If you’re feeling stuck, uncertain, or guilty about not working on your store – you’re not alone. The coronavirus situation in the world is changing much from day-to-day, and it can feel overwhelming trying to keep up. It’s difficult to understand the different restrictions that are being imposed every day, let alone making sense of if it’s a good idea to continue building your business at this time.
With suddenly so much more free time at home, there’s a pressure to make the most of it by being as productive as possible. It’s easy to start feeling guilty that you’re not doing enough.
In reality, if you don’t feel up to being productive with your business, you don’t have to be. Taking care of yourself, including your physical and mental health, is the most important thing now. So if you’re not up to it, close this article and come back to it when you’re ready.
But if you’re feeling good, and looking for ways you can start to make small steps forward with your business despite the uncertainty, then our 13 pro-dropshippers are here to help.
They’ve shared their best tips on what you should be focusing on at this time. They’ve got advice about how to adapt to the current situation, use your time wisely, and get your business into a good place for when things begin to return to normal.
My challenge to you – pick the one piece of advice that resonates with you the most, and make a pledge to yourself to get it done today. Then do the same thing tomorrow. And the next.
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Vlad Gasan
If there’s one thing you should do to work on your store today, you should tweak your messaging to address customers’ concerns appropriately in this difficult time.
People are losing jobs and businesses, staying at home quarantined, bored, and sometimes even scared because they don’t know how long it’s going to last. But most of them are still buying stuff, especially online.
Do anything in your power to help people by offering products that help alleviate their stress, stay fit, and bring more fun into their lives. As dropshippers, we can make a positive impact in this difficult time.
Pierre Emmanuel
If there’s one thing you should do to work on your store today, you should discuss with your supplier about shipments from China to your country of delivery.
As you may know, ePacket delivery usually uses cargo in commercial flights, and there are very few flights still operating. I personally switched from ePacket to AliExpress Standard Shipping as it seems to work better, even if I can’t wait for ePacket to work as usual.
Burak Doğan
If you’ve already started with ecommerce and already have an online store, you must clarify the situation to your visitors with 100% honesty.
You might have some issues with supplying products, shipping, or production, so be honest about that. Everyone is aware of the current situation, so if you explain the issue, people will understand. It’s as simple as that.
Remember, it’s worth spending more time on customer service because chargebacks can be a bigger pain than not selling any products.
Paul Lee
You should simplify it all and make it as easy as possible for the user to purchase. This means hiding everything that could be a distraction (like social share buttons, external links, pop-ups, etc.).
Make the product page very easy to consume and remove as much friction to the purchasing process as possible. So instead of having long descriptions that users may be too lazy to read, you could break them up with photos or gifs.
Courtney White
If there’s one thing you should do to work on your store, you should continue marketing no matter what. But marketing doesn’t always have to mean pushing a product. Even if you’re experiencing manufacturing delays or are unable to ship products, there’s always an opportunity to market your business no matter what your circumstances are.
Try getting more personal, focus your marketing efforts on the person or team behind your business. It’s a great way to continue to get new leads and develop relationships that can benefit you in any situation.
Rodney and Kory
Explore your store as if you were a customer. This is important because it will shift you into the mindset of thinking like your potential customers. Customers are ultimately the deciding factor of whether or not your business works, so tailoring everything towards them is key.
Try to explore as much as you can! Scroll around, read, click things, add things to your cart.
As you go through your store take notes on things that can be moved, fixed, rewritten, added, removed, etc. Optimization is a continuous process so you should always be searching for things that can be improved.
Yuanda Wang
The one thing that beginners should focus most on is market research. The game in ecommerce is different than before, it’s not about testing endless products until you find the golden “winner”.
Read Amazon reviews, Reddit threads, YouTube videos, and forum posts about the product that you are trying to sell. Truly understand your product and find compelling reasons for people to buy from you.
Once you have this knowledge, you can incorporate it into your ad creatives, ad copy, landing pages, and create winning marketing, turning any product into a winner.
Emma Reid
I think if there’s one thing you should do to work on your store today, you should sit down and get really clear on who your audience is.
If you don’t understand your buyer (or don’t put much thought into it), then it will be difficult to sell to them. I’d give the exact same advice to people who have had their ads stop working recently.
Maybe the current state of the world means your customer is facing different problems or could use the product for a different reason? The only way you’ll know that is if you dig deep into who they are and what’s happening in their lives.
Chris Wane
You should focus on improving the brand image of your website. So many new dropshippers think you can throw together a store in an hour and start making hundreds of thousands of dollars. It doesn’t work like that. There is so much extra that’s needed in terms of branding and trust-building.
You need to think about color schemes, logos, text fonts, language used across the site, and ultimately what impression your website gives to a customer in that first 10 seconds of landing on the page.
Does the site look professional, or does it look like it was thrown together in 10 minutes? If you wouldn’t buy from it, then there’s a good chance no one else will, so use this time to make it the best it can be.
Shri Kaase
If there’s one thing you should do to work on your store today, you should focus on the product page. People spend too much time focusing on everything, but if you think about it, 99.9% of your traffic will land on your product page. It does not matter how thrilling or emotionally appealing your ‘About Us’ page is or how fancy your home page is.
While these are definitely important, I would suggest applying the 80/20 rule with 80% of your focus going on product page optimization.
Ryan Carroll
If there’s one thing you should do to work on your store today, you should work on making it not look like a dropshipping store. The barrier to entry to starting a dropshipping store is very small, which results in massive amounts of people now creating their own online businesses. This is great, but at the same time, it’s a double-edged sword because you now have more competition than ever.
Something I currently see in the dropshipping world is store owners copying other people’s products, product descriptions, and advertising creatives. This is how you lose. You have to understand that you need to be original and think outside of the box.
Every dropshipping store that I’ve had success with looked unique and was well branded. Work on making your store look trustworthy and different. Then ask yourself, would I buy from this?
Harry Coleman
Make sure that your store looks professional, clean, and well organized. If you’re not good at logo design then hire a professional from Fiverr, it can literally be as cheap as $30 to get a great looking logo.
Make sure your product pictures are clear, and product descriptions are convincing and captivating. Focus on the benefits of the product and how it can help solve the customer’s problems. It’s important to spend the time developing your store design as it will help improve your conversion rate.
Shishir and Namrata
If you do not have a winning product yet, use the spare time on your hands these days to prepare 10-20 new products to test once things are normal. If you already have a winner, prepare 10-20 new ad creatives and marketing angles for that product.
This is the time to invest in these “important but not urgent” tasks that your dropshipping business needs to survive in the long-term. Do something today that your future self will thank you for.
Which piece of advice are you going to use with your business today? Leave me a comment below to make the pledge.