Why Test Orders Are So Important For Dropshippers in 2021?
If you’re looking to open an online business, you can choose dropshipping. It is one of the simplest business models, no matter how much experience you have. You’ll never need to worry about storing or shipping your products. In fact, all your products will hold in your supplier’s warehouses until you make a sale. Once a customer buys from your store, you pass the order on to your supplier. They will ship your products to your customer’s doorstep. This means that you can run a store without ever touching the products that you are selling. But you should verify your products yourself before you start selling them. And that’s where a test order comes into the picture.
What Is a Test Order?
A test order is an order you place on your online store. It is to ensure your setting all are correct. Include inventory, shipping, order processing, taxes, and email notifications, etc.
Ecommerce platforms like Shopify recommend placing a test order. Shopify actually recommends placing at least one test order during the store setup. In a nutshell, you should do a Shopify test buy before you launch your general or niche-based store.
If you find that your suppliers are shipping out high-quality products in well-packed. And they arrive within the given timeframe, you can relax. You can trust the supplier, and focus on growing your business and making sales. But, if the products don’t seem great, or they arrive later than the expected delivery date, it’ll be you who finds that out. Not your customer. You’ll need to spend a bit of extra cash to place the test orders, but it could end up saving you much more money in the long run. It’s your responsibility that you’re providing a high-quality service for your customers. Regardless of what you’re selling, or where you’re sourcing your products from.
You need to have the confidence to sell your products to your customers. To ensure they’re going to receive something that they’ll be happy with. Something that will justify the price tag that they’ve paid. If you’re selling products that you wouldn’t be happy to receive, you shouldn’t be selling them. And the only way to assess the quality of the products that you’re selling is to check them yourself.
Follow Your Shipping Process
Shipping times are one of the most common concerns for entrepreneurs. Most dropshipping businesses cannot offer guaranteed two-day shipping for their products. It is okay because you’re not running a huge, established eCommerce business yet. Your customers will not expect you to be able to compete with Amazon-fast shipping times. It’s important that you can provide them with a realistic timeframe.
When you’ve placed a test order for the products that you’re thinking of selling, can track exactly how long it takes. That means you’ll have a much easier time setting realistic expectations. And you’ll be able to avoid any unnecessary complaints about delivery times.
Create Unique Marketing Material
If you’ve never seen your products, it is hard to create marketing materials for your business. Sure, you can use the stock images from your suppliers and websites, but they’re suboptimal.
Everybody else has access to those, and it’s tough to make your business stand out with stock images alone. About 64% of shoppers make a buy after watching branded video content. So video marketing is very important. But this isn’t easy either when you only have stock images at your disposal. Test orders will allow you to verify the quality of your products and suppliers. And create compelling marketing content which nobody else in the world has access to. You don’t need to be a professional photographer to create engaging visual content. You can take stunning photos and videos with a smartphone. The visual content can be used on your product pages, for your paid ads, or for your social media accounts.
How to Do a Test Order on Shopify?
Go to your Shopify admin page, and select the “Orders” tab, which you’ll find on the left-hand side of the page.
From here, you’ll need to click on the “Create order” button, as highlighted in the image below.
Then you’ll need to click on the “Browse Products” button on the next page and enter the name of the product.
After that, you’ll need to enter the address in the “Find or create a customer” tab.
After that, you’ll need to click on the “Add discount” button. As shown by the arrow in the image below, and discount the order by 100%.
Once you’ve discounted the item by 100%, the “Pay with credit card” and “Mark as pending” buttons will now be greyed out. Check that everything looks correct, and then you’ll need to click the “Mark as paid” button to proceed.
Sourcing Product Easy company established in 2008, based in Shenzhen city. As a professional China sourcing agent, we buy good products for customers. Over the past 10 years, we have visited more than 1000 factories throughout China. We have huge factories resources and logistic networks. We are good at consumer electronics, shapewear, hardware, etc. . We can provide customized products or print on demand also. We own a fulfillment center in China, provide a one-stop Shopify dropshipping solution.
