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If you have ever been interested in starting your online business, you might have already heard of the word ‘dropshipping’ often thrown around. However, what does it mean? What is involved? Why do you hear about it more each year? Most essentially, how can it help you grow your online business?

This beginner’s guide will answer all those questions for you.

What is Dropshipping, by the way?

In its simplest terms, dropshipping is the process of shipping products directly to your customers from a third-party vendor or supplier, without any intermediary step, such as storing the goods at a physical business location.

After you get an order, your supplier will deliver the items from their warehouse to your customer. You don’t need to think about packaging, storing, or delivering. You can use websites such as AliExpress to find such products.

The supplier will have their products listed. The more sell means it will become a lot cheaper for you. You then set a markup on that figure to identify the selling price for your products. You make an earning on what you sell after taking out product cost and advertising cost.

When a dropshipper is involved, the process looks a bit different:

• A customer orders products from your business
• You then pass the order details to your dropshipper
• The dropshipper charges you a fee for the product sold on the order’s receipt, normally wholesale, and a dropshipping cost. They then package the items and ship them straight to your customer. You don’t need to pack or store the goods on your own.

In short, dropshipping is the act of selling goods on your website without handling fulfillment and shipping. One crucial advantage of this is you don’t need to pay for the goods until the customer pays for them, which makes dropshipping a great option for people who don’t like to spend more on initial inventory or don’t want to risk buying products that won’t sell.

That low barrier to entry enables beginners and professionals alike to choose a niche and run their dropshipping-based eCommerce store.

Does that suggest the dropshipping model is the ideal fit for you? Well, the answer will differ based on your goals and where your skills lie. To begin, let’s consider the pros and cons of dropshipping.

The Pros and Cons of Dropshipping

Dropshipping is excellent, but what makes it so great? Here are the benefits of using the model:

• Low cost of inventory

The cost of inventory is a high cost you will have if you have a warehouse facility. You may end up with an obsolete one or with too little inventory. Dropshipping enables you to prevent those concerns and concentrate on growing your customer base and creating your brand.

• Sell and test more goods with less risk

Dropshipping also lets you update your inventory cheaply, easily, and quickly without the limitations of a physical inventory and the costs associated with it. Further, it lets you test new items without the risk of bringing obsolete inventory. Thus, you only pay for what you sell.

• Low startup costs

It needs a huge amount of capital to stock a warehouse. You can remove the risk of going into debt to begin your business through dropshipping. Rather than buying an extensive inventory and wishing it sells, you can begin a dropshipping business with zero inventory and start making money right away.

Just like everything in life, there are also drawbacks to dropshipping. These includes:

• Less profit

The hidden “cost” of dropshipping is the lack of bulk pricing. You tend to pay more for every item you sell than paying less for a huge inventory of items, which results in less profit.

• Depending on other people’s stock

The ability to provide new goods right away or stop selling slow-moving goods is a huge advantage of dropshipping. However, the drawback to that is you don’t have control over your supplier’s inventory. When they run out of stock, you also run out of stock. That will lead to longer lead teams and lost clients.

• Less control over lead times and order fulfillment

You’ll pay for dissatisfied customers even though you don’t carry the cost of warehousing stock. The wholesalers and manufacturers you do business with are accountable for handling and shipping your stock.

Once the screw-up, the customer complains to you or purchases from your competitor. Make sure you work with high-quality partners if you start your dropshipping business.

How Do You Start a Dropshipping Business?

Here are the steps you need to take if you want to start your dropshipping business.

1. Choose a dropshipping niche

A niche is a segment of a market. For instance, Bluetooth speakers are a great niche in the home audio market. If you want to target the outdoors, waterproof Bluetooth speakers are good sub-niche. The more specific your niche is, the better.

2. Find a dropshipping supplier

Finding a trustworthy and dependable supplier is the most challenging part of starting a dropshipping business for most aspiring online business owners. You depend on suppliers to keep your product in stock, sustain product quality, and guarantee that orders are shipped promptly to your customers.

As a dropshipper, your supplier is your crucial business partner. Remember that a good dropship supplier should be a dropshipper, have the experience, not charge massive order fees, offer fast shipping, have excellent products, present referrals on request, and have a return policy.

3. Get a tax ID

If you are setting up your business in New Zealand, you most likely need a tax ID. It is standard for businesses to pass that expense on to consumers by adding it to the retail price. Applying for one is simple and cheap. You can do it by visiting your clerk’s office or online.

To get a tax ID, you may need a business entity, a sole proprietor, or a company. It’s crucial to collect the exact sales tax amount, but not all eBay sellers require a tax ID. Other wholesale suppliers need you to have one before they’ll do business with you.

4. Select a selling platform

So, you have picked a product and have lined up a supplier. At this point, you need a place to start selling and earning money. Picking the perfect selling platform or online marketplace is essential to your business’s success. However, which platform is suitable for you?

Choose between selling on a known platform or starting your independent online store. The good thing about selling on online marketplaces is it’s simple to set up an account and start selling. They also have attracted massive amounts of traffic, and consumers trust such platforms. However, you’ll be charged fees for each sale, not to mention the competition is extremely fierce.

Some of the common online marketplaces for dropshipping are Amazon, eBay, and Etsy.

Meanwhile, many drop shippers take the route of starting their online stores. It needs more investment upfront, but that’s the long-term option for making money and establishing a business online.

You have total control over layout, design, and branding. There are also no higher profit margins or fees. Nonetheless, it costs a lot to set up and design your store. You also miss out on the guaranteed traffic from established platforms.

Whatever your decision, consider the pros and cons of each.

5. Implement a customer acquisition strategy

For the last and final step, you must attract customers to your page or store. That’s where a customer acquisition strategy comes to the rescue. A few options you can consider are the following:

• Google Ads – If you have an online store, you like it to rank on Google’s first page. You can accomplish that organically, or you can buy ads for your store to show the keywords you wish to rank for on the top page.
• Facebook Ads – Facebook is the world’s biggest social media app. It’s an excellent place to market your goods as you tap into a massive audience.
• Blog – It involves finding forums or blogs connected to your niche or product. Actively participate in the discussions. Position yourself as an authority in your niche and add a link to your website. That can help boost traffic and get new customers.

Frequently Asked Questions on Dropshipping

Q: How much does it cost to begin a dropshipping business?

There’s no exact answer to that question—nonetheless, a rough estimate of between NZ$100 to NZ$1,000.

Q: How much can you make in dropshipping?

Everyone’s experience and skills are unique. If you’re a novice, there’s no reason why you could not make an extra NZ$1,000 to NZ$2,000 per month. However, there is also no reason why you could not make six to seven figures.

Still, it depends on your marketing, product selection, supplier, and how much money and time you’ve invested into growing your business.

Final Thoughts

By now, you must be well on your way to starting an online dropshipping business from scratch. Take note that the work is far from over. Now you have to efficiently run your business. But don’t worry. As long as you follow the steps above, you will have a successful dropshipping business for many years to come.

If you need further help with this topic, you can contact Web Digital. Web Digital is a  well-established web design agency in Auckland, and we can help you with your website design needs.

We wish you the best of luck!

Visuals are a compelling part of web design. With the audience’s attention span getting shorter, the pictures you add to your marketing material help break up the text and make it more consumable. Photographs, illustrations, infographics, and other forms of visuals add an attractive element to your overall website, making it more engaging and exciting for the viewers.

But did you know that the pictures you add to your website also play an essential role in bringing more traffic toward your website?

What is an Image SEO?

Image SEO or picture optimization is one of the most ignored but valuable components of an on-page strategy. The primary aim of image SEO is to:

1. Rank higher in Google Image Search
2. Give users a great browsing experience

To achieve favorable outcomes, you must carry out a few different tasks that help search engine algorithms understand your picture clearly. It is also vital that your website visitors remain satisfied with their visit to keep bounce rates at a minimum.

Studies show that small ‘optimization’ changes can make a significant difference in website traffic. In fact, some websites have reported a 37% increase in the number of visitors they receive.

However, to give your website similar results, you need to optimize the pictures for both – humans and search engine crawlers.

In the guide below, let’s take a look at some techniques that will ensure your images complement the overall SEO efforts of your website. If you need help with SEO Services, please get in touch, and we will be happy to help you.

1. Choose The Right Image

Picture selection is one of the most essential steps of SEO success. When choosing pictures for your business page or blog, make sure they are relevant to the message you are trying to convey with your text. They should also connect with the audience on an emotional level and show them the authenticity of your brand.

Generally, a customized photograph works best to portray the brand’s vision you have formed in your mind. Real pictures show the genuine side of your product/services and help prospective customers make a purchase decision.

However, many marketers find it time-consuming and expensive to go for a personalized shoot. If that is the case with you as well, we recommend looking at reliable stock photo agencies for suitable graphics.

While these pictures may not be exclusive to your brand, they are high-quality and available in an unlimited niche. When searched comprehensively, you can conveniently find stock photographs that represent and match your branding effectively.

2. Go For the Correct Image Format

Once you have chosen the right image for your website, it’s time to look at the file formats that are optimal for quality. The three main file types you will come across are:

• JPEG: The most common format, JPEG, offers lossy data compression. It helps preserve most of the picture detail while also ensuring the smallest file size possible. The only disadvantage is the lack of support for transparent backgrounds. Other than that, they work great for fast loading and the best picture quality.
• PNG: The PNG file format supports transparency, offers a better color range and automatic correction ability. They are also able to embed a short text caption for use in logos. However, its file size can be a bit larger when compared with other formats.
• GIF: GIF supports only 256 colors. Thus, it is ideal for simple arts and animations rather than photorealistic images. It offers a small file size and support for transparent backgrounds, making it a perfect unit for logos and other elements used in your web design.

3. Use Appropriate File Size

Every second counts on the internet! According to a report by Google, 53% of visits are abandoned if a mobile website takes more than 3-seconds to load. Another study shows bounce rate to increase significantly when load time surpasses the 5-second limit.

Google’s John Mueller has also commented that site speed is a search engine ranking factor.

To ensure your website loads quickly, you must scale down large-size pictures into a smaller resolution.

One remedy for this is to use the ‘Save for Web’ option on Adobe Photoshop. This will automatically reduce the file size as per legitimate web design guidelines without compromising the quality.

Besides Photoshop, many other tools can help you compress the file size of your pictures. These include:

• TinyPNG
• CompressJPEG
• SVGOMG

Another way to quicken the loading of pages is to integrate a Content Delivery Network (CDN). Through this process, your website’s media files will be stored in several servers across the globe. When a visitor requests the page, your hosting provider will upload pictures from the nearest geographical location to hasten the delivery time.

4. Name Your Images Appropriately

Give your images a descriptive file name, enabling the search engine crawlers to find and index them easily.

Generally, file names on media files are generic and appear something similar to “IMG5032.jpg.’ However, search engine crawlers will not identify the pictures and may have a hard time determining what it is.

Therefore, take some time out and rename each media file you upload on the website. Make the file names concise. It is also a good idea to add relevant keywords for enhanced visibility.

5. Pay Attention to Alt Text

Alt Text (alternative text), also called the ‘alt attributes’ and ‘alt descriptions,’ are part of the website’s HTML code. They are used to identify the context of the image if the pictures are unable to load for some reason.

Additionally, they are used to enhance the web accessibility of a page. The visually impaired internet users using screen readers gain a better understanding of the pictures through appropriately named attributes.

When writing Alt Text for your pictures, make sure to:

• Keep them short.
• Add the target keyword in at least one image of the page.
• Assign a different alt text for each picture.
• Create alt text with both – readers and search crawlers in mind.

6. Supply Sitemaps

Google has always encouraged the developer’s community to supply a sitemap with each website they launch. As per industry experts, the sitemap gives search engines more information about the webpage and helps them index it more accurately.

In most cases, your web design service provider has already provided you with a sitemap of your website. If you are using WordPress, the same is automatically generated for you as well.

However, make sure to add the details regarding the pictures you are adding to your sitemap. You can do this in the existing one or create a new sitemap exclusively for media files. This will allow search engine bots to identify the pictures – even those loaded by a JavaScript code, such as product images and slider galleries.

7. Make Images Responsive

Having a responsive website means that the page should load seamlessly on all types of devices. And with more than 70% of website traffic coming from mobile devices, this is a task you simply cannot do without.

The HTML code is automatically distributed if you are using WordPress, so your pictures load similarly, regardless of the screen size.

You can also solve the problem by adding the ‘srcset’ code to each picture you upload to your database. This code will prompt the browser to load the image size according to the required display resolution.

Conclusion

Quality images are essential for retaining traffic on your website. However, this is only made possible if users can find them first. With the above tips, you can easily increase the likelihood of your pictures appearing in relevant search results. They will also help offer visitors a flawless user experience and keep them coming for more.

If you need further help on this topic, feel free to consult Web Digital. Apart from web design services, we can help your page in many other aspects of the digital world. We offer affordable packages and will help your business grow with our expert web design services.

Introduction

For new businesses, keeping expenses under control is crucial, especially when it comes to building an online presence. While having a professional website is essential, spending thousands of dollars on it may not be the wisest investment at the early stages. In this blog post, we’ll explore the reasons why new businesses should consider more cost-effective options rather than spending a fortune on a website.

Limited Budget Constraints

As a new business, it’s natural to have limited financial resources. Allocating a significant portion of your budget towards an expensive website may not be the most efficient use of your funds. Instead, it’s better to prioritize other essential aspects such as product development, marketing, and customer acquisition, which have a more immediate impact on your business growth.

Evolving Business Needs

New businesses often experience rapid changes in their offerings, target audience, and overall business strategies. Investing a large sum in a custom-built website may not account for these evolving needs. It’s more practical to start with a simple, functional website that can be easily updated and adapted as your business grows and evolves.

Testing the Market

In the early stages, your business is still discovering its market fit and refining its value proposition. It’s crucial to test your product or service, gather customer feedback, and make necessary adjustments. Investing heavily in a website before thoroughly understanding your customers’ preferences and needs can result in a website that doesn’t effectively align with your target audience.

Cost-Effective Alternatives

Fortunately, there are numerous cost-effective alternatives available for new businesses to establish their online presence. Content management systems (CMS) like WordPress, Squarespace, or Wix offer user-friendly templates and affordable plans that allow you to create a professional-looking website without the need for extensive technical expertise or a large budget.

Scalability and Flexibility

New businesses often experience rapid growth and changes in their operations. Investing a substantial amount in a custom website may limit your scalability options or require additional expenses for frequent updates or redesigns. Opting for a flexible CMS allows you to easily add new features, scale your website as your business expands, and make changes based on user feedback and evolving market trends.

Focus on Marketing and Customer Acquisition

In the early stages, the primary focus should be on generating awareness, acquiring customers, and building your brand. Allocating a significant portion of your budget to marketing efforts, including social media campaigns, paid advertising, or influencer partnerships, can yield higher returns and help you establish a customer base more quickly than investing heavily in a website alone.

Iterative Development Approach

Building a website is an ongoing process that requires continuous improvements based on user feedback and market trends. Instead of investing a large sum upfront, adopting an iterative development approach allows you to launch a basic website and make incremental updates and enhancements as you gather insights and learn more about your target audience.

Conclusion

While having a professional website is crucial for any business, new ventures should carefully consider their budgetary constraints and evolving needs before spending thousands of dollars on a website. By opting for cost-effective alternatives and focusing on other essential aspects such as product development, marketing, and customer acquisition, new businesses can establish a solid online presence without jeopardizing their financial stability. Remember, as your business grows and evolves, you can always invest more in your website to align with your expanding needs and resources.