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Dropshipping is considered one of the most reliable and convenient ways to conduct quick business transactions and product delivery. Retailers also hail this intermediate platform for marketing products effectively so that sales increase. As a dropshipping business owner, you cannot, however, choose to neglect the customers and their experience using your website.
Whatever goes wrong in the supply chain process impacts the customer. Hence, there are certain unforgivable sins of dropshipping that must be avoided at all costs if you wish to run a successful business with maximum customer retention.
In this article, we will look at 6 of these mistakes that need to be avoided and how you can do it. Remember, it is the customer who brings in the money and must be kept satisfied no matter what.
1. Stop worrying about shipping costs
Worrying about anything while running a business cannot have productive results. In a dropshipping business, you must not spend time worrying about the shipping costs. You own the business, and you are its boss, so make decisions that are convenient for you to run the online business.
You can either have a range of shipping prices depending on different factors like the demand of a specific product, location of customers, availability, etc. Another more convenient option is to set a flat rate. This can alleviate your stress and make the process straightforward and easy for the customers.
2. Never rely too much on vendors
You will be putting yourself amidst unnecessary crises by relying too much on vendors or e-commerce suppliers. An example of such a crisis is when you rely on a single vendor and do not have certain products ordered in stock. What will you do when something like this happens? You cannot leave your customers hanging as that would completely tarnish your image.
The best thing to do is have multiple backups in the form of many vendors or suppliers. Then, if one fails, another can help.
3. Never expect money to come in easy
Business is a tricky business. To outsiders, it might look hunky-dory, but only those running the day-to-day operations are aware of the various challenges. Dropshipping using Shopify dropshipping or Wayfair dropshipping might seem like an easy way to make money, but it amounts to nothing if clever marketing strategies are not in place. There is also the factor of competition to be kept in mind. Hard work and research are essential for developing your business.
MyDepot is a dropshipping platform formed in 2021 that carries out extensive research regularly to mark out competition and plan marketing strategies that beat other similar platforms.
4. Do not make order information difficult to access
You need to invest creatively in your website to ensure that you deliver your promises of making order information easy to access for your customers. For example, you must provide estimated shipping dates to the customer and ask for the same from the supplier. In addition, the suppliers need to keep you updated so that you can provide updates on the website for customers to check whenever they wish to.
5. Not enough branding image
Customers tend to forget about brands when they are out of sight. For this reason, you must promote your dropshipping business as much as possible. This can be done in many ways. For example, you can customize the external packaging of the products to include your logo and even include small notes or vouchers from your end.
Another beneficial method for maintaining a brand image is by using social media platforms. You can create a business page and regularly post about different things related to your business. This helps to reach out to a broader customer base.
6. Mishandling order changes and cancellations
Customers often press the wrong buttons and end up ordering something by mistake. Therefore, your website must have a process in place that refunds such order changes or cancellations. At times, customers cancel orders because they might change their minds. In such a case, you can provide a certain cancellation period within which if the order is canceled, the money will be refunded.
On the other hand, mishandling order changes and cancellations is an unforgivable sin that will forever take away customers from you. They will look at your brand as a loss of their time and money and hence, will not trust it. Therefore, stay communicated with your vendors to get updates on the cancellation requests by customers and update the customers about the same.
To sum up
MyDepot has paid special attention to avoid all the mistakes mentioned in the article. We have studied and researched other companies, the mistakes they have often made, and learned from those. Our home and furniture-based dropshipping website ensures 100% customer satisfaction. Give it a try to know more!