Fast shipping times attract customers more than anything. Here’s how to Dropship with 4-7 day shipping in the US.
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Let’s face it: Customers love fast shipping times.
According to Retail Touchpoints, 63% of consumers expect a standard delivery to arrive within three days.
If a three-day shipping time is considered ‘normal’ to consumers, then what does this mean for dropshippers who have a shipping time of two to four weeks?
While long shipping times is not a big issue the way people make it seem so, they can limit you from potential sales, due to long the wait customers have to endure.
The best possible solution for this problem, is to source suppliers in the US, who can provide fast shipping times.
Fast shipping times ensure customers receive the orders promptly, and avoids unnecessary stress during the delivery time.
Fast shipping times also encourage customers to purchase from you again. A store with high-quality products and quick shipping times is every customer’s dream. And if you can offer this to them, they will pay you again, and again, and again.
Luckily, there are many US suppliers who can ship orders in as little as seven days (or less). Here is where to find them, and how to get them to fulfil your orders without having to hardly do any work.
Chinese suppliers aren’t the best option
Shipping from China to the US using Aliexpress can be quite long. On average, orders can take anywhere between 10-20 days to arrive in the US. A much longer time Compared to normal U.S shipping (3-4 days).
Many expect fast shipping, and won’t accept nothing more. 40% of people won’t even consider buying your product if the delivery exceeds two or more days. Long shipping times put a lot of customers off, and may even make them bounce from your page.
While many people do not mind long shipping times (after all, it’s free), if you’re unable to provide fast shipping, you miss out on potential customers. And this ultimately lowers your conversion rate and the money you make.
The workaround solution? Switch from using Chinese suppliers to US suppliers. US suppliers can deliver the same item to your customer within a week or less. And this is within the time that customers expect their order to arrive.
With fast shipping, you will attract more customers, and your conversion rates will grow as a result.
Benefits of fast shipping
Fast shipping is just one of the benefits of working with US suppliers. Another big advantage is being more ‘aggressive’ with your pricing strategy.
When it comes to Chinese suppliers, we recommend adding the base and shipping price, then TRIPLING the answer to get your selling price.
This strategy allows you to maximise your profit after expenses (e.g. cost of goods, marketing costs, processing fees) are deducted.
With US suppliers, however, this strategy isn’t necessary. You can sell items for lower, yet still be profitable.
Since shipping is fast (4-7 days), the more people will buy, and sales volume will rise as a result. You make less money per sale as margins are lower, but a high sales volume balances the deficit.
Another big benefit of having 7-day shipping is you get more repeat customers.
Discount coupons are the number one way Chinese Aliexpress suppliers are getting repeat customers. Immediately after people purchase an item, they’re hit with a limited time discount coupon code they can use it for their next order. The only catch is that it expires within twenty-four hours. People do not want to miss out, so usually claim their discount while it’s active.
What’s really important, however, is the state the customer is in. At this point, they are what you call a “hot” lead. They are in the mood for buying. And will snap up a bargain they think is worth having at the time. It’s important to capture a customer in this state. If you don’t, getting them to buy something a week later will be much harder, especially given that shipping times from China are pretty long.
How to find US suppliers on Aliexpress
Here is a step-by-step example of how to find products that provide 4-7 day shipping from US suppliers.
The first step is to go to Aliexpress.com. When you land on this page, type into the search bar the product or niche you are looking for. For this example, it’ll be dogs.
Next, click the ‘Ship from’ drop-down menu, and select United States from the list of countries. Aliexpress will now filter the products to show us which ones can be purchased directly from US suppliers. Easy!
However, not every product shown is actually making consistent sales, and so it’s a good idea to filter the results based on orders.
To do this, click the ‘Orders’ button so your search will also show products based on the number of orders received.
Next, click on a product. This unique dog toothbrush here costs $1.56 per toothbrush, plus $4.21 for 4-7 day shipping from the US. Together this a total of $5.77.
Add US suppliers to your store with Oberlo
You’ve now found an item that provides 1-week shipping. But how do you add this item to your store?
The easiest way is to use Oberlo. This Shopify app streamlines the process of adding items to your store and fulfilling orders.
Using its Chrome Extension tool, you can import products directly from Aliexpress to your Shopify store with a single click.
For every product you import with Oberlo, China is the default shipping option. But you want US to be your shipping option. So you need to
Using the Oberlo chrome extension, you can add any product on Aliexpress to your store, by simply clicking the small Oberlo icon (the top right side of your browser).
When you have added an item, via Oberlo, click on this same Oberlo icon, then click ‘Open Import List.’ Oberlo will then show a list of the products you have imported from Aliexpress.
On this page, you can also edit the options of a product, before adding it to your store. For this case, you’ll need to edit the variants tab.
In the variant tab, this toothbrush has twelve variants. For each variant (colour), Oberlo creates a shipping option for both China and the US. So each variant has two shipping options.
Since the only focus is 7-day with US suppliers, we don’t need China as a shipping option in our store. So all you need to do is go and untick all the variants that have China in the ‘Ships from’ column. And then select what colour toothbrush you’d like to add to your store.
When done, simply click the green ‘import to store’ button. And now you have easily added an item that ships from the US within a week.
Now when a customer purchases this toothbrush from your store, Oberlo will now know that it is a US supplier who will ship your order.
Use Oberlo to fulfil orders too
You know how to add a product using Oberlo. But what about fulfilling orders?
This is the kind of the fun part. Because quite frankly, there isn’t much to do. Oberlo automates 90% of the fulfilment process. The other 10% required from you is clicking two buttons.
When your store makes a sale, Oberlo presents this as a pending order inside of the app. To fulfil this order, click the ‘order product’ button next to the item, and Oberlo will automatically start the fulfilment process.
In this process, Oberlo puts every detail necessary (shipping address, customer details, tracking information) together. All that is left to do is click the ‘Place order’ button.
The Bottom Line
1-week shipping ensures customers receive their orders quickly and enjoy a better customer experience. The result is more customers, sales and higher conversions for your store.
Using the simple steps outlined above, you can easily find US suppliers on Aliexpress, and semi-automate the fulfilment process using Oberlo.