4 Headache-Preventing Tips for International Shipping
International shipping is a fact of life in ecommerce. Software, advertising platforms, and shipping methods have co-evolved to give store owners access to a market that is more or less the size of planet Earth.
Which begs the question: How can you get products from Point A, which could be just about anywhere, to Point B, which could also be just about anywhere?
This is extra pressing for dropshippers. After all, the whole beauty of dropshipping is that you can sell products from suppliers all over the world.
That solves one challenge – getting products – but introduces plenty of others.
This post introduces eight tips to help ecommerce store owners, and especially dropshippers, navigate the maze that is international shipping. We’ll cover
· How to find reliable suppliers
· How to create customized shipping zones
· How to sync your marketing strategies with shipping realities
· How to present shipping information on your website
If you make it to the end of this post, you’ll have a handful of international shipping tricks to implement in your store.
Shipping is all about speed, so let’s hurry up and get to it.
1. Use Shipping Filters for Your Target Markets
If you use a drop shipping or product sourcing app, then you should be able to use filters to find the best suppliers for your target markets.
Inside Oberlo, for example, the “Selling to” dropdown lets you filter for suppliers that ship to specific countries. So if you want to ship items to the US, you can use the auto-complete text field to lay a filter on your product options.
You can also filter based on shipping methods.
We always recommend using ePacket delivery on products being sourced from
China. So if you want to see whether ePacket is available for your target
countries, incorporate that as part of your search filter.
2. Work With the Best Suppliers
There are a few ways to gauge the reliability of potential suppliers. One method is to order products for yourself. Put yourself in your shoppers’ shoes, and see what international shipping looks like from their perspective. This will give you a chance to scope out the packaging, see how long delivery takes, and maybe even contact the supplier with a question.
Another way to find the best suppliers is searching for Oberlo suppliers and Oberlo Verified suppliers.
Oberlo suppliers meet several key criteria that dropshippers are looking for. For starters, they offer robust international shipping options, which removes geographical hurdles for your business. Oberlo suppliers also specialize in dropshipping, so your items will never be delivered with branded packaging or promotional materials like flyers and coupons.
Oberlo Verified suppliers, meanwhile, meet all those criteria – and then some. Specifically, Oberlo Verified suppliers have processed more than 1,000 orders for Oberlo merchants, and 95 percent of their orders are shipped and delivered on time.
There are two places inside Oberlo to find Oberlo suppliers and Oberlo Verified suppliers:
Either of those links – as well as this one – will
take you to our index of trusted suppliers. The best ones will have the
“Verified” badge:
That same Verified badge can be found while browsing products:
3. Pay Attention to “Warehouse Location” Info
When you browse Oberlo suppliers and Oberlo Verified suppliers, you’ll find details about where a supplier has warehouses.
Some suppliers – including some really good ones – only have warehouses in China:
American and European warehouses might not always be closer to your customers than Chinese warehouses. But generally speaking, you’re more likely to be selling to Americans and Europeans. (The other country in the top four is Australia, and that’s one where you would rather ship from China than the US or Europe.)
Sometimes a single product will be available from multiple warehouses, which is of course a huge plus when it comes to international shipping.
When you import a product with multiple “ships from” locations from Oberlo into Shopify, you can include all of the variants.
In this case, that means different sizes, as well as different international shipping locations.
Then, when your shoppers choose a product, they
can choose where it ships from.
Of course, if you’re only targeting the US market, then you wouldn’t need to
include the China shipping location.
Of course, there are plenty of great markets for drop shippers. Which brings us to Tip 4.
4. Explore More Markets
There are plenty more markets to target – especially if you have a good understanding of how international shipping works.
For example, Malaysia and the Philippines both account for more drop shipping sales than their populations would suggest. There could be lots of reasons for that. Both countries have large English-speaking populations and high Facebook penetration, so they speak ecommerce’s biggest language and are tech savvy.
What’s more, both countries are a stone’s throw from China, at least compared to some of the other big markets. This reduces barriers to international shipping on lots of drop shipping products.
Other sneaky-good markets for drop shippers can be found in Scandinavia and Western Europe. In addition to disposable income, these market have rock-solid options for international shipping. Here, for instance, we can see that ePacket delivery is available in places like Sweden and the Netherlands, and it costs the same price and takes the same amount of time as an ePacket delivery to the US.