Shopify has tremendously improved the way businesses and startups dive into the expansive ecommerce world. It has made it easy for businesses to set up shop without necessarily breaking bank to create commercial websites for their businesses.
Whereas Shopify makes it easy for shoppers to create online storefronts to reach millions of customers, it doesn’t really provide a streamlined service to facilitate drop shipping and outsourcing of products and shipping them to customers without worrying about packaging and shipping. This is where Oberlo and Aliexpress come into play.
Oberlo is a tool which lets sellers to easily import and dropship products into their Shopify stores and have them shipped to their customers directly without handling them. Aliexpress on the other hand, is a leading electronics retailer and they let Shopify owners to import their products to their Shopify stores, fulfill orders automatically with a single click and dropship them to their customers.
Benefits of using Oberlo and Aliexpress dropshipping in Shopify
Dropshipping using Oberlo and Aliexpress makes it easy to start an online business at low cost. You don’t have to procure items before sales or maintain a warehouse. All you need to do is to pay your suppliers when items have been sold.
How to Create a Shopify Dropshipping Store Using Oberlo & Aliexpress
Here is a step by step guide on how to create a Shopify store using Oberlo & Aliexpress;
Sign Up process
The sign up process for Shopify is very easy and quick. From their Shopify website, select the sign up option and fill out the form to create an account and you are good to go. After creating your account using your email address, you’ll be required to choose a unique business name and provide more details of your business including the address, country, contacts and your name.
Set up Your online shop
Once you have agreed that you have products you intend to sell and have created an account, you will be directed to the store admin interface. Here, there are very many features which you can use to customize your store.
You can upload the pictures of your products, give descriptions of the products, the prices and also include the payment details. If you intend to offer shipping, you can also include the shipping info from this screen.
Customize the layout or theme of your storefront
Although Shopify comes with a default theme store, it is possible to customize the theme of your store by choosing from a list of modifications which are available in the theme store. It is important to note that a lot of these customizable themes are premium and you’ll be required to part with some money to make changes to the official Shopify theme.
There are close to 200 themes in the theme store which you can choose from. They are classified by industry, features and their price. You can also filter them by popularity and their date of release. Always choose a theme that is consistent with your brand story, is affordable and suits your products. Always try out a demo of the theme before you can purchase them and use them in your storefront.
Adding Oberlo and Aliexpress to the store
To add Oberlo and Aliexpress to your store, you will need to click on the apps, and then choose Oberlo. Oberlo automatically appears under the apps that enhance the Shopify store experience and then click on Oberlo then click get and install the App. Under the settings tab, change the shop settings and change the auto updates to suit your business.
It is recommended to check all the notifications so that you can get updates whenever there is a change in the availability of products and prices.
Add products to Oberlo
From Apps choose Oberlo then click on search products and add the names of products you intend to sell in your Shopify store. Search for all the products you intend to sell and add them to the import list, then edit the details of the products and put in the details you feel will best describe the product and attract as many customers are possible. Choose where the products will be seen and you will be good to go.
Set up payment options
From the payments options, include information on how you intend to take payments from your customers. Remember that depending on the getaway you use, some will keep a small percentage of the payment a customer makes. As for the payment options accepted, Visa, MasterCard and American Express are the most popular although PayPal is growing in popularity by day.
Include shipping information and how you plan to pay tax
Some stores charge taxes and shipping costs on certain products and you will need to confirm this from the Inventory and variants page. Click on the product variant option and make sure the checkboxes next to Charge Taxes and Shipping are checked.
Get your online shop live by purchasing a new domain
Once all these steps described above have been achieved, you can then get your store live and ask a friend to try and make an order or try it yourself. To get a store live, you’ll have to buy a domain name either from Shopify or from a third party. Add the domain to Shopify in the settings- Domains- Add an existing domain and your store will be live.