Understanding Dropshipping
Dropshipping is method used by stores where they don't actually keep the products that they sell in the stock. In fact, whenever an order is placed for a certain product, the store purchases the item from a third party -usually a wholesaler or manufacturer- and ships it directly to the customer. This is method doesn't involve inventory and the best part about is its efficiency.
Oberlo works on the same principle and allows you to setup dropshipping business without putting any amount of money down. So in this article we are going to detail Oberlo Review is it Shopify's Best AliExpress Dropshipping App ?
The advantages of using this method for retail purposes are quite a lot including lesser amount of capital required to get started, easy setup, low overhead, wide selection of products and flexible locations.
Some useful guides:
Oberlo - An insight into tension-free dropshipping
If you have previously tried dropshipping or working directly with a supplier, you'd have come across the problem and frustrations regarding managing one's own inventory. Dropshipping is quite a profitable strategy, but putting the inventory into your store could be very laborious and strenuous. And this is where Oberlo comes into the picture, importing hundreds of products into your own retail space within minutes.
Oberlo is highly regarded on the Shopify app market with over three hundred positive reviews and the services are currently being used by around 6500 Shopify stores which all in all generate around 36 million dollars in sales. Oberlo deals exclusively with AliExpress and rightly so, considering how much of a titanic eCommerce site it is.
Features
One of the main features that is coupled with services from Oberlo is the importing of items directly from AliExpress.com. Since there are many dropshippers that use AliExpress to find and sell products, it comes off as a succinct way of adding to your own inventory. And considering it gives you access to various suppliers, along with product images, details and prices it does seem to one heck of a combination.
It's pretty simple trying to locate products on AliExpress but the importing of the product part takes an extension which is available on the Google Chrome Store. After installing that you can import items from AliExpress to your site by a click of a button.
- Automatic Inventory and Pricing Updates
One of the best features that I personally liked about this product was that, as soon as one of the suppliers run out of inventory, the item is automatically pulled from your own store. It is the same case with Pricing update, where a change in price is reflected almost immediately on your store. This is especially a blessing in disguise since changes in prices are quite regular and managing the inventory gets so irritating at many point.
- Interactive Interface for Product Display
Oberlo provides built in capability for configuring how your products are to be displayed on your store. The dashboard consists of a working area and the menu which is situated on the left side. The items in the store would be organized neatly with information about sales and earnings for each one.
You can also edit the products that you have in one click, essentially providing you with 2 dashboards in the situation. The details of the products are managed by Shopify instead of Oberlo dashboard.
This is absolutely my favourite part of Oberlo because it makes dropshipping look like child's play. Automatic order fulfilment means that you basically have to click a button to ship the product to an end user and the rest of the hassles would be taken up by the supplier through AliExpress. Therefore, it reduces a lot of effort that is put by many stores towards shipping. The shipping, storage, package and the final delivery would be managed by the supplier and AliExpress.
Oberlo comes bundled with a tool called ePacket filter, using filtering techniques developed by the site, it locates products with the fastest delivery times. Since the shipping is a huge factor between a successful business and an unsuccessful, it is quite comfortable knowing that you can only choose to import products which has fast shipping. ePacket also enables door-to-door tracking, along with postal custom clearances mainly because the products that are shipped are being shipped from China.
The main thing to consider is: does your product have demand? It is absolutely necessary to test the water before committing all of your money into one product. And this is where Oberlo sales and cost tracking combine well so that you can check exactly how much money it is that you are spending in purchasing the products and the amount of money you are actually earning.
With millions of AliExpress products at your disposal you also get a wider range of certified suppliers. For the convenience of the middle-men and the end-user, the suppliers are given particular rating and choose for yourself a perfect match. There are also no contractual obligations involved in case of suppliers. In case you don't like your current supplier for any reason, that can be changed by just following a few steps.
Pricing
Oberlo provides you with a 30-day free trial, enticing you into the realm of dropshipping. The best part is, the trial period consists of the pro-pack so every feature that Oberlo has to offer would be at your disposal. You can certainly cancel your account at any given time and go over your plan limits without affecting the order process, which makes the whole process quite reliable.
In terms of pricing, I personally think it is quite cheap, considering the number of features that will be at your disposal and the number of labour-hours it'll liberate you off of. They offer three plans to choose from depending on your needs and the size of your store.
- Starter - This is the free pack, in this you receive a setup for 500 products and 50 order per month. Not quite ideal but very useful considering it is only meant to give you a taste of the experience. It also includes automatic order fulfilment, pricing automation, chrome extension and reports of your sales.
- Basic - At $29.90 per month, it is the best plan to opt for. It allows you to setup a store that can consist of 10,000 products and also entails you to 500 orders per month. Everything from the previous plan along with shipment tracking and shipment order fulfilment monitoring is also included.
- Pro - At $79.90 per month, it is one of those plans that shouldn't be necessary until and unless you own a very huge story and have lots of inventory. With this plan, you can setup a store of 30,000 products and unlimited orders per month coupled with multiple user access.
Support
Considering it is not actually an e-Commerce platform it has quite a serious support platform for end-users. The support consists of blogs which provides information updates and strategies. While, email newsletters are there for news.
As for to solve the real issues that the end-users face on daily basis, Oberlo has built a large forum where you can speak to other people using the same service and includes quite a variety of topics that people might be interested in discussing.
Oberlo Success Stories
Over To You : Should YOU Try Oberlo : YES GO ON
A full knowledge base also has been provided to find popular questions related to problems, and in case there are some problems that are not mentioned on the forum, a ticket can always be generated to solve the issue through e-mail. All-in-all Oberlo has all its bases covered and is a very impressive venture into the dropshipping market.
It is a must try application for people who are into the dropshipping business. I hope you like our Oberlo Review 2017.