Setting up shipping for your dropshipping store on Shopify can get a bit tricky. If you run a store where you have a single supplier and your products ship from the same supplier then it is easy.
When all your products ship from the same warehouse, orders with multiple products can be shipped in the same parcel.
Not only does this save on shipping costs, it can be presented much better to your customer than when they receive multiple parcels for the same order – which is inevitable when you dropship from Aliexpress.
If you use Aliexpress and you use dozens of individual suppliers then it can become a mess and if you are not careful you can lose a lot of money on shipping.
Setting up your shipping prices correctly is essential in running a profitable Shopify dropshipping store.
Shopify allows you to control shipping costs in several ways. The first is to set up shipping by weight and the second is by price. Both have their own uses.
Shopify has recently added some more options to control shipping for individual products which was a huge shortcoming in the past but it can get quite complicated.
Since we are dropshipping we don’t need to account for shipping locations and warehouse/inventory management.
So, lets keep it simple and stick to a basic setup and not over complicate things.
As you run your store you may need to make some adjustments to shipping prices when you see what customers actually buy, how much they buy and what products they tend to buy together.
How to Set Up Shipping on Shopify for Dropshipping By Weight or Price
You can control how your shipping prices is calculated by weight. Now, the obvious choice is to use the actual weight of the product and that would certainly be useful if you ship your own products. As dropshippers we will do it differently.
I like to set the weight of each product to just 1 lbs. That makes it very simple to have a logic when setting up the rates.
1 Product would be 1 lbs. 3 products will be 3lbs ec, ec.
This means that you will have to manually set the weight for each product you sell. This can be extra work.
To simplify things, I suggest you always just set up your shipping rates based on Price. Its easier to control and much more intuitive. There’s also less room for mistakes in case you forget to change the product weight.
How to Set Up Shipping in Shopify
In Shopify, go Settings >> Shipping
We won’t mess with Profiles yet so just use the general profile and click “Manage Rates”
Your default shipping origin will be the address you set up in Shopify. Don’t worry about this.
The first thing to do is to “Create Shipping Zone” and add all the countries you want to ship to and click “Done”
Then click on “Add Rate”
Select “Set Up Your Own Rates”
For Rate Name – Just use something like ‘Secured Shipping’ or ‘Insured Shipping’. This will be displayed to your customer at the checkout and it will also show on the order conformation email.
Then click “Add Conditions”. Here you can pick either weight or price based shipping rates.
Your shipping rates will be determined by what you sell. There is no hard and fast rules but I would suggest you set your lowest shipping rate to $3.95 or $4.95 and increase this as your prices increase.
The logic behind this is that as customers add more products the shipping costs increase.
You also want to offer customers an incentive to add more products to their cart. To do this you can offer free shipping over a certain amount.
Offering free shipping for orders over $75 or orders over $100 will give customers an incentive to add more to their shopping carts.
Make sure you “advertise” this on your store either with a banner at the top or by adding it to your home page and/or product pages
How to Set Up Shipping on Shopify for Dropshipping With The Better Shipping App
If you want to have full control over your shipping rates then I would recommend you install the Better Shipping App. It allows you full control over shipping prices that Shopify does not offer.
With the Better Shipping app you can set shipping prices for every single product in your store.
The ability to set shipping on a per product basis ensures that you are never out of pocket when a customer buys 5 products on your store that each have to ship from different suppliers.
If you do free plus shipping offers then you simply have to use this app. Why? What if a customer buys 10 of your free plus shipping products? Even if they buy just 2 or three you will still get burned.
Better Shipping gives you a lot of control. You can even group products from the same suppliers to set up shipping rates on a “per supplier” basis.
This way you can give your customers good value while still avoiding potential losses.
Shopify has made some big changes to their shipping settings at the start of 2020. There is a lot more flexibility and you can now group products and set up shipping rates for individual products or for product groups.
Its still not easy to set up and for now I am sticking to the Better Shipping app.
If you want to do this for free you can use straight up Shopify and create shipping profiles and setting up multi-origin shipping.
A Strategy For ‘Perfect’ Shipping Prices
While charging shipping is quite normal, free shipping is becoming more and more “normal”. Thanks to Amazon everyone expects free shipping these days. Offering free shipping on your dropshipping store should be on your radar.
Why?
Free shipping can increase your conversion rate significantly. If you see a lot of add to carts and your cart abandonment rate is high then you should switch to free shipping.
When you build your shipping costs into your product prices it simplifies everything. You will see lower add to cart rates because the products prices will be higher but overall you will have a higher conversion rate.
Another reason why I like free shipping on dropshipping stores is the fact that your customers are going to wait 2 to 3 weeks for their product.
Charging them shipping for that will only fuel the fire and make them more angry when their parcels are late.
Customer experience is the name of the game with dropshipping and ecommerce in general. Price is rarely the determining factor in whether someone buys or not.
As long as your products are reasonably priced you will be fine.
If you haven’t tested free shipping, I highly recommend it.
