Once you are done with the design and setup of your Shopify store, you now need to add products. For you to seamlessly import and add products, you will have to download Oberlo.
It is the leading app used by eCommerce entrepreneurs who wish to import products to their stores. Shopify and Oberlo are seamlessly integrated, making it very easy to start importing and adding products to your store.
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What is Oberlo?
Oberlo is a popular app from Shopify. It provides a useful service that enables you to import products from the popular Chinese store known as AliExpress.
As a dropshipper, Oberlo is ideally one of the best applications available to you. Using Oberlo, you can easily and seamlessly import thousands of products from the AliExpress warehouse and start selling to your customers.
The reason why Oberlo is crucial to Shopify dropshippers is that it saves them plenty of time and effort when adding products from AliExpress. Oberlo is currently being used in more than 6,500 Shopify stores and has more than 300 positive reviews.
Oberlo works only with AliExpress and not any other wholesale stores or suppliers. There are some very good reasons for this so let us first teach you a little bit about AliExpress.
What is AliExpress?
AliExpress is a global wholesale, and retail online marketplace developed and overseen by Alibaba, the world’s biggest online marketplace. Anyone can place an order for wholesale items on AliExpress. You can also purchase a single item and still be protected by AliExpress Buyer Protection.
Buyers on AliExpress can purchase products directly from manufacturers. This enables them to get lower prices as they cut out middlemen. Buying directly from manufacturers ensures that buyers and dropshippers are guaranteed the lowest prices in the market.
Most people describe AliExpress as the retail section of Alibaba which provides a useful service to millions of traders, retailers, and customers around the world.
Alibaba on its own generates more sales than eBay and Amazon combined. The term express means that this service is designed for express, wholesale transactions.
The main target markets of AliExpress include small and medium-sized buyers and suppliers. This way, they are able to access high-quality products at very affordable prices. The minimum order accepted is a single item or product which is shipped via express delivery. Sometimes fast and free shipping is available to entrepreneurs.
Key Features of Oberlo
Oberlo is a powerful plug-in that makes the job of importing products into your Shopify store easy and straightforward. Oberlo is specifically designed to work with aliexpress.com and Shopify – if you install the plugin, you will be able to import products directly from the Aliexpress website into your Shopify store.
Most dropshippers who get their products from aliexpress.com suppliers make use of Oberlo to import products and fulfill orders automatically.
Here are some of the key features of Oberlo:
Add products to your store: With Oberlo; you don’t need to add or list products manually. The tool helps you to import products directly from Aliexpress into your Shopify store. All you need is to indicate some of the products you want and click a button; then the tool uploads the same products into your store with the same product images, description, etc. You might consider changing some of the product’s details before finally importing them.
You can change suppliers easily as you desire – if a particular supplier stops performing well, you can change suppliers using Oberlo – and the process is such an easy one.
Manage inventory: Since you are using suppliers on aliexpress.com to fulfill your orders – what Oberlo does is that it monitors aliexpress.com so that if any product you have in your store goes out of stock on aliexpress.com, Oberlo automatically changes the status of the product to “out of stock” on your website as well.
Customize products before listing: Normally, you can import products with all of their attributes (product image, product description, etc.) directly from aliexpress.com into your Shopify store. But sometimes, the product might have a photo that you don’t want, or you would want to change.
Also, the product’s description might look too unappealing to you, and you might want to change it. With Oberlo, you can do all the customizations you want to do before importing the products into your Shopify store.
Automated pricing: This is part of the automatic inventory management that Shopify helps you to do. If the price of a product changes on aliexpress.com, Oberlo automatically updates the cost of the product in your store to match that on aliexpress.com.
Automatic order fulfillment: When you use AliExpress suppliers, and you get an order, what you do is to order the product from the AliExpress supplier and then ship it to your customer. This might be an easy thing to do when you get about 3 to 5 orders in a day. What happens if you have close to 50 or even 100 orders in a day, how do you handle all of that manually?
Oberlo takes the burden of order fulfillment off your shoulders. Once you get an order on your site, Oberlo takes over, places an order for the product on AliExpress, and provides the shipping address of the customer. Oberlo also tracks the orders and provides tracking details to your customer.
Sales Tracking: Oberlo helps you to track and record your sales so that you know how your store is performing. Without properly tracking your sales, you will not know if you are making profits or losses. You can look at your sales history over a given period to see if you have been making progress or if you have been doing poorly. With the sales report, you can modify your strategies if need be or stick to your current strategies.
Why Use Oberlo?
- The Oberlo dashboard is easy to use. It also offers plenty of conveniences. You can access the Oberlo dashboard directly from the Shopify admin section. On the dashboard, there is a section labeled “Get Started” that helps you accomplish certain tasks. For instance, it helps you set up pricing rules so that you know how to price your products.
- Oberlo has plenty of simple video tutorials that help you understand how to set it up. For instance, you can watch tutorials that show you how to customize products, how to import them to your store, and even how to connect existing products. Always keep in mind that your products form the most important part of your Shopify store.
- Using Oberlo, you can search for products at AliExpress. There is a “Search Products” page where you enter different keywords to find the categories and actual products that you want. Oberlo also allows you to import products to your Shopify store using either the product ID or product URL.
- You can also use Oberlo’s Chrome extension to import products as you browse AliExpress.
- You can access a featured products page to get product ideas. Sometimes you have to search through numerous products to find the right one.
- Oberlo shows important information about each product such as product rating, price, sales figures, supplier information, and so much more.
How To Sign Up for Oberlo
There are two different ways you can use it to sign up for Oberlo. The first is to visit the official Oberlo website at www.oberlo.com and sign up directly. The other option is to sign up through Shopify. The Shopify app marketplace listing makes it easy to sign up directly. The direct access is apps.shopify.com/ali.
In our case, we have already installed Shopify on our device so we will click on the installation link that is provided. This link is highlighted on the homepage and is easily noticeable. Simply click on it and register. Once the app is installed, it will appear on your homepage.
From here, you can begin adding products to your store. We will need to register a credit card on Oberlo to do a trial run. Please note that Oberlo is not free to use. You get a 30-day free trial on the premium plan before moving to the lowest plan which costs $4.90 per month. For the app to be activated, you will need to approve this charge.
How To Use Oberlo
1. Install Oberlo
To install Oberlo, visit app.oberlo.com, then click on the signup. After you have signed up, you will be taken to your dashboard – on your dashboard; you will see instructions on how to link your Shopify store to your Oberlo account.
The instructions are pretty straightforward – just follow them and link your store to the Oberlo app. You will be needed to grant Oberlo some permissions to manage your Shopify store.
Once you have done that, you will be able to install the Oberlo app on your Shopify account. After linking your store, the next thing you want to do is to install the Oberlo extension on your browser.
The job of the Oberlo Chrome browser extension is to make the job of importing products into your store easy. When you have installed the extension, you just need to click a button to be able to import products directly from aliexpress.com into your Shopify store. If you don’t have the Google Chrome browser, then you will need to download and install it at this point. Chrome browser is free – so you don’t have to pay money to use it.
After installing Google Chrome, simply type “Oberlo Chrome extension” into your search bar. The first result that Google will pop out will lead you directly to the download page of the Oberlo Chrome extension. Download and install the extension on your Google Chrome browser, and you are good to go.
Once you have installed the extension, look at the top right-hand corner of your browser, you will see the Oberlo icon there. If you see the icon, then it means that the extension was installed successfully. If you don’t see the icon, then you might want to reinstall the extension or activate it.
With your Oberlo account created and linked to your Shopify store and with your Oberlo Chrome extension properly installed, everything is now set for you to start importing products from aliexpress.com into your Shopify store using the Oberlo app.
2. Import products into your Shopify store
To import products from aliexpress.com into your Shopify store, you will need to use your Chrome browser. Your Chrome browser is where your Oberlo browser extension is installed. So, you need to use it to make the process of product importation easy.
Open your browser and type www.aliexpress.com into the address box. You will be taken directly to the Aliexpress website. On the homepage, you will see some products, but they may not be the exact products you want to import into your store. Remember, before you reach this stage, you must have conducted extensive product research to determine the exact types of products that do well and those that you should avoid.
You have two options when it comes to finding the products you want on AliExpress.
One, you could simply browse through the different categories, locate the category for the product you want to import, and proceed to look for the exact product.
Another way to search for a product is to type the keywords for the product or the name of the product into the search bar. A lot of results will appear. Having found the product you wish to import, how do you proceed?
Place your mouse over the listing or over the product of interest, and the Oberlo icon will appear. That’s why you need the Oberlo extension. You will not see the Oberlo icon if the Oberlo extension is not installed on your browser.
If you have found the particular product you want to import, and you have placed your mouse over the product listing, you will see the Oberlo icon. Click on the icon, and you will get a confirmation message that shows that you have successfully imported the product into your Shopify store.
If you want to add more products to your import list, you simply need to repeat the above process.
First, search for the product or go through the different browse categories to find the product. When you have seen the product, hover your mouse over it, and the Oberlo icon will appear. Click on the icon and add the product to your import list.
The import list shows all the products you have imported. If necessary, you can change any of their descriptions. You can also change the product photo by uploading your own custom photo. Sometimes, the product images of some products on aliexpress.com may not be clear enough – so you might want to change some of them.
An important detail you will definitely want to change is the price of the product. You want to make a profit – which means that the price you list a product on your Shopify store must be higher than the price of the product on aliexpress.com.
For example, if a product is selling for $40 on aliexpress.com, you might want to list the product for $50 on your store. Anytime the product is bought, you will make a profit of $10, which is fair enough since you are not the one fulfilling the order yourself.
You have to be sure that you are giving your products reasonable prices – remember that the dropshipping space is super competitive. High prices could chase your potential customers away, and low prices can lower your profit margins. You need to find a balance – if possible, search for other stores and see how much they are selling similar products.
Once you are done editing all the details you want to change – description, image, price, etc., then click on “save” and all the products you have added to the Oberlo import list will automatically be imported into your Shopify store. Visit your Shopify store, and you will find the products being displayed there.
Oberlo’s app makes adding listings to your Shopify store as simple as ABC. All you have to do is click a button, and your preferred product will be moved from Aliexpress.com to your Shopify store. You can import up to 50 products at once using the Oberlo app. It may take you a whole day to upload just 10 products if you do it manually.
Learn more about how to dropship on Shopify.