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If you’ve ever wondered how shipping works when you run a dropshipping business with
Oberlo, then keep watching.
Today, I’m showcasing step-by-step instructions for how to set up basic shipping settings
in your Shopify admin.
This video focuses on stores that only sell dropshipping products.
If you sell your own products in addition to dropshipping products, then you need a
more advanced shipping setup.
This video focuses on stores that only sell dropshipping products.
If you sell your own products in addition to dropshipping products, then you need a
more advanced shipping setup.
For details on advanced shipping settings, check out the description below.
Now, let’s get started!
When you sell products with Oberlo, the product is shipped directly from the supplier to the
customer.
This means that when you buy the product from the supplier, you also pay for the shipping.
The shipping cost depends on the product’s weight, shipping method, and destination country.
You can preview available shipping methods, potential shipping cost and the estimated
delivery time on each product details page.
But, it’s important to remember that these shipping details are not imported to Shopify
with the product.
This means that you need to set your own shipping rates in the Shopify admin to account for
these costs.
Before you set up your shipping settings, you need to decide on a shipping strategy.
There’s two options to choose from.
The first is to charge for the product and the shipping separately.
The second is to build the cost of the shipping into your product’s retail price, and then
offer free shipping.
Unexpected shipping costs are one of the top reasons that people abandon their carts.
So, offering free shipping is a great strategy to help you reduce carts being abandoned.
You also need to consider the countries you want to sell to, because the shipping costs
are different depending on the supplier and the destination country.
For this reason, it’s best to start selling with one or two target countries and then
expand once you’re comfortable with the dropshipping process.
After you decide on a strategy and target country, the next step is to review product
shipping charges and then calculate the average shipping cost.
Then, you’re going to take the average shipping cost and either build it into the product’s
final retail price, or include it in your shipping rates.
Let’s do a quick example together.
Here’s a t-shirt that I plan to sell, with the United States as the target country and
using AliExpress Standard Shipping.
I mark the shipping cost down and then repeat this process for a few more products I’m
going to sell.
You don’t have to do this for every product in your store, but try to get a good sample
size so the average shipping price is accurate.
In our store, we have 10 dropshipping products.
So I’m going to gather at least 5-8 shipping prices of our products.
Here are the estimated rates for eight products, shipping to the United States, using AliExpress
Standard Shipping.
I add the rates all together for a total of $30.
Then, divide 30 by how many products you wrote the prices down for.
In this example, I wrote down 8.
So 30 divided by 8 equals 3.75.
I’m going to round that to an even 4.
Now, I know that the average shipping cost for our products is about $4 per product.
After you know the average shipping cost, it’s time to edit your shipping settings.
From your Oberlo profile, click on the dropdown menu to open your Shopify admin.
From here, click “Settings” and then “Shipping and delivery”.
When setting up basic shipping settings for a dropshipping business, you only need to
use the "General shipping rates" profile.
If you’re not familiar with shipping profiles, see the description below for an introduction.
Click “Manage rates” to start making customizations.
By default, every Shopify store is created with one shipping profile that contains your
general shipping rates for all of your products.
Whenever you import a new product to your Shopify store, it’s automatically added
to this profile and will have the same shipping rates you create here.
The “Shipping from” section identifies the locations where you’re shipping products
from.
In this example, our store only ships products from Oberlo, so that’s the only location
I need here.
If you see other locations listed, you can remove them by clicking “Manage” then
“Remove rates” for that location.
Next the “Shipping to” section is where your target countries are included.
The default shipping rates created automatically here will vary depending on what country you
live in.
Because these rates are suited for businesses that sell their own products, I’m going
to remove these.
Click the three dot icon beside the country name, then “Delete”.
Repeat these steps until all of the countries have been removed.
Next, I need to add the new target country and create shipping rates for it.
Start by clicking “Create Shipping zone”.
Add a zone name, like “United States - Standard Shipping”.
Your customers won’t see this name.
Then, select your target country from the options listed.
You can use the dropdown menu to choose specific provinces or states if you don’t want to
ship to the entire country.
Then click “Done”.
Next, click “Add rate” to set up your shipping rates.
Shipping rates are the options that your customers will see when they check out on your online
store.
You can create a shipping rate with a custom name and specify how much you want to charge
for it.
Let’s look at an example together.
In the pop up, keep the box “set up your own rates” selected.
The other option, for carrier or app calculated rates, is used for shipping your own products
and printing your own labels.
Because the suppliers ship the products for you, you don’t need to use these.
Then name your shipping rate - something like Standard Delivery.
Remember, this name is visible to your customers at checkout,
Based on the average shipping cost you calculated earlier, enter that number in the 'Price'
field as the amount you want to charge for shipping.
Or if you want to offer free shipping instead, enter “0” as the value and then click
“Done”.
The section “not covered by your shipping zones” are all of the countries that you
do not ship to.
When you’re comfortable with the dropshipping process, you can start to expand to new countries.
The shipping rates I just created are specifically for the United States.
But if you'd also like to ship to another country, like Canada, and apply the same shipping
rates, you can add Canada to the same shipping zone.
Keep in mind that each destination country will have different estimated shipping rates.
To keep your rates accurate, it’s recommended that you calculate the average shipping cost
to each individual country.
After you have that shipping cost, follow the same steps outlined in this video to create
a new shipping zone with specific rates to that country.
After you save your changes, your shipping rates are now live.
To see what your rates look like from a customer perspective, click the eye icon beside “Online
store”.
From here, add a product to your cart with a shipping address to your target country.
This is a great way to see what your shipping rates look like at checkout.
Now, if you offered free shipping like I did in my example, then you still need to account
for the average shipping cost you calculated earlier.
If you’ve already imported products to the Shopify store, use the bulk editor to increase
the product prices by the average shipping cost.
In this example, I would increase each product price by $4.
Or, if your products are still on the import list page in Oberlo, edit your prices here
to reflect the average shipping cost.
Now, just some final quick tips!
With dropshipping, it’s common that delivery times vary for each product.
And oftentimes orders with products from different suppliers may not arrive at the same time
or in the same package.
To set proper expectations with your customers, it’s best practice to create a “Shipping
and Delivery” or FAQ page.
Use this page to include details about where products are being shipped from, how long
it will take to arrive, how long it takes to dispatch an order, and what countries your
store currently ships to.
Now you know how to set up basic shipping settings for your dropshipping business with
Oberlo.
Let us know if there’s anything else you’d like to know about shipping in the comments
below.
And don’t forget to subscribe to the Shopify Help Center YouTube channel for more videos
like this one!