The fundamental thing about dropshipping is that you don’t need to keep inventory or have a physical structure such as a store to display goods or a warehouse to store products. As an order fulfilment method, you just receive orders from your customers who have seen their favourite products on your website and send the orders to a wholesaler or a dropshipping platform.
Dropshipping being an online-based business, you must engage in a lot of data traffic. There is the need to release the personal information of your customers to third parties for efficient delivery of products.
While product delivery is very critical to the success of your dropshipping business, protecting the privacy of your customers must be your priority. It’s vital for the security of your customers, especially now that cybercriminals have become more tech savvier, to ensure that your dropshipping platform maintains the world’s best standards in security compliance.
When you want to use a dropshipping platform, these are some factors you must consider:
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1. Transparency
Looking at a dropshipping platform like Etsy, there has always been the question, “Can you drop ship on Etsy?” The main reason this question crops up is the high level of transparency the organization displays before accepting to drop ship products for brands.
Etsy knows there are all forms of players in the dropshipping business and values its reputation. As the platform that will eventually do the dropshipping, the organization requests the location of the drop shipper and the manufacturer of the products for verification purposes.
Customers who are familiar with the operations of Etsy rest easy when they know that their products are coming through the organization. By ensuring that an honest and transparent body approves the purchases your customers make, their level of confidence in the products increases.
So, in choosing a dropshipping platform, you must go for one with proven ethical standards since that may be what you need to retain and convert customers.
2. Cybersecurity awareness
The dropshipping business entails a lot of communication between the customer, the drop shipper, the drop shipping platform, and possibly the shipping agent; email is still very relevant in the business world. Email messaging will still count among the cheapest means of communication in the business world today.
A staggering 83% of organizations revealed that they experienced a successful email-based phishing attack in 2021. This figure is a quantum jump from the 57% in 2020. As most emails organizations send today are personalized, the recipients and the senders have a lot of personal information that can be damaging if they fall into the wrong hands.
It’s no longer fashionable to send generic emails; you must know your customers, and they want to know you to build trust; personalizing emails solves this problem. But, cybercriminals also know this and leverage personalization for email phishing attacks.
A dropshipping platform has several employees that can receive and send email messages. While you can’t stop the business because of threat actors, you can ensure that your dropshipping platform creates awareness among its employees.
If an employee does not click on links that can expose the network to threat actors, threat actors will find it difficult to gain entry points. Employees must be wary of clicking suspicious links that can possibly disclose the dropshipping platform’s network to threat actors and lead to data breaches.
3. Customer satisfaction
Any business you set up today can only thrive if your customers believe in what you offer them; there are options for them; they can always churn your brand. Customers are the reason why you are still surviving the competition.
If customers have reasons to believe you are not performing up to their expectations, they will use different social media platforms to complain about your services. They can also use product review sites to give negative reviews about your brand and services.
Poor delivery time is one thing that can irk your customers; the dropshipping platform you choose determines how fast your orders get to your customers. While you may have a host of dropshipping platforms out there, it’s your responsibility to ensure that the dropshipping platform that handles your orders is reputable.
Product review sites will also have reviews about the competition; you can leverage these reviews from different customers to know what the competition does right or wrong and how to improve your services. Product reviews mainly come in the unstructured format; you may find it difficult to understand customers’ true sentiments.
This is a hurdle you can easily overcome with sentiment analysis tools.
4. Specialty products
You must consider the type of niche your dropshipping platform specializes in; for instance, wedding gifts, home goods, clothing, and baby products are items a lot of customers seek. Endeavor to do your business with a dropshipping platform that focuses on niche products so that you can be sure that you are selling custom items to your customers.
Unusual and specialty products will make you stand out among the crowd. You build brand loyalty when your customers know that what they get from you are custom products.
Even referrals you get from customers will greatly push up your conversion rate. Customers have a way of telling their family members, friends, and colleagues about their experiences with a brand or product; if your dropshipping business is in your customers’ good books, you can expect a huge positive impact from their word of mouth campaigns.
This is a type of influencer marketing campaign you don’t have to pay a dime for.
Conclusion
The ease with which people can start dropshipping has made it very competitive; to thrive in that line of the eCommerce industry requires an extraordinary touch. The dropshipping platform you use makes a lot of difference to your relevance in the dropshipping market.
Customers expect transparency, trust, and quality service from you. They strongly value their privacy and can only become your brand ambassadors if they feel secure with their data at your disposal.
