The coronavirus pandemic has caused many people to have to shelter in place. That means you might find yourself with a bit more time on your hands than you might typically. If you need a way to make a little extra income to get you through the pandemic, a dropshipping business might be a strategic move to make.
Luckily, the barrier to enter the dropshipping market is relatively low, but that means it is pretty competitive. By creating a good dropping shopping website, you can help stand out from the crowded field and start making money through your dropshipping business. Here are five essentials for a good dropshipping website.
1. Choose A Good CMS To Run Your Website
A Content Management System (CMS) is going to be a necessity for running your business. A couple of the options you might be considering is WordPress vs. Shopify to find the right dropshipping CMS for you.
Depending on your dropshipping business, you might want to consider a CMS that is free, like WordPress, which gives you access to a wide array of features without you having to know how to code or develop your own website. Before choosing a CMS, make sure that it has good eCommerce integration, attractive themes and layouts, and easy access to the admin area.
2. Choose A Good Hosting Provider
One of the biggest things that will dictate the success of your dropshipping is which hosting provider you choose. When looking for the right dropshipping hosting provider, keep these things in mind.
- Uptime and reliability: Your website is the way you’ll make money, so you want to ensure that it is up and running as much as possible. The best website providers will have an uptime guarantee of at least 99%. The closer the number is to 100%, the less time your website will be down.
- Loading time and speed: User experience is essential for running a good dropshipping website, and of the important factors is how quickly your site loads. If your site takes two or more seconds to load, your visitors are going to bounce off your page and right to one of your competitors. Read reviews and check loading time speeds before committing to a lengthy hosting contract.
- Customer support: Likely, you aren’t a website developer, so your technical skills might be lacking. If that is the case, you’ll want to make sure that the hosting provider has accessible customer support that can help you with any dropshipping problems you might have. You’ll want to be able to get a hold of someone 24/7 via email, chat, or phone.
- Support for dropshipping plugins. You’ll probably use different plugins, services, or scripts to help launch your dropshipping business. Make sure your chosen website host is compatible with any third-party services to make your business run as smoothly as possible.
- 1-click installs. Another thing to look for is a website host that offers 1-click installations of different software. It helps to get your website up and running a little bit quicker.
The right hosting provider will be there for you and allow your business to grow. Read reviews carefully before making your final choice.
3. Choose An Attractive Layout
Which hosting provider and CMS you choose will likely have an effect on the layouts you have available. Select a layout that is photo-heavy and allows your products to take center stage. You don’t want to clutter up your website with too much text.
You also want to make sure that your website is easy to navigate. The last thing you want is a frustrated customer who can’t figure out how to get to your products or how to contact you because you’ve hidden that information on your website.
4. Mobile-Friendly and Responsive Layout
This is more important than ever. More people are shopping on their phones, and if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you might be alienating a huge portion of your customer base.
When a website is designed with a mobile device or tablet in mind, it means that the layout will be rearranged in an attractive way to fit any size screen. However, if it is not mobile-friendly, it might be difficult to read or access on a phone or tablet, which means you’ll have a much higher bounce off your dropshipping website.
5. Keep Your Website Secure
Your customers are entrusting you with their private information, like names, addresses, and credit card numbers. Therefore, you need to make sure your dropshipping website is as secure as possible. Many hosting providers will provide an SSL certificate, which encrypts sensitive data.
Your website provider should also be taking security measures on your behalf. You might find a hosting provider that has these security features like regular backups, manual reboot, top-level domain names, and more.
Start Your Dropshipping Website Today
The most essential step out of all of these is to actually start your website. Find your dropshipping niche and begin designing your website to grow your dropshipping business now.
Looking for Top web hosting? Clicking on this link can be the solution.
