropshipping business model includes creating products, maintaining inventory, shipping products to customers on behalf of the retailer, replacing defective products and restocking. The dropshipper sells the products to the retailer at wholesale prices, assuming the risk of unsold inventory.

The dropshipper

In the dropshipping business model, the dropshipper or dropshipping website owners sell the manufacturer’s products directly on their dropshipping website to consumers without having to handle the products or invest in inventory. You, as the dropshipper, are responsible for creating your dropshipping website and your own brand, as well as choosing and marketing the products you want to sell, shipping them, and setting the prices that allow you to make a profit.

When a customer makes a purchase on your site, you simply check the order details to make sure they are correct before sending the order to the supplier.   The product is then shipped from the supplier to the customer, wherever they are in the world.

Once the supplier has shipped the product, you inform the customer of the shipping date and tracking number if available. In many cases, dropshippers also sell white-label products – pre-made products that you can legally brand under your company or site.

The customer

The customer, in the dropshipping business model, buys the products directly from your dropshipping website at the retail price you set, and the supplier ships them directly to them. If the customer has any questions or problems can contact the dropshipper from whom he bought the product. 

How to Create a Successful Dropshipping Site in 10 Steps?

Here are the 10 steps by which you can easily create your dropshipping website:

STEP 1: Select Your Niche

The first step to creating your dropshipping site is to find a niche to connect with a target audience and find products relevant to them.  Here are some things to consider when selecting your niche:

Select a Niche that Offers Consistent Results

When you want to look for a dropshipping business idea, you can either choose trendy, fashionable niches or choose more stable, long-term niches. The good thing about trendy niches is that they are great for short-term gains, on the other hand, they are very competitive and don’t last very long, and can come with very low prices.  So it’s best to choose a niche that offers consistent results and gives you long-term customers.

Select a Niche that Combines Profitability and Passion

It’s best that you find a niche that you are passionate about or it will be difficult to market. If you are not passionate about the niche you choose, you will be more likely to get discouraged in the long run, as it takes a lot of work to successfully develop a dropshipping business.

If no one is looking for what you intend to sell, you are dead before you even start. To find a targeted niche you need to understand the problems of your target audience and then identify the problem or find out what aspect of the problem remains unsolved and then find the products that can solve them or meet their needs.

Step 2: Conduct a Market Research

The second step in learning how to create your dropshipping site is to conduct the necessary market research. Once you have chosen a niche that you are interested in you need to know your competitors and check that it is profitable.

 If your market has a lot of competitors, this can be a good thing in dropshipping because a product that has little or no competition is a sign that there is no demand for that particular product. Look for products that have competition, from the big players like Walmart or Amazon as this is a sign that the demand is high and the business model is sustainable.

 Some products may not have much competition, due to high shipping costs, supplier and manufacturing issues, or low-profit margins. So it’s critical to research these issues to ensure you’re counting on the profitability of the products.

Choose a niche with high-priced products

Since the amount of work required to sell a $10 item is essentially the same as selling a $1,000 item it is best to choose a niche with high-priced products.

find a product with low shipping costs

Since you will be responsible for shipping costs, it is best to find a product with low shipping costs. This gives you the opportunity to offer a discount to your customers to attract more sales.

Your product must generate spontaneous purchases

The products you sell must also match the financial ability of your target audience so that it sparks impulse buys and attracts your visitors to make a purchase on the spot.

Find a product with low shipping costs

Since you are responsible for shipping costs, it is best to find a product with low shipping costs. This gives you the opportunity to offer a discount to your customers to attract more sales.

Your product must attract impulse buys

The products you sell must also match the financial ability of your target audience so that it sparks impulse buys and attracts your visitors to make a purchase on the spot.

 Offer a product that is not readily available locally

Offering a product that your customers can’t easily get in their local store is more appealing to potential customers.

Use tools to research products

There are many tools to help you research products. Here are some of the most well-known of these tools: 

Google Trends

Google Trends is a free and handy tool that shows you the popularity of certain search terms over time. With Google Trends you can not only find out if a niche is trending up or down but also display search interests by region and compare them to other search terms over time. However, this is not enough to determine if a niche is viable or not because Google Trends does not show search volume. Some niches may be trending upwards but do not have enough search volume to justify their popularity.

Use a keyword research tool

A keyword research tool like SEMrush, Jaaxy, or Google Keyword Planner can help you determine the product’s popularity in searches by showing the monthly search volume for your product and its degree of competition.

Trend Hunter

Trend Hunter is the world’s largest trend community with 20 million monthly views, dedicated to sharing market trends that you can use to find brilliant new ideas for your dropshipping site.

Check out popular websites in your niche

Looking at popular sites in your niche will help you understand what trends are happening and which products are selling the most and give you an idea of finding the best products to sell on your dropshipping site.

Step 3:  Conduct Competitive Research

Now that you know what you will be selling on your dropshipping website, you want to see who your competitors are and understand how they sell their products. You can learn from your competitors how they are using their dropshipping website builders and how they are leveraging social media to improve their business. You want to know their vendors, their target audience, the type of content they use, and more.

Here are some ways to do your competitor research:

-Do an online search

Type the name of one of the products in your niche that you want to sell into Google or any other search engine. The top ten results will give you a good indication of your competition in a given location.

• Use third-party tools to gather data on your competitors

There are many online tools to track your competitors’ online activity, such as their websites, social media profiles, top traffic sources, number of visitors, and who their competitors are.

– Search on social media

You can find dropshipping business ideas by analyzing your competitors’ marketing activity on social media. By looking at the social media pages of big brands in your niche, you can understand how many followers they have, how they market their brand, and how much brand engagement there is. This gives you an idea to differentiate yourself from them by adding value. Signing up for a competitor’s newsletters can also help you stay on top of their content if they share their blog content in this way.

STEP 4: Choose a Hosting Provider and Domain Name

Hosting is a remote server that stores your website data. It plays a vital role in the success of your business, as secure and reliable hosting not only makes your site accessible to anyone who wants to visit it, but also protects all of your site’s information, and can even secure your users’ payments.

 Therefore, it is very important that you choose a good hosting provider for your business that offers:

– Optimized servers so that you can get good performance.

– A one-click WordPress installer to speed up the process.

– Custom caching features to improve speed.

– Guaranteed 24/7 availability.

Choose a Domain Name

Once you have chosen a good hosting provider, you need to choose a unique and short domain name. The domain name will be the name that people will use to search for your online store on the search engine.

Choosing a catchy and relevant domain name for your business when setting up your dropshipping business can have much more impact on your online brand value and user engagement. You can use Google Domains to search for the name that comes to mind and see its availability.

There are also many domain name generators like Lean Domain Search, which are tools that give suggestions for domain names based on keywords and tell you if the domain name is available for registration. It is always advisable to choose a domain name that ends in “dot com” as it is easier to reference, but you can also choose “dot org”, etc.

Step 5:  Identify a Dropshipping Website Platform

There are plenty of dropshipping website builders on the market, but each one serves a different purpose, and the price of it also changes accordingly. Therefore, it is recommended to choose a distance selling website builder that best suits your business needs and niche.

You can create your wholesale website in different ways, the best of which are:

• Create your website with WordPress using the AliDropship plugin or with WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin using the WooCommerce version of AliDropship.

• Use a building software like Shopify or Bigcommerce to create your website.

Create Your Dropshipping Website with WordPress

In this article, we will take a closer look at how you can create your dropshipping website with WordPress which is one of the most popular content management systems in the world.

Among the best benefits of WordPress, we can mention:

 A wide choice of themes and plugins.

As WordPress is one of the most popular platforms, it provides you with thousands of free and premium themes and plugins to meet all customer needs. Most themes are already responsive and SEO ready to improve your ranking in Google searches. You can choose a general theme or niche-specific themes that are lighter and specially designed for a particular business.

An open-source content management system (CMS)

WordPress is an open-source CMS (Content Management System), which means it gives you the freedom to develop your own features and customizations, set up your own security policies, and has hundreds of themes and plugins (many of which are also free) that allow you to add more functionality or visual elements to your site.

Remember, if you decide to create a website with WordPress, choose a hosting provider that offers WordPress optimization with a one-click installer, so you can get the most out of the CMS.

Installing WordPress

Select the auto-installer in your hosting account control panel for the domain you want to use and install WordPress.  Once the installation is complete, you can start creating your site via the WordPress dashboard.

Step 6:  Install the Necessary Plugins for Your Dropshipping Site

So you already have a fully functional WordPress site, but aside from the site design, there are plugins that are necessary for your dropshipping website to function. Without them, you can’t manage orders, buy or sell anything on the site.

When you decide to create your dropshipping website with WordPress, you have the choice to do it using the:

• WooCommerce plugin with WordPress using the Woo AliDropship.

• AliDropship plugin for WordPress

Let’s start with the WooCommerce plugin which is the number one solution for creating online stores.

The WooCommerce plugin

WooCommerce is one of the most popular open-source online store plugins, which you can use to sell physical or digital products on your site. WooCommerce is the leading e-commerce platform with  23.43% of the market share worldwide which means that over 5 million live websites are using WooCommerce. WooCommerce will take care of most of the tasks involved in managing your wholesale business on your site, such as:

• Importing products from the supplier’s site, which can be a marketplace like AliExpress or a brand’s dedicated site.

• Listing the products on your site and managing all the product details like price, inventory, description, etc.
• Place the order on the supplier’s site with the order details after purchasing a product.

The installation of this plugin is quite easy and does not require advanced knowledge of website development. You can install and activate WooCommerce via the Plugin section of your WordPress dashboard.  To complete the WooCommerce installation process, you’ll need to answer a few questions about your store, such as location, currency and type of product to be sold, and even the payment and shipping method.

You can also automatically install and activate the free WooCommerce Storefront theme and automated taxes for your online store. Once the WooCommerce installation is complete, pages such as My Account, Store, Shopping Cart, and Checkout are already created and all that’s left is for you to start adding the products you want to sell dropshipping from your supplier.

The AliDropship plugin

The AliDropship plugin too will help you turn your WordPress site into a semi-automated wholesale site with AliExpress and take advantage of all the features needed to successfully run a dropshipping business through your website. To install the AliDroship plugin, simply log into your WordPress dashboard and click on “Plugin”, then “Add New”.

Search for “AliDroship” and select “Install Now”. Click on “activate” and follow the installation wizard to create your online store. After that, what you need to do is add a new theme and you will have a fully customized mail order website with WordPress.

Step 7: Find A Dropshipping Supplier

 At this point, you’ve selected the products you want to sell and you know they can be profitable. Now you need to find a reliable dropshipping product supplier for your dropshipping site. Choosing the right dropshipping supplier is critical to the success of your dropshipping website because they need to ship good quality products quickly to satisfy your customers and you have no control over that.

Without suppliers, your dropshipping business would have no products to ship to customers. It is also important to make sure that you have a reliable supplier that offers a competitive price on products otherwise you have to apply a higher markup to make a profit, which makes selling incredibly difficult. To find a supplier for your dropshipping site, you can check a supplier database, such as Dropship Direct, Alibaba, or AliExpress, and then open an account with a supplier.

Another option is to contact the manufacturer directly.

Contact the manufacturer directly

One of the best ways to find trustworthy dropshipping suppliers for your business is to contact the manufacturer directly and request a list of their wholesale suppliers. Contact your chosen suppliers to ask important questions, such as minimum order quantities and delivery times, to ensure they have the capacity to grow with you.

Order product samples from each supplier and compare delivery times, product quality, and packaging, keeping in mind your customer and what they want from you when placing an order. According to Bigcommerce, 77% of respondents to the global survey have abandoned an online purchase due to unsatisfactory shipping options, while 58% have stopped buying from certain retailers due to a negative shipping experience.

But you also need to be legally set up and ready to meet the supplier’s official criteria.

Step 8: Check All Legal Requirements

Since you want to create a legitimate dropshipping site, you need to check all the legal requirements before you can start selling.  Most dropshipping service providers will require some form of legal documentation before agreeing to work with you, so it pays to get it right the first time.

Check local legal requirements

Dropshipping is a legal e-commerce business, but before you get started, check the local legal requirements to see if you need to obtain a business license.

Choose your business structure

If you’re serious about your business, you’ll want to create a legitimate business entity that indicates which category your business falls into. There are several, but here are three of the most common:

Sole Proprietorship

This is the simplest business structure, requiring minimal paperwork to set up, but it offers no personal liability protection, which can put your personal assets at risk.

Limited Liability Company (LLC)

A limited liability company (LLC) registers your business as a separate legal entity, which offers increased protection for your personal assets. You may have to comply with additional filing requirements and pay incorporation and maintenance fees.

 Limited Company

A limited liability company offers the highest level of liability protection, which comes with greater peace of mind, but is generally more expensive to form. Most large businesses fall into this category. Create a separate business account. Don’t mix your business finances with your personal finances.

Apply for an EIN

EIN stands for Employment Identification Number and you can apply for one fairly easily on the IRS website.  All businesses need an EIN number to file their taxes, apply for wholesale dropshipping accounts, open a bank account and do just about anything else related to your business.

Step 9: Start Marketing Your Dropshipping Website

At this point, you’ve found your product and built your dropshipping website, you can start promoting it to generate traffic and encourage visitors to buy.  Marketing and traffic generation are absolutely critical to the success of your business and are difficult to outsource, especially if you have a small budget and are just starting your business.

The ability to drive traffic to your new site is second only to value-added as a key success factor.  In order to stand out in your market, you need to put in extra effort in article publishing, SEO, and marketing for your dropshipping site. You can focus on marketing and promoting your dropshipping website in the following ways.

Content Marketing

Content marketing can be helpful in creating a long-term traffic flow for your wholesale site, creating blog posts or YouTube videos around your dropshipping niche that add value to your customers and provide quality information, solutions, and tips to compete in a highly competitive market where you offer similar products.

Read More: 

10 Steps to Planning a Strong Content Marketing Strategy

B2B Content Marketing: 8 Great Ways to Grow Your Business

Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing: Two Complementary Strategies

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The success of your dropshipping website depends on SEO to appear in the search engine results for certain queries. It is essential that your site is user-friendly, responsive, and loads quickly so that Google ranks it higher on its search pages. Create long, quality content, optimize it with keywords, link to other pages on your site, create meta links on product pages and choose a relevant product title. These are just some of the techniques to improve your website’s SEO.

To learn more, check out the blogs below: 

SEO for Beginners: How to Optimize Your Blog Posts for SEO

80 Best Free SEO Tools

4 Best Keyword Research Tips to Improve Your Ranking

12 Best Ways to Get Backlinks

12 Best Tips for Creating SEO-friendly Content

Jaaxy keyword Research Tool Review

Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing, if done right, can be a huge source of traffic. According to Bigcommerce, online stores with a social media presence have up to 32% more sales Consider creating an account on each popular platform like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to engage and attract customers with different types of content. But focus on the social media channel that best fits your business to attract the most people to buy your products and the places they are most likely to visit.

Read More: 10 Steps to Successfully Promote Your Blog on Instagram

Step 10: Analyze and Optimize

Once you’ve spent some time marketing and managing your dropshipping site, you can begin to analyze the results of your work according to an analytics system based on clear data and key performance indicators. For example, you should be able to identify the best performers, bestselling products, best customers, etc.

Google Search Console and Google Analytics are two tools you can use to evaluate your online traffic and improve your SEO efforts. If you find that some marketing activities are not successful enough, you can consider optimizing some things or lowering the price compared to your competitors and see how to make them more competitive.

You can even invest in A/B testing methods to identify the most profitable segment of your niche or methods that will keep you ahead of your competitors.

Conclusion

I hope this blog has provided you with the information you need to move forward with building your dropshipping website and set yourself apart from the competition by bringing great value to your customers and benefits to you. Building your dropshipping website, as with any other online business requires a significant level of commitment and a long-term perspective to promotion and marketing with consistency and perseverance to get it up and running and make profits.