Ecommhub: Drop-shipping done right

In the world of ecommerce, drop-shipping is an excellent solution for retailers that do not have the space or funds to order large quantities of products.  With dropshipping, the retailer displays an item on their website, the customer buys it, and the order request is sent to the store owner’s chosen wholesaler.  From there, the order is filled and shipped by the wholesaler to the customer.

This is an excellent way for online retailers to not worry about heavy up-front costs for purchasing products and it also reduces the amount of physical space the retailer needs for their products.  It may seem like a win-win situation, but dropshipping comes with its own set of risks and issues.  One of the most prominent and common issues is items that are on backorder.

Customers will purchase an item, assuming that the retailer has it in stock.  The retailer notices that the order is now on hold because the wholesaler has placed the product on backorder.  Generally, it is a wholesaler’s responsibility to notify retailers of inventory levels, but this process does not always happen smoothly.

The retailer is now forced to reach out to the customer to notify them and apologize for the delay in order fulfillment as well as the wholesaler for product availability.  This can result in lost sales for the retailer and a difficult relationship between the retailer and wholesaler.

Fortunately, Bigcommerce, Shopify, Magento, and Amazon retailers can receive extra help from Ecommhub, a third party application designed to automate the drop-shipping process.

Ecommhub establishes a connection with your wholesale vendors (yes, more than one if you have multiple vendors)  and automates backend operations like inventory management, order routing and shipment tracking.

Once the customer pays for the item, Ecommhub takes care of the rest, starting from order routing and generating purchase orders all the way to marking orders as shipped once they leave your vendor.  Ecommhub will also update your website every 15 minutes, or as frequently as you need it to, with product availability.  Finally, just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any better, Ecommhub provides you with gross profit reports to see how much profit you are making from each transaction.

Unfortunately, Volusion users do not have access to Ecommhub, but there are some built-in auto drop-shipping functions built into the platform itself.  We will discuss Volusion’s auto drop-shipping features in our next blog, so stay tuned!

Meanwhile, if you are looking to switch to an ecommerce platform that supports Ecommhub, our Account Managers here at 1DigitalAgency are more than happy to discuss migration options and help you improve your ecommerce business!