10 Ways to Increase Your Dropshipping Conversion Rate

Dropshipping makes eCommerce tremendously simple for businesses. The sellers and dropshipping partners handle all the activities behind the scenes, enabling companies to focus on increasing their customers and improving conversion rates.

Conversion rate optimization of eCommerce stores – whether on Shopify or any other platform – can get a little tricky in dropshipping, given that the business has little control over the process after order placement.

Did you know that the average conversion rate for stores on Shopify is about 1.4%? The best-performing stores stand at 4.7%.

Thankfully, by reading the tips detailed in this blog, businesses could understand the subtle nuances of conversion rates in dropshipping and improve this metric significantly.

What Is Dropshipping

Dropshipping is an order fulfillment model where an online retailer outsources procurements, storage, and shipment/logistics to a third-party associate (usually a supplier). It allows the retailer to have inventory once an order has been placed.

It provides fledgling eCommerce stores with a way to economize on the cost overheads while maintaining some efficiency. However, the downside to dropshipping is that it doesn’t give the eCommerce store much control over what happens once the order fulfillment has been outsourced.

The way dropshipping eCommerce business works is quite simple, despite the complexities that may appear on the surface. The online retailer provides an online storefront for the customers and markets various products for the suppliers on this storefront.

When the customers place an order, the retailer forwards it to the supplier, who begins processing it for packaging and shipment. The supplier takes care of everything after they receive the order from the retailer, from informing the customer that the order has been received to forwarding the shipment to the drop shipper.

The eCommerce retailer can only control something when the seller receives the order.

10 Ways to Boost Dropshipping Conversion Rates

Data shows that dropshipping has the potential for higher profits by 200% than the traditional business models. The potential for conversion using this eCommerce model is already high: listed below are some handy tips to boost conversion rates with dropshipping further.

1. Optimize Site UX Design

Your website or app’s user experience is the customer journey the shoppers go through to complete a purchase. The more efficient this journey is, the more your conversions will be.

Creating websites that are mobile-first and responsive helps to improve conversions significantly. This is because about 58.8% of the website traffic comes from mobile devices.

By optimizing your website for use with mobiles, you will be improving the convenience for your customers—additionally, enhanced security and two-factor authentication for payments help to encourage customers to complete a purchase.

You can improve the UX factor of your websites by including live chat options for the customers as well. Providing them with prompt self-help and purchase guidance helps them close more deals.

2. Add High-quality Images and Videos to Product Pages

Since landing and product pages are sale-oriented, there would inevitably be much information to give the customer. However, text-only information delivery could be more engaging and exciting and may drive shoppers away.

Add high-quality and professional images and videos that define your products or services. Emotions like awe, laughter, amusement, and joy can make people click on things – adding videos to your website is the perfect way to elicit these emotions in your visitors.

Here are some tips for creating images and videos:

• Add your logo or watermark to your videos or images;
• Show products on a white background from all sides;
• Show how to use products in real life, for example, in the garden or at the office;
• Add subtitles to your videos;
• Create short and high-quality promotional videos that demonstrate product quality.

Using images and videos helps open doors to move visitors further down the pipelines and boost conversions.

3. Cross-sell Your Products

Inserting subtle cross-selling modules into your products description page is an excellent way to achieve two things: a boost in the average order value and conversions.

However, your personalization and recommendations algorithms need to be on point to boost conversion rates using cross-selling. You can insert related items at critical touchpoints based on what the shoppers browse for and put them in the cart.

For example, Myntra – a fashion commerce app – uses “Shop the Look” to recommend similar items to customers looking at a garment to promote other clothing pieces in the range or style they browse. That helps them sell more things that suit the customers' tastes and complete their ensembles effortlessly.

4. Improve Website Speed

One research shows that if your website loads only one second faster, it can help you boost your conversion rates by 17%. The quicker your website loads, the more sales and conversions you generate. Here are some tips to boost your dropshipping store:

• Select a good hosting provider;
• Compress and optimize your media files;
• Use special speed optimization plugins or apps;
• Show fewer ads on your site;
• Reduce the number of redirects and unnecessary widgets;
• Minimize the JavaScript, HTML, and CSS scripts;
• Enable caching in the browsers.

5. Write Engaging Oroduct Descriptions

Detailed product descriptions help to build trust and increase conversions. They must be compelling for search engines because about 70% of all online journeys start with a simple search. Create keyword-rich content and optimize it for your consumers' terms and search engines.

Describe your product features, benefits, and specifications in your product description. Make sure to write from the user position and show an experience to each customer. Avoid lengthy descriptions and make bullet points, for example, what it is, its benefits, how it works, design, features, and characteristics.

6. Add Customer Testimonials and Reviews

Customer reviews have the potential to increase conversions and build credibility. According to a survey by Malman Law conducted in 2021, 98% of consumers consider reviews an essential part of the purchase decision-making process.

Add customer reviews to product pages and homepages and encourage other customers to leave feedback. Show your buyer’s reviews from Google on your website. Give incentives or discounts for customers to leave reviews. Send emails to customers and ask them to drop a review.

7. Make Your Store Look Real

It takes time for consumers to trust an eCommerce business immediately at the first touchpoint. To improve customer conversions, a company needs to build a bridge to the customer and assure them that the eCommerce store is reliable.

Many dropshipping stores lack the basic things that make them look like scammy stores. To make it look real, put some effort and create certain pages on your site. You can create web pages for Privacy policies & Terms of Service, Cookie consents, Shipping policies, Returns and Exchange policies, Insurance/Damages, and Consumer Complaints.

Pages like About Us, Contact information, FAQ, and Collections pages are essential for making your store look like a real business. That will establish trust with a customer and encourage checkouts.

8. Optimize the Checkout Process

A cumbersome checkout process can become the biggest culprit that crashes your conversion rates like nothing else. There are several reasons why a complex checkout drives customers away:

• Non-transparent shipping costs;
• No guest checkout;
• Bad payment options and methods;
• Slow shipping;
• Paying extra for taxes;
• Spammy offers;
• Website crashes.

The checkout process should have only one objective: to let customers pay quickly and leave with the goods, offers, deals, and discounts they like. Here are some tips to improve the checkout process:

• Highlight your Add to Cart and Checkout buttons on your site;
• Offer different payment methods like PayPal, Payoneer, debit or credit cards, BNPL, or Bitcoin to checkout;
• Enable guest checkout to place an order;
• Make sure to have an SSL certificate to protect customer’s data;
• Avoid inappropriate pop-up notifications during checkout;
• Use exit popups to offer exclusive discounts or special offers to customers who want to leave your website.
  

9. Show Trust Badges

Trust badges are a great way to adorn your website with a specific promise, such as a promise of quality or organic, cruelty-free products. They allow us to build trust with potential customers and increase conversions.

Information like this helps establish that your brand is working towards a cause, helping influence their purchase decisions in your favor. The best way to do this is to display them on your website's homepage or checkout pages. You can include badges that prove security checks, free shipping, money-back guarantees, payment options, ratings on TrustPilot, or other things.

10. Run Sales and Promotions

According to a recent survey from BigCommerce, promotional activities boosted consumer engagement with various eCommerce stores and gave conversion rates a massive boost. Running different sales and promotions regularly is essential to generate more revenue and conversions.

You can use multiple sales and promotions for your dropshipping business. The flash sale allows you to give discounts on all orders for a short period, while multi-buy offers provide customers with discounts if they buy one or more items. Another great way is to offer gifts on purchases. Just choose low-cost gift items from your supplier to dispatch goods.

To grab more customers’ attention, you can use a countdown timer on your product pages to create a sense of urgency and scarcity. That informs customers that they will miss the chance to grab the special offer soon and must hurry up to jump on it.

Bonus Tip: Create Personalized Email Campaigns

Personalization is the mantra for every eCommerce store today. From recommendations to cross-selling and up-selling, from remembering payment preferences to emailing preferences - everything needs to be personalized to enhance customer experience.

It’s essential to create email campaign offers for customers. You can send them personalized emails, including special offers, free product guides, reviews, or an ebook. Make sure to send them every month or twice per month to increase the dropshipping conversion rate.

Wrapping up

Dropshipping is a business model that needs its own strategies and tactics to win the hearts of consumers. By keeping your customers at the front and center of every aspect of design and convenience, you can significantly improve the conversion rate of your dropshipping store. These tried and tested methods mentioned earlier will help you boost your dropshipping conversion rates.