How To Create A Dropshipping Store Using Shopify And Oberlo
In today’s tutorial, I’m going to be showing you a step-by-step tutorial on how to create an Aliexpress dropshipping store using Shopify and Oberlo. The store isn’t going to be completely automated, but thanks to Oberlo, we are going to greatly streamline the process of both adding products to your store and fulfilling orders.
This is going to be a 16-step process, and for each step, I’m going to be showing you exactly how to do it even if you are an absolute beginner with no technical or design experience. You can skip to a particular step if you want.
Let’s jump straight into it.
Step 1. Create An Account For Free Using The Shopify 14-day Trial.
The first thing that we need to do is we need to create a Shopify account using the free 14-day trial. Let me show you exactly how to do this.
Start out by going to Shopify’s homepage and entering your e-mail address. Then, click Get Started. Now, type in the password that you want to use. Now, type in your store name. It needs to be a name that no other Shopify store is using.
Then, click Create Your Store. It may take a few minutes for Shopify to create your store. Don’t worry about it. It’s normal for it to be loading. Just be patient.
On the survey page, just click Next. Filling it out is optional.
Now, you need to fill out some details. You will need to give your first name, last name, address, and phone number. Anything else is optional. Make sure these details are accurate as they will be used as part of accepting payments, so don’t be tempted to fill in fake details. Make sure all of it is accurate. After that, click Enter My Store.
Then, that’s it. We have successfully set up our free Shopify trial.
A quick note, I strongly recommend that when you create your Shopify account, that you do so with an e-mail address that is already connected to a PayPal account. By default, your store will immediately be accepting payments with PayPal using the e-mail address that you signed up for Shopify with.
If your e-mail address is already connected to a PayPal account, then you will be able to access that money instantly. If it isn’t connected to a PayPal account, then don’t worry.
You’ll still be able to accept payments with PayPal. What will happen is PayPal will hold the money until you set up an account with them using the e-mail address connected to your Shopify account. When you set up the account, you’ll then be able to access the money.
That’s why I recommend using an e-mail that’s already connected to a PayPal account because it makes the process of accessing your money faster.
Step 2. Install The Free Shopify Theme Minimal.
For this step, we are just going to be installing it. We are not going to be making any modifications to its design. That is going to come later in the tutorial. For now, let me just show you how to install it.
Click “Online Store”. You should automatically be on the themes page. Scroll down until you find the “Explore Free Themes” button, and then click it.
There are multiple free themes to choose from. We are going to be using the theme Minimal, so scroll down until you find and then select it. There are three versions of this theme. Select Modern. Then, click the Add Minimal button. Stay on the page until the, “Adding Minimal text changes” to “You successfully added Minimal.” Don’t refresh.
After that, scroll down and find the Actions button. Click it. Click Publish. On the pop-up box, select Publish again.
That’s it. You’ve successfully updated your store theme to Minimal.
Step 3. Install Oberlo And Update Its Settings
Click Add Oberlo to Shopify. On this page, scroll down and click the Install App button.
Click the settings wheel. Select the Shop Settings button. Click auto-updates. Click unpublished product, and then click Notify Me.
Select remove variant and then click Notify Me. Keep Do Nothing ticked, but click Notify Me. Select to update inventory automatically. Then, click Save Settings.
Now we need to update our supplier settings. Select the settings wheel icon. Click supplies. Click add a payment card. On the screen, adding your credit card or debit card
Oberlo will be using this card to purchase items from Aliexpress, so make sure it’s real, has money on it, and works. Again, a debit card is also fine. It doesn’t have to be a credit card. Once finished, click Add Card.
Come to the default shipping method. Select the dropdown menu and click ePacket. Then, write your phone number in the box. Oberlo will use this phone number instead of a customer’s phone number when ordering items from Aliexpress.
Come to custom note and type in the same message that I have here. Then, just click Save Settings. That’s it.
You’ve successfully added Oberlo and modified its settings.
Step 4. Install The Oberlo Chrome Extension
To automate and streamline the process of adding products to your store. We are going to be using the Oberlo Chrome Extension. What this, of course, means is you’re going to need to have the Chrome browser installed on your computer, and you’re going to need to be using it. We are also going to need to be using the Chrome Browser Extension for step five as well, so if you don’t have Chrome installed on your computer, go do so.
Let me show you how easy it is to do this. Go to Chrome Browser Extension
Click Add To Chrome. On the pop-up box, click Add Extension. Oberlo will now install in your Chrome browser. When it’s finished, you’ll get the success message and see the Oberlo icon in the top-right of your Chrome browser, and that’s it.
Step 5, Add Products To Your Store With Oberlo
Again, to complete this step, you’re going to need to be using the Chrome browser because we’re going to be using the Oberlo Chrome Extension. Let me show you the step-by-step process of how to do this.
Go to Aliexpress and find the product you want to add. Put your mouse over it. When you do, an Oberlo button will appear. Click it. If added successfully, you’ll get this message saying, “Product imported successfully.”
Once you’ve added all of your products, click the Open Import List button. As you can see, the two items I imported have been successfully added and can now be edited.
For now, we’re only going to edit two things, the variants, and the images. go to the camera lens travel mug. I’m going to click variants. As you can see, there is only one variant for this mug, so we’re not going to remove it.
Now, I’m going to click on images. We are going to add images and remove images.
To add an image, click on it. It will turn green. You will also get this success message.
To remove an image, click it. It will turn gray. You’ll also get this image removed successfully message.
Now, I’m just going to go ahead and add some images to my listing now, picking the best ones to add to it. Once I’ve done that, I’m going to switch over to my second example product, the self-stirring mug, and edit its variations and images.
Again, to edit variants, click variants. As an example, I’m going to remove some of these mug variants.
I’m going to remove this light blue mug by clicking the check box. When successfully removed, it will give you this success message.
Now, I’m going to edit the images by once again clicking the Images button. Once again, I’m going to go through the images, selecting and deselecting images. I’m going to pay special attention to removing images of the mug color variants that I just removed. Once you’ve edited the variants and images, it’s time to post the products to your store.
Click the Select All Products checkbox. Then, click the Push All Products To Shop button. Click Yes on this pop-up box. Then, that’s it. You’ve successfully added your products to your store.
Also, check out this article Aliexpress alternatives for Shopify dropshipping
Step 6. How To Edit Product Pages
Now, I’ve gone ahead and added two example products to my store. One of these is the camera lens travel mug. It only has one variation of the product.
Now, the other example product that I added is the self-stir mug. The self-stir mug had multiple variations, so customers can come in and either order the black one or a red one or a yellow one or a blue one.
Now, editing the product price for a product that has a single variation is quite different from editing one that has multiple variations, so I suggest you watch me do both.
Click Products. I’m going to start out by showing you how to edit a product with a single variation, so I’m going to edit the camera lens travel mug since it only has one variation.
I’m just going to click it. go to the title. Delete it and replace it with your own.
If you go to images, you’ll see the images we selected earlier have been added to this listing. Scrolling down, we’ll now modify the price. The price is the actual price. An optional extra is to add a compare it price, so for me, I’m setting the price to $19.99, and then compare its price, $29.99. It’s been shown as normally being priced at $29.99 but currently on sale at $19.99.
Once you’ve finished editing the page, click Save.
Let’s edit the next product, the self-stir mug that has multiple variations. Again, delete the title. Replace it with your desired title.
Now, delete the description, and again, replace it with your own description. Copywriting is essential, and something to keep in mind when writing copy is to sell how it fixes problems rather than the features. For this mug, instead of being like,
- Feature: mixes your hot chocolate
- Be like, “No more goopy hot chocolate. The self-stirring mug makes it perfect every time,”
Because ultimately, that is why people want to buy the mug because it stops that annoying lumpy hot chocolate from imperfect mixing when you just whip it with a spoon. Point out the challenges people are facing, and explain how the product overcomes them if possible.
Something else to keep in mind is that oftentimes, paid traffic converts better with shorter product descriptions. But if you want free search engine optimization traffic from Google, you need to write long product descriptions.
In the beginning, choose to focus on either SEO traffic or paid traffic. I don’t recommend doing both as a beginner.
Scrolling down to the images, you’ll be able to see that Oberlo has only added in the images that we selected.
Now, we’re going to edit the product variations. Before we do that, we need to save since it takes us to a different page, so click Save.
Now, click edit next to the first variation. On this page, scroll down until you find pricing and edit it. Then, just click save.
Time to edit the next variation. Click it. Scroll down until you find pricing. Each variant can have its own individual price, so you’ll need to edit the price for each one. Then, just click save.
Now, I’m going to edit the yellow mug. For this one, I’m going to not have a compare it price, so you can see an example of a product not on sale. Then, I’ll just click save.
That’s it. That is how you modify product pages.
I’m going to switch over to my camera lens travel mug product page so that you can see what it looks like.
As you can see, the images have been added. You can click them to change the big picture being displayed. Of course, the price has been set to $19.99 on sale from $29.99.
Now, I’m going to switch over to the self-stir mug.
You can see that the images have been added, and the customer can click through, seeing what the different colored mugs look like by just clicking on each picture. Check out the price. You can see the black mug is set to $19.99 on sale from $29.99.
If we change it to yellow, we’ll see that this variation of the mug isn’t on sale, and it is set to $29.99.
That’s what our product pages look like.
Step 7. Add Product Collections
Click products. Then, on the sub-menu, click the Collections button. Click the Create Collection button.
Type in the name of your collection. For me, this example will be coffee mugs. You don’t need to type in a description. Under conditions, click the Manually checkbox. Then, you’ll need to click the Save Collection button, which will also reload the page.
Now, scroll down and come to products. Click the dropdown menu box. All of your products will show up there. Select the products you want to add to your collection. For me, I’m going to select all of the coffee mugs.
Something handy is that Shopify automatically saves as you click each product.
That’s it. I’ve added all the products to this collection.
Step 8. Add Shipping Options
For this step, we’re going to be doing two things. Firstly, we’re going to be removing Shopify’s default shipping options.
Secondly, we’ll be adding in a single shipping option, free shipping. Because shipping is so cheap with Aliexpress, you can absorb it into the cost of your product while still keeping the product price low. Plus, it also means that you get to promote items as having free shipping, which is a nice bonus when you are converting sales.
Let me show you just how easy it is to do this.
Start out by clicking settings. Then, on the settings page, click Shipping. Now, Shopify has a bunch of pre-set shipping options that we need to delete. Come to the Domestic option and click Edit. We just want to delete this, so scroll down and find the delete zone button and click it. Click Delete Shipping Zone.
Now, we need to edit the next default zone. Click the edit button next to Rest Of World. Again, just scroll down and click the Delete Zone button. Again, click Delete Shipping Zone.
Now, come and click Add Shipping Zone. Call this shipping zone free shipping. Now, click add countries. Search for the countries that you want to add. Tick the checkbox next to them to add them.
You can add multiple countries if you like, but as I’ve said before, I recommend beginners just starting out with the USA.
When you’ve ticked all of the countries, click Add. Now, scroll down to price-based rates. Click Add Rate. Name this free shipping. Keep everything else as is. Then, just come down to right and tick this checkbox. With that, just click Done.
That’s it. You’ve now added free shipping to all items in your store to your selected countries. Customers from other countries won’t be able to order items from you, so you don’t need to worry about that.
Step 9. Set Up Payments
Again, as I discussed earlier, by default, your store will already be accepting payments with PayPal. Of course, if you signed up for your Shopify account using an e-mail address that is already connected to a pre-existing PayPal account, then you will b able to access that money instantly.
If you don’t have a PayPal account with an e-mail address, then you’re going to need to create one. In the meantime, what PayPal is going to do is they are going to hold the money until you have created that account. I’m not going to be teaching you how to set up PayPal because it’s already been done for you. Instead, I’m going to be teaching you how to set up Shopify payments.
Let me show you the step-by-step process for doing this.
Click Settings. Click the Payment Providers button. Under Shopify payments, click Complete Account Setup. Scroll down and find your address. Make sure it’s your actual address. It can be a business or personal address. Now, scroll down and add in your date of birth. Again, make sure it’s accurate as it’s a legal requirement.
Scroll down to the next section. Come to the dropdown box under Average Order Price and click it. Select $10 to $1,000. Click the dropdown menu under average shipping time. Select 15 to 21 days. Then, just give a simple description of the types of items you’ll be selling. A simple one as seen in this description is enough
Go to the customer billing statement and make sure your phone number is accurate. Now, you just need to add your bank account number. The money you’ve earned will be deposited there, so make sure it’s your actual bank account. Then, just click Complete Account Setup.
That’s it. You are done. You’ve successfully set up Shopify payments.
Step 10. Edit The Checkout Page
Click the settings button. On the settings page, click checkout. It’s your choice for accounts. I like them to be optional.
Now, we’re going to make it so that customers opt-in by default to your e-mail newsletter. To do so, click this checkbox
Now, scroll down to the final part. Click that three-button to automatically generate a refund policy, privacy policy, and terms of service. Then, just click save.
That’s it. You’ve successfully edited the checkout settings.
Step 11. Add An About Us Page
For this step, I’m going to be teaching you how to create an About Us page, but keep in mind, I’m not just teaching you how to create an About Us page. I’m teaching you how to create a page about anything. For example, I also recommend that you add a refund policy page, along with the terms and conditions page.
Let me show you how to do this
Start out by clicking Online Store. On the sub-menu, select pages. Then, click the Add Page button
Into our title, I’m going to type About Us since, well, it’s an About Us page. Then, enter your page text
When you’re done, click the save button. There you go. You’ve added an About Us page.
Step 12. Add A Contact Us page
This Contact Us page is going to have a contact form on it that customers or prospective customers can use to ask you questions. It’s going to be connected to the e-mail address that you signed up for with Shopify.
Again, click on the online store. Once again, click pages from the sub-menu. Guess what’s next? Yes, click the Add Page button and title it into Contact Us or whatever you’d like.
Don’t worry about entering any text. Instead, come to the template. Click the dropdown menu and select this option
Then, just click save and boom, you’ve successfully created a Contact Us page.
Step 13. Add Menus
For this step, we will be adding three menus. The photo menu, the main menu, and the sub-menu.
Start out by clicking Online Store from the menu. On the sub-menu, click Navigation
The first menu we’re going to edit is the photo menu, so click the photo menu button. Now, click add a menu item
Type in home for the menu item name, and then, click the link box, selecting homepage from the last. Then, just click add.
Now, click Add Menu Item again. Type in Products as the name. Then, click the link box and click products. Then, select All Products and click Add
Great.
Now, let’s follow this process again and add the About Us page we created earlier. Type About Us in. Click the link box and select pages. Then, click About Us, and of course, click Add
Now, we’re going to repeat this process, this time adding in the Contact Us page. If you do ever create a refund policy page, I also recommend adding it to the photo menu. Though it’s not something that I’m going to teach in this tutorial.
All right. Now, we just need to click Save.
Let’s edit the main menu.
Click Navigation. Go to the main menu and select it
Click the Edit button next to Catalog
Change this name to Products. This is a personal preference, but I think it sounds less clunky than catalog. Now, click Add Menu Item.
Type in the name of one of your product collections. I’m typing in coffee mugs. Click the link box and select collections. Scroll through the list and select your product collection. Then, click Add
Now, drag it to be under the Products menu item. Then, click the Add Menu Item to Products button and add in another product collection you created earlier.
I’m adding in my travel mug collection. What we’re doing here is adding a sub-menu under products so that customers can easily access our different product collections.
Just go through and add in your different product collections following these instructions. For me, I’m going to have four collections as part of my sub-menu. Coffee mugs, travel mugs, coffee spoons, and tea infusers. It used to be a lot less intuitive to create sub-menus in Shopify, so it’s great to see that Shopify has listened to feedback and updated this to make it better.
Once you’ve done that, click Add Menu Item. In the name box, type About Us. Click the link box and select pages. Click About Us. Then, click Add. One more.
Let’s do this again to add our Contact Us page to the menu. Keep in mind that while I’m only adding four pages plus a sub-menu as part of the tutorial, you can add extra pages to it if you like, and as your store grows and you add more collections, be sure to add them to your sub-menu.
That’s it. We’ve successfully updated our menus.
Step 14. Customize The Homepage And Store Design
The honest truth is that the homepage design is not as important as you might think for conversions, so don’t overthink this step. For this step, you’re going to need to have a logo. Now, I actually created my example logo using a free logo maker. Alternatively, you can also use designers on Fiverr to make an even awesome-looking logo for just $5 and a $0.50 transaction fee.
Something else that you’re also going to need to complete this step is one color that suits the niche of your store. We are going to be using this color throughout the process. For me, my store is about coffee accessories, so I’m going to pick the color brown because that’s the color of coffee.
Let me show you just how easy it is to do this.
Click Online Store. You’ll immediately be on the Theme page. Click the Customize button.
Just let the feed needed to load up. Once loaded, click Header. Click Select Image. Click Upload an Image. Find your logo and click open. Let it upload. Then, click Select. The default size for logos is tiny. I’m going to change this to 200 pixels wide. Click the Back button.
Now, let’s edit the slideshow. Click Slide and then click Select Image. Click the Upload button. Find your image and then click Open. Wait for it to upload. Then, click the Select button.
Just go ahead and repeat this for the other slideshow images. Of course, you might be wondering how to find images for your slideshow. Google Images is a good place. Make sure only to use images that you can use and modify even for commercial purposes. You could also use images provided by Aliexpress suppliers that you are dropshipping from. There are lots of free image editors out there that you can use as well such as BeFunky and Fotor.
Now, let’s click Add Section. Click Featured Collection. Select the Add button. Delete the collection ticks in the header and insert the name of your collection.
Now, click Change. Pick the collection you want to feature. Then, click Select.
Come to the Products per row and move the slider until it shows four products. If you like, you can click Show Sales Circle to have the cool little sales sign show.
Add in another featured collection. Click the Back button. Select Add Section. Again, go through this process and add in another featured collection.
Showing off your products is one of the easiest ways to make your professional-looking store without needing any design experience. By having the two collections featured at the top of the page as large images and then these two rows of products below, it adds some nice variety to our store homepage design with very little work. This is just a simple design you can copy. If you’d like to design your own, go for it.
Now, let’s edit the footer. Click on the News button and then select Remove Content. Now, delete Social Icons. Once you’ve created social pages like for Facebook and an Instagram page, I suggest adding this section back in.
We’ve edited the footer.
Click Back. Click Theme Settings. Select colors. Scroll down and find the top bar background. Click the color box.
Now, use the color gradient tool to select the medium-dark version of your chosen color
Now, come to primary buttons and links. Select it. Now, select a medium-light version of your color.
I’m going to now mouse over a menu button to show you what it looks like. Now, when you mouse over it, it turns brown.
Come back and copy the text so that we can reuse this color. Scroll down and click on social media and payment icons. Paste in the text that we’ve just copied.
That’s it. We have updated our homepage and theme design. As you can see, we’ve got a nice professional-looking homepage, and we’ve updated the color scheme to one that suits our niche. You can check the preview above.
It’s time to move on to the next step.
Step 15. Add A Custom Domain Name
Just a quick note here, I strongly recommend that you pick a .com domain name and nothing else. The one exception to this is if you are planning on selling to customers in one specific country and only that specific country. If you are planning on selling to customers that were only based in the UK, then pick the UK-specific domain name, co.uk.
Click online store. From the sub-menu, select domains. Come to the Buy New Domain name button and select it.
In the text box, type in the domain name you want to use. Only purchase a .com domain name by clicking the Buy button. If the .com isn’t available, come up with a new domain name.
Now, you need to edit your credit card details. This will store your credit card details on file with Shopify, so when you come to buy anything with them such as a paid subscription, you’ll automatically have your credit card on file to use.
When finished adding your card, click the Continue button. Scroll down and click the Buy Domain button. That’s it. Shopify will automatically set up the domain name for you.
One last thing though is you’ll need to confirm your e-mail address as real. It is a legal requirement to do so for .com domain names.
You can see that I’ve gone to my e-mail address and found the confirmation e-mail. After you’ve clicked the confirmation link on the verify information page, just click the Verify Information button, and you are done.
Step 16. Send Your Store Live
That’s it. We are almost done. We’ve just got one more step to go. We need to remove our store passwords so that customers can flood in, and you can start making sales. To remove the store password, we need to purchase a page Shopify plan.
Click select a plan. The $29 a month plan is perfect for most people, so select it by clicking the Choose This Plan button. You can choose to pay upfront for a year for a discount or just pay monthly.
Once you’ve selected what you want, scroll down. Click Confirm Changes. Type in your password and then click the confirm button. Perfect. Now, we can remove the password.
Click Online Store. From the dropdown menu, select Preferences. Scroll down to the end of the page. Untick this checkbox and then click the Save button.
That’s it. Your store is now live, ready for customers, and you can start making money.
Conclusion
In 16 easy steps, we have successfully set up our Aliexpress Shopify dropshipping store.
