Automatic Inventory Updates: Why it’s Essential for your Dropshipping Store?
Running a dropshipping store be an incredibly demanding and time-consuming job, leaving dropshippers often feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. Working with suppliers and processing orders while at the same time managing payments and inventory turnover, recognizing upc vs sku codes and generating them, and, on top of everything, dealing with customers can be a lot to handle at once, especially if working alone. Luckily, in recent years the dropshipping business model has evolved tremendously, offering entrepreneurs the much-needed help and making it possible to tackle any duties effortlessly.
Thanks to automated dropshipping, store owners are no longer preoccupied with millions of errands. Instead, they have full-time assisting software to lend them a hand and take over part of the chores. In that way, dropshippers can pay closer attention to other areas of their business and make sure customers are well taken care of rather than spending unnecessary time completing tasks that can easily be sorted out by computer programs. This technology has conveniently replaced the outdated manual dropshipping system by programming most hand-operated tasks and enabling dropshipping store owners to perform them through a simple button click.
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What does automated dropshipping offer you?
Here are some of the advantages you can benefit from when you opt for converting your dropshipping business into a labor-saving software-managed system:
- You can skip on completing tedious chores and focus on tasks that need more attending like advertising your dropshipping store on social apps such as Instagram;
- You don’t have to deal with currency conversions as prices will be automatically changed in different currencies depending on the location from which your customers access your store;
- You won’t have to preoccupy yourself with sourcing for new merchandise since your store will constantly be supplied with the latest items available in your supplier’s warehouse;
- You won’t be bothered with checking for any product changes non-stop;
- You’ll avoid having significant expenses since you won’t need to hire staff to help you out with all the tasks mentioned above.
Out of all the benefits of automated dropshipping, one particular feature which will save you a lot of headaches down the road is automatic inventory updates. Just like the name already says, the automatic inventory function enables dropshippers to sync their eCommerce store with their supplier’s inventory. In that manner, store owners are kept informed of all of the latest changes regarding the products they’re selling. In this article, we’ll look into the advantages of using an automation dropshipping plugin that provides this feature and explains why it’s important to work with a supplier who’ll offer you this extremely useful option.
What are the benefits of automatic inventory updates?
Having at disposal automatic inventory updates can be of great advantage to your dropshipping store. It’ll increase your business’s efficiency and with that significantly improve your management skills by supplying you with helpful shortcuts and stopping you from wasting energy in performing activities that can be carried out with minimal human interference. Therefore, the automatic inventory system can give you a fantastic lead in today’s highly competitive dropshipping market. It’ll easily manage a large majority of your store’s inventory-related operations, exposing you to the following benefits:
- You’d be receiving live updates on your inventory’s stock situation;
- You’ll never have to worry about accurate reports regarding product quantity;
- Chances of overselling products will decrease considerably;
- You’d gain spare time on your hands;
- Your productivity will flourish and, as a result, your store will quickly start climbing the stairs towards success;
- Customers will start expressing much greater satisfaction.
Inventory visibility in real-time
As it’s the case with any other type of eCommerce or retail business, when working with dropshipping, you’ll have to keep a close eye on your inventory and make sure you’re up to date with any significant modifications. Before coming up with the automatic dropshipping management, inventory reports were carried out manually without using any API integrations. So, suppliers would regularly do physical counts in order to keep dropshippers posted about the number of items they have at their disposal. This, however, would only provide dropshipping owners with a rough calculation of the number of items the suppliers have in stock as it’s quite time-consuming and work-intensive to count the inventory every day.
Nowadays, the automatic inventory updates feature will easily take care of all inventory records and will guarantee you an in real-time product count. In other words, you’ll be informed instantaneously about any alterations made to your supplier’s warehouse regarding which items are still available for sale, what’s no longer in stock, and many other relevant adjustments. In that way, you’ll have full access to your supplier’s inventory at all times which will help you tremendously in organizing your listings and always be two steps ahead of everything.
Accurate inventory counts
Unpleasant shopping experiences are often the number one reason for customers to ditch their purchases, especially in the case of new clients. Such a situation frequently leaves them with a bad first impression and makes them question the dropshipper’s services. Zendesk reports that up to 50% of customers get redirected towards competitors after a single bad experience and in the event of such incidents becoming repetitive, the statistic increases to 80%. There are many reasons behind these displeasing occurrences such as expensive shipping fees, bothersome payment methods, long delivery times, inconvenient return policies, etc. But one particularly annoying cause is no other than inaccurate inventory counts which leads to publishing inaccurate product detail.
MarketScale reports that in a podcast episode of Keeping Count, the CEO of Datascan, Adrian Thomas, claims that, on average, inventory accuracy among retailers is no higher than 60-65%, numbers that store owners shouldn’t take lightly as accurate stock counts can increase online sales. To avoid reaching those statistics, dropshippers are highly encouraged to opt for automatic inventory updates since it can significantly reduce the chances of listing incorrect information concerning available items for sale.
Oversell prevention
There’s nothing worse than selling products you don’t have in stock and weren’t aware of it due to the previously discussed incorrect inventory calculations. When you do get a grasp of the situation, it might be a little too late as customers might have already made a purchase. Letting them know that their order will have to be canceled as a result of the purchased item not being available for sale can lead to undesirable confrontations. This will not only cause confusion between you and your supplier but will also get you on your customers’ bad side. Your store’s hard-earned reliability and reputation can suffer the consequences and make consumers think twice before coming back for another purchase.
With automatic inventory updates, the stock is updated by software which greatly decreases human-made mistakes, leaving little room for any critical errors. For example, situations in which sold-out products continue to appear on the store’s website as in-stock merchandise can be successfully avoided by relying on automatic systems. Therefore, this feature will certainly reduce card abandonment situations. Moreover, it’ll constantly keep your store synced with your supplier’s warehouse, allowing you to check the inventory’s state round the clock, hence, not risking losing either sales or customers.
Efficient time-saving
No business owner has time to complete mundane tasks which can be easily sorted out by taking advantage of smart technology. Thanks to the function of automatic inventory updates, dropshippers are now able to focus on launching, promoting, and growing their online businesses while putting minimal time into completing monotonous work such as inventory updates.
For instance, without using the automatic update option, synchronizing your dropshipping store’s eCommerce platform with your supplier’s warehouse can easily become a pain in the neck since it occupies precious time which can be used for tasks that truly need your full attention and energy. One way to fulfill this task is by manually updating new inventory levels on a daily basis in order to ensure you’re up to speed on all product data alterations. As you can probably tell, the manual stock upload can be extremely arduous and takes way too much time to complete. Dropshippers would need to constantly be on the lookout for changes in item quantities and update any modifications repeatedly by themselves.
Luckily, the possibility for automatic inventory updates can provide you with a much simpler and faster way to get the job done. By working with automatic updates, your supplier’s inventory can be quickly synced with your sales channel without lifting a finger. In most cases, these updates happen multiple times a day which can be extremely practical, especially during sales and busy shopping periods but they’re also exceptionally helpful for your overall store management.
Productivity growth
Since the automatic update of your inventory will take a lot of responsibilities off your shoulders, it’ll cause your productivity to increase through the roof. Tasks will get accomplished faster and smoother, leaving you with more than enough time to tackle any other store-related operations. Moreover, your dropshipping store will experience much more favorable outcomes as you’ll be able to devote adequate attention in all areas of your business and avert impeding your store’s progress.
All in all, with inventory updates becoming automatic and, therefore simpler to accomplish, your workflow will become more efficient as it’ll significantly improve time-management and organizational skills. But, most importantly, these automatic updates of products will save you from a pile-up of work, hence, preventing you from experiencing a bad burnout. This will give you time to recuperate from all the demanding work and come back more productive than ever before.
Satisfied customers
At the end of the day, all of the above-discussed benefits will contribute to excellent customer feedback and beyond satisfied buyers. Customer loyalty isn’t built solely on outstanding product quality and impeccable customer service although they do play a decisive role in making a business successful. It also greatly depends on the store’s operations such as providing the audience with the latest merchandise and keeping them posted about item availability at all times.
By obtaining automatic stock updates a couple of times a day, there’s a very little chance of receiving inaccurate inventory counts or imprecise product data which can often lead to unhappy customers. That being the case, your clientele won’t have to worry about purchasing out-of-stock items and can completely rely on the product descriptions found on your store’s website. Consequently, their shopping experience will only improve, making them more likely to come back for yet another shopping spree.
How can BrandsGateway’s feature for automatic inventory updates help you out?
Now that you’re well aware of the abundance of advantages automatic inventory updates can bring to your business, it’s time to get in touch with a dropshipper supplier that’ll offer you this feature which will tremendously ease up running your store. If you opt for BrandsGateway, you’ll be able to enjoy all of the previously discussed benefits and many more.
To start with, in case your store is built-in Shopify or WooCommerce, Wix or Shift4Shop, BrandsGateway offers a dropshipping service for all eCommerce platforms in form of a plugin, for Wix and WooCommerce, and an app, for Shopify and Shift4Shop. This will allow you to conveniently sync stock reports and product detail of all items you wish to sell directly to your dropshipping store. Consequently, it’ll enable you to constantly monitor inventory levels and look out for any type of adjustments that may have affected your merchandise. Alternatively, in the event of custom-built websites, BrandsGateway will supply dropshippers with REST API integrations. Additionally, the plugin supplies clients with real-time synchronization, thus, preventing store owners from overselling or coming across incorrect product quantity records.
The feature for automatic inventory updates that comes in the package that BrandsGateway’s plugin offers will assist you in running your dropshipping store smoothly without stressing over stock levels or worrying about accidentally displaying items that are no longer on your online shelves. Moreover, for newbies on the market, BrandsGateway can even help you in starting your own business, allowing you to decompress and let their automatic solution take care not only of your inventory but also assist you in handling all other dropshipping related operations.
To sum all up
As technology keeps on advancing, it continues simplifying many things especially when it comes to running a business, in particular in managing online shops such as a dropshipping store. With the dropshipping model having developed an automated management system, store owners are now able to take advantage of automatic inventory updates, making their job twice easier than before. No more overselling products because of incorrect stock counts or wasting time on updating inventory every day. Taking into account all the benefits laid out in front of you, passing on automatic inventory wouldn’t be the smartest decision to make. With the right supplier by your side, that’ll offer you full access to this feature, you’ll save both time and money, minimize unexpected issues, and keep your customers happy.
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About the Author
Nedina Gjorgjieva
Proud bookworm, passionate content writer and devoted Arctic Monkeys fan. Always in the mood for travel and sightseeing.
