One of the biggest challenges keeping potential entrepreneurs from opening dropshipping stores is the delivery times. ‘How long does dropshipping take?’, one might ask before going to the e-commerce business. However, it is not as daunting as it seems. Thanks to the naysayers, most people believe in the myths and develop the fear of late shipping. 

How long does dropshipping take?

It’s probably a hard competition for you to beat the 2-day shipping of Amazon. But many dropshippers are building successful stores, even if their AliExpress processing time takes more than 3 weeks.

Based on the knowledge that many dropshippers have shared with me, I am going to debunk those myths and give you life-long tips on how to cut down AliExpress shipping time. 

Yes, the delivery times of dropshipping stores are longer than that of Amazon. However, it does not stop the customers from approaching dropshippers. If they did stop, Oberlo would not have been popular. 

Tips to cut down the dropshipping delivery time

The delivery time depends on several factors and there are many ways you can cut it down. Let’s consider AliExpress shipping time to demonstrate the situation almost every dropshipper gets in:

Why select e-packet shipping?

The E-packet shipping option aims to make the lives of dropshipping entrepreneurs easier. E-packet shipping allows you to ship products from China to every country in the globe. But why select it over the normal delivery?

Because it is prompt, cheap, and allows you to track all the packages. 

As of 2021, an e-packet is available to a lot of countries. Moreover, an e-packet takes only 12 days to deliver. AliExpress displays a lot of suppliers with the same product. However, the Oberlo Google Chrome Extension helps you shortlist the suppliers that offer e-packet shipping.

Consider the AliExpress processing time

Processing time is usually located at the bottom of each product listing. Processing time is the time when the suppliers fetch the product from AliExpress, wraps it, and prepares it to ship to you. The shorter the processing time the better as the total delivery time equals shipping + processing time. Considering processing time before making a deal with the supplier is essential while cutting down the delivery time.

Check the reviews on the supplier’s page

There’s one way to know how much others waited to get the products from the suppliers: Reviews, reviews, and reviews.

 Like Amazon, AliExpress is a marketplace and people leave reviews and feedback about the supplier’s shipping time, product quality, and customer services. 

Skim & scan through the reviews and look for the words, ‘slow’, ‘quick’, or ‘fast’ to determine the shipping time.

Order a sample product 

One tip to reduce AliExpress shipping time is to order sample products from multiple suppliers and select the one with a quick delivery time. This will definitely balance out the long AliExpress processing time.

This is the only way to validate the total delivery time and ensure that you are importing high-quality products only!

How to have faster AliExpress shipping time 

Let’s say you have a 12-day delivery time for your product. That’s prompt as compared to the average delivery time on AliExpress. But will your customer wait for 2 weeks? As long as the conditions are right, your customer won’t hesitate. However, not all customers are the same. Few will want to have their products delivered fast. 

Therefore, here are some ways to tackle a customer’s hesitation: 

Sell products with no hype 

Look for products that customers do not want immediately. Let’s take a magic pen, for example. Your buyer won’t wake up and decide to buy a magic pen in an emergency unless he has a birthday gift to give. 

Ideally, your target audience would come across your content in the targeted ads and think, ‘Yes, I might need it to prank people’.

If a customer comes to your website with urgency, he is less likely to wait 12 days for the delivery. If the buyer has tunnel vision, he won’t think of anything else except to get the product as quickly as possible. 

Moreover, a magic pen is something that your customers do not need to replenish. As opposed to Bluetooth speakers or protein shakes, they won’t spend an hour looking for other alternatives. Chances are, they will order the product right then and forget about it until it arrives.

Be straightforward about your shipping time

After you have scored a customer, be upfront to them about your product’s quality and the delivery time. A better option is to include the shipping duration tag at the bottom of every product page.

Other than that, create a shipping info page to cater to your customers’ queries. Just get a page template from Oberlo, edit it and reflect your shipping conditions right away. 

Lastly, create a product policy and be clear that there would be no refunds for products if the delivery time is more than 4 weeks. However, you can be lenient in your exchange policy. 

Offer exceptional customer service

Now that you are clear about your delivery times, it is time to take your customer support game to the next level. If you are selling products with long delivery times, you would get queries for sure. It is better to assist the customer than to deal with a nervous and frustrated customer after 3 weeks.

Conclusion

Most of the customers are willing to wait for high-quality products. However, you should play your part as an entrepreneur and cut down the delivery time as much as possible.

The newsfeed algorithm that Facebook has changed has allowed all social media marketers to change their advertising game. The same thing tragedy waits for social media teams of small businesses as they have observed the organic reach decline.

One of the important metrics that social media marketers measure on Facebook is the conversion rate. It is generally the rate at which a follower converts into a buyer.

For many of us, doubling the conversion rate is the top priority. However, it’s not always about purchases when it comes to the conversion rate. A conversion rate is about driving consumer actions too.

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How to improve Facebook conversion ads

That being said, no platform beats Facebook for driving actions and thus, increasing conversions. Therefore, it all comes down to optimizing your ads to drive a high conversion rate.

Let’s go ahead and check out 5 amazing tricks to improve Facebook ads to drive conversion:

Improve Facebook ads with Pixel

Like AdWords cookies, the Facebook pixel is a tracking tool that allows you to track down your users. It offers you to target them with marketing advertising. You are allowed to use your conversion objectives to persuade users to take action.

You can do the following actions through Facebook pixel:

Remarketing through retargeting 

Facebook pixel allows you to retarget the customers who did not convert for the very first time by remarketing ads. That’s one way to optimize Facebook ads.

Track conversions

Determine the success rate of your Facebook ads by keeping note of the customers’ actions. What will the visitors do after clicking on your website? It is where the conversion rate declines drastically.

Optimize bids to increase Facebook conversion ads

You can adjust your bids at any time of the day. Adjusting the bids show your ads to the audience that’s more likely to convert.

Target a large audience 

The Lookalike feature of Facebook pixel allows you to target people with similar shopping interests. It compares their interests with your qualified prospects and existing customers.

The very first thing you should do with Facebook Pixel is remarket your popular ads. Target people based on their actions and interests. Many visitors take a specific action, such as fill a sign-up form, buy a product, or add to their Wishlist.

In short, Facebook Pixel allows you to take visitor’s actions into account and then retarget your ads to drive conversion.

Understanding user-buying intent through targeting options

As a social marketer, you already know the immense number of targeting options that Facebook provides. This allows you to pinpoint visitors that are likely to convert into customers. The goal here is to go right for the sale and not to generate soft conversions.

To make it work in your favor, you have to layer all the available targeting options. It is a great way to target focused audiences and create marketing ads specific to their interests. It will not only triple the conversion rate but will also generate revenue.

Example of a travel brand 

Let’s say your campaign works on a single statement that everyone desires to travel and escape the hectic. The goal is to make sales; however, you would also be looking to increase soft conversions. Uploading a sign-up form for customers to know the weekly price updates is a good way to do it.

However, there’s a better way to get people to book from you straight away. By targeting the option of ‘Life Events’ on Facebook, you can reach people who have an event coming. Search the market for newlyweds or those ready to take off for the honeymoon.

Moreover, you can play with a demographic audience targeting to target people who are about to marry. Offer the perfect honeymoon package to them through your Facebook ads.

That’s not where the story ends. You can target by pinpointing couples interested in cruise holiday packages. The best trick here is to find a sweet spot where the target audience can see and reach your ads.

Your ads are already reaching a large audience. But this trick allows you to maximize quality leads with high converting possibility.

Target soft conversions

Facebook users are not looking for products. They are just browsing to see their friend’s dancing video or of dogs wearing weird dresses. When the Facebook users are scrolling through the newsfeed, the buying intent is near to zero.

Do not go after the sales

Do not utilize all your Facebook ads to make sales. Facebook advertising is a huge process which we should start with soft conversions. Firstly, you have to nurture the leads in the news feed and lure them into buying the product. The remarketing campaigns start with email marketing but soft conversions start with Facebook ads.

Use broad-targeting options 

Go for branded yet visually-striking ads with minimal text and maximum visual content. Play with your audience’s mind by reminding them of their basic desires: lust, hunger, and escapism.

These are generic yet important themes to spread your brand message the right way. The best time for these ads to work is when the people are scrolling their news feed.

When scrolling the feed, it becomes difficult to let go of a tempting ad post that shouts, ‘free trial’. The message that these ads give is attention-grabbing and converts non-potential prospects into customers.

Take note of your Facebook’s advertising objectives

You can optimize Facebook ads through a wide range of advertising goals and campaign objectives. The conversion rate objectives continuously urge you to target previous customers and quality leads. It also allows you to target customers based on their actions.

One great advantage of Facebook’s conversion objective is that it allows you to track actions that users take on your website and social media page.

With this knowledge, you create targeted Facebook ads to nudge them into buying or at least taking an action.

Segment your custom audiences

The custom audience feature of Facebook advertising finds people’s accounts through your email lists. This helps you target them with your ads. All you have to do is upload your email list and target potential customers, previous customers, and prospects. Whether these people were from Facebook or not, you get to double conversions.

Uploading segmented lists to drive conversions

You can segment lookalike audiences by uploading a single email list and creating a custom audience. The custom audience uploads all the segmented lists automatically based on the customer-specific actions.

Take the example of a SaaS business

Let’s say the 3 most important segment lists of a SaaS business are email newsletter subscribers, free trial users, and previous customers. By segmenting these lists, you can show tempting ads to the prospects based on their actions.

For example, you can tempt a newsletter subscriber to sign up for a free trial. Or, you can convince your existing customers to upgrade to the premium package.

Regardless of the buying-process stages, you can utilize custom audiences to convince them into moving on to the next step.

Pull all the tricks together

You already know how to optimize Facebook ads but these tricks will help you build a solid Facebook strategy to drive conversions. If you can get the most out of Facebook’s ad targeting options, you’d be ahead of the competition. You will get a sure shot in increasing your conversion rate.