Drop Shipping how to

Adding drop shipping items to your WebStore is a great way to be found online, to become a destination of choice for your customers and to never miss a sale. It allows you to level the playing field against online marketplaces and Mega Stores. It is virtually impossible to stock all products in-store; drop shipping is here to complete your product offering and allowing you to efficiently compete. Always Be Closing!

Managing customer expectations is very important to do drop shipping right. More precisely:

You'll want to properly communicate that the item is only available online. This way you'll avoid customers driving to your store to be disappointed (and angry) to find out that the product is only available online.
You'll want to manage expectations if there are longer shipping delays. Customers are OK with longer delays IF it is clearly communicated to them. Many people shop on Amazon and several items have delays ranging from several days, to weeks or even months!
FREE SHIPPING! Many drop ship items have a value higher than your minimum order requirement for free shipping (ex: free shipping on all orders over $99) so if the value of your item qualifies it for free shipping, do highlight that you are offering free shipping on this item.

PRO TIP - Endless Aisle: Having drop ship items available in your WebStore allows your in-store staff to have access to "endless aisles". Endless Aisle is the concept when you enable customers/sales staff in your store to browse and order an extended inventory of products that are not sold in-store or out of stock and to have them shipped to their home/office or to your store. The customer is in your store so if he can't find exactly what he's looking for in your store he would normally order it online anyway so best to order it right away from your online store. ABC... Always Be Closing the sale! Your are blending physical and virtual shopping together and creating the ultimate merchandising strategy.

Add products to your WebStore inventory for Drop Shipping

In your mydakis.com account, select products to add to your inventory for drop shipping.

In your mydakis.com account, go to the INVENTORY Tab
Click on the category in the sidebar you want to add products to (you can also click on the category on the overview page)
Click on the add new products button
In the pop-up, you can search for the product you want to add. (be sure to uncheck show new only if you want to see the all available choices)
Select the products you want to add by clicking their respective checkboxes and hit the save button.

Now that you added the products for drop shipping to your inventory, move to Step 2 to edit the display text and pricing.

HELP GUIDE: how to add products to your inventory through your mydakis account (Inventory tab) we recommend you familiarize yourself with the process by clicking here for a helpful tutorial.

2.1

Add Display Text indicating that your drop ship product is "Special Web Order" product

Once you've added all of the products you must add display text to each targeted item to highlight that they are web only items.

Click on the pencil icon to edit the product
Scroll down to "Product Display"
Add the text. We recommend "FREE DELIVERY within 2 weeks (special web order, product available online only)"
Go to Step 2.2 to Price your product and to make it available online

2.2

Price your product and make it available in your WebStore

Next step is to price and make each item available on your WebStore so your customers can purchase the products!

Check the "Available" box
Scroll down and set the price
Save your changes... your product is now LIVE in your WebStore and ready to be ordered by customers.

Useful Tips!

After adding the products to your inventory you can use the CSV Import/Export tool to quickly set the display text, prices and availability of your targeted products instead of going through and setting all of your products one at a time. Find out how!
SKU your products, every product! This will make finding and editing products in your inventory a much easier task.

Resources (including instructions for Simple method, Advanced Method and Ninja Method)

We can help!

dakis can do all the heavy lifting for you! If you would rather take advantage of our expertise and knowledge get in touch, we can help you with the following:

Add new inventory based on your product submission
Set availability, price and display text
Assist in adding SKUs to your products
Configure your display text to show a real time updating date rather than a static "FREE DELIVERY within 2 weeks" message.
Assign tags to your products to build special dynamically loading marketing pages.

Get in touch today by email or give us a call at 514-931-8820 extension 221 to unlock the full potential of your dakis solution!

Happy Selling!