5 Facts About Dropshipping That You Must Know
eCommerce
Without knowing what you’re doing, it is impossible to succeed. You’re supposed to know the answer before you join up Dropshipping. As we’ve already mentioned, Dropshipping is a new business type in the commercialized world, there are tons of things you should learn about it (find more what is Dropshipping). In this article, I want to share some overview dropshipping facts that are helpful for your business.
1.The webstore facts:
The main source markets: Europe and USA
The rating of top-5 countries most actively placing orders in our stores is comprised of:
- USA: California; Florida;
- Canada: Alberta; Ontario;
- Germany;
- UK;
- Australia.
Apart from that, a rising demand for our products from customers in Asia and Africa can also be seen quite clearly. When you know your main source markets, you have an opportunity to optimize your marketing efforts, and also consider payment and delivery issues carefully. It is vital for your supplier to arrange shipments to these regions, and it is crucial for your dropshipping store to support the payment methods that are most typically used in these countries.
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Average revenue per webstore visitor: $0.43
To get this figure, we take the total revenue we got from all the processed sales, and divide it by the total number of Internet users who visited our stores. It lets us understand whether our stores’ offers and design are appealing enough for our customers and whether they are motivated enough to make a purchase from us.
Day of the week with the largest amount of sales: Saturday
It is quite important for us and for every dropshipping store owner to know the days of the highest customers’ activity since it defines the strategy of promoting the stores via shoutouts and other ways of social networks use.
Day of the week with the lowest amount of sales: Wednesday
Knowing which days normally are not characterized with a significant amount of placed orders, we can flexibly adjust the working schedule of our staff members, and use this free time to focus on managing customer relations, dealing with promotional tasks, thinking through marketing strategy, etc.
Core traffic sources that attract the largest number of visitors:
- Social media;
- Organic traffic;
- Paid traffic (Google Adwords).
Apart from these, SEO also plays a significant role in generating the desired amount of traffic. Since our stores generally have a wide range of products, they are indexed by search engines and get good rankings on search engine result pages.
It is vitally important for drop shippers to know the main sources of traffic for their webstores. This kind of information gives them an opportunity to evaluate and increase the efficiency of all the steps taken to boost the traffic.
The most efficient traffic sources that attract the largest number of buyers:
- Paid search – 2,43% conversion rate;
- Organic search – 2,20% conversion rate;
- Direct – 1,40% conversion rate.
The previous parameter shows what sources bring us more visitors, and this one shows the efficiency of the measures we take to turn these visitors into actual customers. Again, this type of data helps us rethink and redefine the strategies we use if necessary.
The amount of time necessary to achieve 100k likes on Facebook: 9 months
While promoting one of our stores in social networks, we were able to achieve 100 000 likes on its dedicated Facebook fan-page. During the first 6 months of the page existence, it managed to get only 10 000 likes, but after reaching this milestone we decided to implement a new promotion strategy which is described in detail in this article, and in 3 months the number of likes increased from 10 000 to 100 000. It gives us the reason to consider this strategy successful, and to recommend it to our customers who order their own stores from us.
2. The payment and shipping facts
The most popular delivery option: ePacket
The concept of ePacket delivery was purposely created for small packages not weighing more than 2 kg (4.4 lbs) and costing less than $400. This system allows a really prompt and quite cheap delivery which is exceptionally convenient for buyers – they don’t have wait for weeks for their order to arrive, and they don’t have to bear extra costs. Additionally, the shipment movement can be monitored with the help of tracking codes provided by the supplier.
Knowing that ePacket is so popular with our customers and for the vast majority of Internet shoppers worldwide, we pay a special attention to choosing our suppliers – we need to be 100% sure they provide this shipping option.
The most popular payment methods:
- Credit cards – 60%;
- PayPal – 40%.
It is vital to know what kind of payment method your customers prefer, and what payment options are available within the country the order comes from. But it is even more important to integrate the necessary payment system in your dropshipping store – you surely want your buyers to have no technical or any other problems while paying for their purchases.
3. Customers’ profile facts
Gender distribution of purchasers:
- Female buyers – 58%;
- Male buyers – 42 %.
Surely enough, this statistics is highly important since it gives us the opportunity to target our potential customers more efficiently. We give a thorough consideration to this parameter while planning our advertising campaigns on Facebook, in Google Adwords, etc.
The average number of items per one order: 2,5 items
What’s the most important about this parameter is its change within some period of time? This dynamics matters if you implement the techniques of upselling (you try to persuade a customer to buy a more expensive improved variation of a chosen product) or cross-sell (you try to persuade a customer to buy a complimentary item from another product category). The change in the average number of items per order helps you understand whether your strategy is working as planned.
4. Demand patterns facts
- Best selling clothes size: XL
- Best selling clothes colors: black and grey
- Best selling clothes type: hoodies and sweatshirts
- Most demanded clothes material: cotton
- Best selling model of phone case: iPhone 5
- Best selling jewelry type: necklaces
- Best selling lifestyle items: keychains, mugs, and watches
- Most demanded type of products: interactive goods (items with highlight, self-stirring mugs, etc.)
- Products that have seasonal demand: scarves, hats, and gloves (bought in late autumn); backpacks (bought before the start of school season); fancy cosplay costumes (bought before Halloween).
This kind of statistic is extremely important not only for our product strategy when we decide what to include in our stores offer: it also impacts our promotional efforts. For example, knowing that grey and black clothes are bought substantially more often than colored ones, we try to set an appropriate main photo on the product page of an item that is available in several colors.
5. Support facts
Most typical questions our support team gets asked:
- When will my order arrive?
- Where is my order?
- Where is my tracking?
Knowing what types of questions are asked most frequently, we can prepare the answers in advance in order to facilitate our customer relations management and make the communication process easy and comfortable for both sides.
Most amusing cases our support team worked with: Once, we had to deal with an Instagram user who left dozens of angry comments in our account claiming that we stole his money and didn’t deliver the item he had ordered 3 months ago. Upon further communication it became clear we never even had such a client – he has mistaken our website for the store he actually has bought this product from.
We hope that you will find these facts and tips useful for your own business development. If you also happen to have some interesting business stories, we would love to see them in the comments section! You are also kindly invited to leave a comment if you want to know any other facts about our drop shipping stores.
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