How to Start an Online T-Shirt Business: Guide for Beginners

There is a surge of excitement when you start your own T-shirt business. Everybody wishes to be a successful business owner. If you’ve already started or you would like to know how to start a T-shirt business, there are several main things to be considered.

Let’s begin with some pleasant things as your dreams, ideas, and passion. After you’ve come up with the concept and goals in mind, you need to create a business plan, develop strategy, and marketing activities. To start a T-shirt business, you need some tips and live examples.

In this article, we will provide some guidelines to help you go through all stages from defining your niche to choosing an eCommerce solution that fits to ground your online T-shirt business.

Find a Niche for Your Online T-Shirt Business

To find out your niche, you need to answer the question: What is my specific target group?

Before you start your online T-shirt business, choose a niche as a base of your future business growth.

A niche refers to a specific product line which you can sell to a particular range of customers that have specific interests and needs in your product.

To select the right niche, you should be particular. If men are your target group, define their personas and age (for example, young trendsetters 20-26). So your online store will only appeal to a specific group of young men. Your branding will take direction when you shun being broad to focus on the niche for your online store.

Also, defining a niche means that you specify the type of T-shirts to be sold. For example, you can decide that your product will be a typical shirt with short sleeves for a skateboarder or classic polo shirt for a young and ambitious manager. This will help you to deliver a sample that fits your target audience.

However, to succeed in a T-shirt business, you can have some unique designs or tell an exciting story about your brand and gain your place in the market and customers’ minds.

Design Your T-Shirt Samples

Since you have your target audience and t-shirt styles, you can work with a creative part. Designing your T-shirts with some awesome pictures or other creative elements will make a difference.

Starting a T-shirt business requires trial and error methods. Also, avoiding copyrighted designs will help you to stand out from other ideas and get fans among your customers.

How to Create T-Shirt Design

Creating a T-shirt design can be done in different ways.

1. Make custom hand made designs. This means to draw some pictures, letters, phrases by hand with special textile ink.
2. Use tools like Adobe Photoshop. You don’t need a guru prowess to do it. However, to get great design without spending much time, you need to know how to use the program or hire a designer.
3. Edit and upload the design to a print-on-demand shop. These websites will print your designs on demand. You can choose any of the dropship suppliers for your T-shirt business. Among them are:

• Printful
• Printify
• Printaura
• Teelaunch
• CustomCat

Choose How to Print Your Designs

Choosing how to print your model is a crucial decision when starting your online T-shirt business. We will outline three primary printing methods but remember, it all depends on your budget and customer demand.

Screen Printing

Screen printing has been tried and tested over time now. Many business people have given it license due to its long-lasting results. In this technology, ink is transferred through a mesh (screen) onto the T-shirt. The screen is pressed gently using a blade to allow the ink wet the attire for printing. Although it’s tedious, many beginners prefer it because it’s cost-effective.

However, it may take a lot of time to create t-shirts on your own using such technique. You can either go with some custom designs and hire a designer, then print what you’ve got.

Look at private designers and their portfolio. (Rose Blake)

To make a screen printing you either need to create or buy your own equipment or find a company who can print your designs to order.

Let’s take a look at another printing method.

Vinyl Graphics

Vinyl Graphics is an old printing method, like screen printing. Local office supply stores and homes prefer this method. Plastisol transfers are advanced forms of Vinyl Graphics and used by the skilled workforce on a special heat transfer paper. Vinyl Graphics is an easy way of producing full color-images onto your T-shirt designs.

Print-On-Demand

Print-on-demand functions the same way as the ink-jet printer found in many homes. In print-on-demand, you choose a company that will give you ready-to-use t-shirts, selection of colors and styles.

Then, you choose to upload your designs and place them in your online store. Once, a t-shirt is ordered by your customers, you will get a printed T-shirt. It is better than both Vinyl graphics and screen printing because it doesn’t have setup costs for the equipment and supplies. If you have small orders, this is the way to go.

After you figure out which type of t-shirt model, designs and printing options will suit your business, you need to choose a workable business model. This will help you to successfully run your business and build all business processes.

Choose Your Business Model

You need to choose your business model to help you select actions that you should do to reach the set goal. For the beginners, you need a tool to manage your online shop. Outline tactics and specific activities that will help you to test your online T-shirt business. Here are a few business models to choose for running your T-shirt business.

Drop shipping

Having established a T-shirt business (dropship supplier), you need to link with a retailer who will market your brands online. Drop shipping helps run your store from anywhere in the world; you will never be tired into a specific location. It doesn’t need a lot of cash to start selling online. In fact; the retailer does more than the drop shipper.

Let’s say, for example; you need to showcase new designs of T-shirts. The dropship supplier (you) would link with the retailer, who in turn would market your T-shirt brands to customers. When a customer places an order, the retailer will send the request to the drop shipper (you) who will, in turn, submit the order to the customer. Remember, it’s upon you to check the companies before you settle on the right drop shipper. You can also produce some designs upon request.

Vice versa, you can be a middleman, who sells a supplier’s t-shirts on your own website or a marketplace. This is less risky than to produce, store and sell products in one place. You can use Aliexpress, Amazon or similar marketplaces to sell your t-shirts.

Print-on-demand is also a part of the drop shipping model that allows you to advertise your T-shirt online then print it when the customer pays. In this case, a customer will buy a T-shirt brand on an eCommerce shop, and the order will be sent on you for printing. To achieve such, you need to connect your online store with a company such as Printful, and your product will get shipped to your customer. This can be done, if you have your store, for example on Shopify.

Own Store

Having found a niche, you need to build your store. With your store, you can sell various T-shirts that reflect your brand’s vision. The online store will help you to attract different customers. You can partition your online store based on the target customers. The target customers could be men, women, or babies. Not only this, now to promote your brand, and make it visible on the web, you need to have a store or platform.

Own store can be simple; however, it gives you more options to grow, establishes a design, tells a story, interacts with your customers and manages all processes freely. Let’s look at the simplest options to create your online store.

Select Your eCommerce Platform

Having established an online store, it becomes almost impossible to evade an eCommerce platform. There a several eCommerce platforms to select from. But before you can select, take your time to test them. Luckily, most of the platforms have free 7-30 days trial, explanation of features and set up process.

WooCommerce and Shopify are the green light for small businesses.

With Shopify, you will create your t-shirt store quickly. It has 10 themes, basic features and easy-to-use admin panel for the administrator of the store. There are lots of apps available to complement your store with the necessary features.

WooCommerce is also a great plugin for running eCommerce store on WordPress. It is free to download, SEO-optimized, simple to use, and has all the range of features to create a fully-fledged eCommerce store.

However, if you need a reliable team for your store development at the stage of expanding your business to implement unique features or customizations, we are ready to help you with eCommerce store development.

If you have your store ready and run it for some period of time, you may wonder how to expand your web presence and how effectively sell more of your custom bits. We’ve got you covered.

Decide on How to Market Your Products

Starting a T-shirt business is a simple thing, and anybody can do it. But you need to stand out. You may have creative designs, but you want to get customers that like your T-shirts.

How to reach customers?

You can take into account all the channels: social media, advertisement, some additional platforms, and forums or your own blog.

Let’s look closer at the most workable options.

Social Networks

Begin by identifying where your clients hang out. Engage in social networks to reach them. Many T-shirt businesses have exploded due to social media. Social media increases traffic in your online store. Aim at offering great value in any chat you engage in, on social networks, avoid being too promotional.

Instagram, for example, is a visual marketing channel because many people browse the app daily.

• You can start with growing your page organically and through advertising campaigns. An Instagram business account allows you to check activity reports on your page.
• You can start engaging your clients by following the hashtags and posting your T-shirt designs and creating engaging content.
• The second important thing is to be real. You can tell the story behind your brand, and follow the main statements of your vision in all posts that you create.
• Don’t forget to use stories, highlighting your customers that ordered your products, and promote some new products.
• Influencers still have the loyalty of most Instagram users, so involve them to reach more people.
• Create some instant welcome replies and monitor your DMs.
• You can also integrate your Instagram account into your eCommerce store, and engage with your audience through their pictures with your products.

Facebook is a great place for advertisement and the involvement of news influencers.

• Create a page or community and run advertising campaigns.
• Post some new designs, and involve your customers to the creation of the new collection.
• Give your customers an opportunity to express their opinion by creating a secret Facebook group for them. Testing your products make the whole difference. Tell them more about quality, designs, fabric that you use.

Overall, ensure that your T-shirt business is out on the right social platforms.

Crowdfunding Sites

Crowdfunding is an easy way of starting your T-shirt business. There are so many sites that can help you get funds for your business. You should join crowdfunding sites to source for funds and promote your T-shirts. RocketHub is an excellent Crowdfunding site where people share their business and artworks. It is divided into different categories. With RocketHub You can promote your T-shirt business.

Reddit

Many beginners prefer Reddit website because it has large engaging niche communities. It has the highest number of subscribers as compared to Facebook. Did you know that a lot of viral content have early traction here? It is in Reddit that you will get a niche market for your T-shirt business.

Reddit consists of tons of discussions about entrepreneurship, where people share their wins and challenges running eCommerce business. T-shirt business is not an exception. Community members share their products, websites and opinions to get an inspiration and exchange ideas for their stores.

Google Ads

Google Advertising is a great promotion tool. Since you have an online store, Google Ads will help market your T-shirt to people who search for them. Start a campaign there, test it, and analyze your results. You can learn how to use Google analytics with their course, or you can find a specialist to set up campaigns for you.

Blog

Blogging is a quick and effective way of marketing your T-shirt business to your niche. You can tell about your products, or you can tell your story of the product creation and testimonials of your customers. Also, you can place useful information on how to wash t-shirts, and how to style them. The blog information creates awareness, and customers get to buy your T-shirt.

Look how Threadless company is successfully running blog, telling about their designs and stories of people who work in art and design sphere.

Other Options to Grow Your T-Shirt Business

If the above options don’t impress you, you can still try different options to grow your T-shirt business. Here are some.

T-Shirt Subscription Service

T-shirt subscription service will help to present different T-shirt designs to your customers. After paying for the subscription, your new T-shirt designs will be displayed to your customers according to your terms of the agreement. You can display up to five different models of T-shirts. T-shirt subscription offers good deals because a customer can opt out the subscription if they are not satisfied with their services.

Additional T-Shirt Sales Channel

Choosing the right T-shirt sales channel is one of the best decisions that you can ever make for your business. The online marketplace can be useful for your T-shirt business. If you are a beginner, platforms like Amazon or Etsy will allow you to access t-shirt customers in your immediate vicinity. Any famous marketplace helps you reach a wider net of potential clients.

Grow Your T-Shirt Brand

Having engaged in the marketing of your product, you now need to grow your T-shirt brand. Here are some ways that can help you boost your T-shirt brand presence and increase sales.

Work on Logo, Brand Colors and Typography

The power of your T-shirt brand is equal to the uniqueness of your brand visuals. You don’t need a cool plain logo but one that communicates about your products. The brand color and typography must mix amicably.

Involve Influencers

Involving influencers in your T-shirt business will determine how fast your business will grow. Influencer marketing combines referrals and reviews to help expose your brands on social media.

Consider hiring a blogger or socialist rather than a sports star. Influencers are experts in social media and can produce the right content and engage with their fans effectively for them and for brands’ profit.

Collaborate with Other Brands

Collaborating with other brands will help you reach new clients to promote your T-shirts. But before that, you have to be sure of your collaboration goals. You need a strong brand name which can easily be acquired through collaboration with other brands. A reliable brand name helps your T-shirt brand increase the customer base.

Advisory Board Crystals, a streetwear brand collaborated with Wikipedia to raise some funds for this well-known free online encyclopedia. For sure, this type of partnership gives you not only increased presence and customers’ awareness but helps you to support a brand’s mission and be involved in social projects. This can be helpful due to the interest in sustainability and social responsibility of brands from their customers’ perspective.

Do you want to promote your brand or increase sales and traffic on your site? You can achieve either of them through collaboration. Think of your goals for collaboration. Make a list of potential collaborators and approach them.

Open Pop-Up Store

Open a pop-up store to help you spark a surge of excitement around your retail shop. It is an excellent way of introducing your products. Remember pop-up store is mostly associated with youth and fashion. This concept can work very well with the T-shirt business.

Use the Power of Email Marketing

Email marketing is a great tool to help grow your small T-shirt business. New marketing channels come and go, but email marketing has stood the test of time. Try it!

Unlike other channels, email marketing connects you directly to your clients. Instead of paying the subscription fee for your content to be aired, email put the content straight into your clients’ inbox. It’s an affordable tool for your small T-shirt business. If you are looking for a responsive, user-friendly, and well-designed email templates, you can check WEB4PRO products.

Stormberg Online Store Review: Useful Features for Your Business Success

Today, we want to make an overview of the successful brand’s website and help you to find some useful business ideas for your online store.

Stormberg is a Norwegian company which was established in 1998. When the company has started its journey, there were only expensive clothing for outdoor activities on the market. Stormberg aimed to create high-quality outdoor clothing line at a reasonable price, and they made it happen.

Besides developing a great sport clothing line for a whole family, Stormberg became one of the most sustainable brands. According to the results of the Sustainable Brand Index in 2019, people in Norway awarded the brand for its social responsibility and commitment to the environment. 1% of each company’s turnover is used for various community projects and humanitarian issues.

Stormberg also follows an action plan to create an inclusive working environment. It means that the company has a broad diversity of employees, from university graduates to unskilled workers, former convicted criminals, and former drug addicts.

With all these facts in mind, you have a clear picture of what Stormberg as a brand is. The story and the positive impression of this brand inspired us to tell you more about it from an online perspective. That’s why we want to share a full review of the Stormberg website.

We’ll look into special characteristics and unique features that can help a business owner to make a good impression on a website visitor and gain clients their loyalty, making their experience user-friendly.

General Impression of the Stormberg Website

The website is available in three languages: Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish which is related to the fact that the company operates on the Scandinavian market. However, the store with various categories and products as well as useful features make it completely user-friendly.

When you enter the online store, first you see calm colors (green, white, deep blue) and soft-core design. It looks like these colors follow in the footsteps of the brand’s philosophy as sustainability, greening and origin of Norway culture is the core.Let’s see and discuss the useful website features that can help the online business grow.

Functionality Analysis

The Stormberg site is running on Magento Commerce. The navigation is pretty convenient: the store has all necessary features such as related products, size guide, and reviews on the product page to make a purchase. Besides, you can place your order in one step. The store has a live chat, banner on the main page with all the discounts and offers, pop-ups and footer with all the main website’s categories.

Let’s look at the site features in detail.

If you want to look closer to the website pages, we recommend you to use automatic Google Translate to find all the sections of the website. Below you can follow our links along with the explanation for better understanding.

Desktop

Home Page

The home page is the face of the entire store. You can take a look at Stormberg Home page to see the example.

As well as clean design, Stormberg has Trustpilot reviews and an official certificate of approval to create brand confidence. Google also takes into account reviews and certificates or other marks of excellence when ranking a site in search.

Below the main banner, there is information regarding delivery and returns with links to the detailed answers. The company explains each point in-depth and shows respect to customers providing all the information.

Also, we want to highlight the block You recently looked at…(Du har nylig sett på). It is a great marketing feature to remind customers about their selection of clothing and increase the chance for a purchase.

Product and Category Pages

Each category has understandable navigation to different types of products. For example, let’s take a look at a Women Skirts (Skjørt og kjoler) category.

When you enter any subcategory, you can see the Recommended for you (Anbefalt for deg) block. This gives the customer an overview of the most popular items in the store.

Blog

Also, on the category page, there is an Inspiration (Inspirasjon) block which has the description of clothing for different occasions.

For example, you can read about the safety rules and how Stormberg design clothes for outdoor activities to protect kids from bad weather and provide them with harmless design and materials.

The blog shows the practical benefits of the brand’s products usage and shares advice for clients’ to fill out their needs.

Product Listing

When you enter one of the categories, you’ll appear at the category page with all products’ range. Stomberg has simple filtering options such as size, price, features, and color.

Clothes are made of recycled materials are marked with a green circle. It is important to include product information into the product card so a customer can see which colors are available, what the product price is, and compare some options to make a final choice for less time spent.

The availability of filters gives a customer to spend less time browsing the page and offers the simplicity of perception.

Product Page

If you enter a product page, you see the product-related information.

What grabbed our attention was the Size Guide. You simply get the instruction on how to measure your body to get the clothing fit perfectly. It is handily to use for a customer.

Below, there is a block of Similar Items (Aktuelle alternativer til deg) in case the particular item is out of stock; then a customer can find and buy related products.

It is a great idea to include reviews and a block with tips for taking care of the product.

Checkout Page

When a customer adds a product to cart, they automatically get the popup of the cart with product details, the amount of money needed to get free shipping and the block Others also bought. Such type of the checkout page visualization without reloading doesn’t distract the user from the purchase and saves their time.

One of the unique features inside the cart is the Notification block. It calculates how much you have in total until free delivery and notifies you.

This block helps to encourage a customer to increase their check, but save money due to free delivery, experiencing positive emotions.

Payment Methods

Stormberg store has 4 payment options:

• Invoice
• Credit Card (Visa/MasterCard)
• VIPPS
• PayPal

Payment by Invoice is a convenient payment option for customers who want to pay later.

Stormberg has this option with 30 days of the deferred payment. For Sweden, it is a common practice to let customers pay by invoice, and even return products if they didn’t fit with 30 days of deferred payment. According to Statista, in 2018, 25% of Swedes preferred payment online by invoice.

As for VIPPS, it is a Norwegian mobile payment application which allows you to pay directly through a phone number. If a customer wants to pay for their online purchase, it is possible with one click. In means of convenience, VIPPS is great for the Scandinavian market, yet it is simple to use for both business and customers.

The store has all possible payment methods which let customers shop easily. The more payment options you have, the fewer doubts customer force before completing the purchase.

Let’s move to the mobile site version.

Mobile

The mobile version of the site has simple navigation style despite many categories. The drop-down menu allows customers to find the exact product.

The store has Scroll to the Top feature that allows a user to get back from the bottom of the page to its beginning. This feature will save time for a customer to browse the entire page and makes it convenient to avoid scrolling and minimize additional actions to explore the information.

In mobile version each category is accessible, and you can easily select any of them as buttons are big enough to tap on them.

The product page is also simple and easy-to-browse.

You have a convenient interface, it’s easy to look at the product with images slider. You can find exactly the same information as on the desktop version and still it is easy to read and learn it from your smartphone’s screen.

The same with other pages. Customer service page or blog page, it is easy-to-scroll and browses on mobile. Their mobile version of a website is a perfect example of simple and at the same time handy design.

After all, let’s summarize all the functionality insights:

1. Unique design will represent your brand’s philosophy. The same you can see in Stormberg’s website: nature and calm color palette show their approach to sustainability.
2. Blog and social responsibilities will show that the brand is dedicated to worldwide needs and problems. You can share what you do regarding charity, manufacturing or inclusive employment as Stormberg did.
3. A website that has unique features can attract customers for additional purchases. Implementing a notification block with a sum needed for free delivery let Stormberg convince customers to buy more items, as well as Related Products, Others also bought blocks.
4. Useful blocks with products help customers to find what they need and increase loyalty to your brand. Accessible Size Guide and Checkout let customers buy products conveniently and be confident about their choice. Also, by offering various payment methods will give customers the freedom to choose to pay no with a card or later with an invoice and buy without doubts.
5. The mobile responsive app is crucial for most of the shoppers. Mobile version should have easily accessible main sections of the website. Stormberg shows a handy mobile version which is convenient to use even on the go.

Stormberg is a sustainable brand that has gained popularity in Scandinavian countries. It keeps taking leading positions as a socially responsible and affordable sports clothing company. Besides, they are going to launch a new design soon, as they mentioned in their blog post. We’ll be glad to update the article and consider new interesting features that are coming soon.

Shopify Review: Pros and Cons for eCommerce Business

A decade ago, there weren’t any eCommerce websites who could take the top spot, and then Shopify arrived with a new concept. Shopify is a web application through which you will be able to have your very own online store, regardless of whether or not your business has a physical address.

The application gives you various types of templates that can be easily customized according to your preference and necessities. Shopify enables you to sell both physical and digital products. You can be selling either a bracelet or an eBook, the possibilities are endless. The application consists of incredible features. Currently, Shopify is among one of the top leaders in the eCommerce industry.

Shopify Feature List

Shopify is considered to have the most contrived features. Nearly all that you need to do in order to manage your own online store is completely taken care of by Shopify.

Admin management

Admin management is the complete rundown of your online content. Here you will be able to see the customers, orders, and products of your store. You will be able also to administer the sales channels such as POS or Point of Sale Purchase, the store and other Shopify products if you want to utilize them.

Dashboard Overview

The dashboard demonstrates important sales of your store along with the orders, and customer data. You can also see how your store is performing — over the majority of your business channels.

Catalogs

All the stores of Shopify consist of a catalog page where you will be able to create a collection to manage the order on how you want your products to be displayed on your page.

Products

Shopify consists of a product section where you will be able to edit the details of the products by color, size and other features.

Shopify Pros and Cons

Shopify Pros

• Shopify is fast and reliable. It can handle any kind of sensitive information and processing payments of the orders.
• Shopify consists of a wide range of templates, and add-ons both free and paid that enables you to build both professional and yet, a creative site at the same time. It also allows you to expand the features in your site.
• 24/7 Support. Shopify team is always available, and you can reach them through phone support, online live chat or email.
• Shopify products. It has own POS system to go omnichannel, Shopify payments as a substitution to the PayPal or other payment methods.

Shopify Cons

• Additional fees. Before you sign up on Shopify, you need to make sure that you will be able to pay the necessary fees. You need to pay the monthly fees and transaction processing fees to Shopify.
• Functionality limits. On Shopify, you cannot work with the products as you wish. There are various limits by the categories.
• Shopify is made up of unique coding language. Hence, if you need to work on the back-end of your website design, you will need expert programmers for that. This will lead to an increase in your maintenance costs which will in turn delay in running your online store.

Ease of Use

Nowadays, most online stores promote easy and simple features, but only very few of them actually are. Anyone can open an account on Shopify and launch their online store within a few minutes.

Shopify Server Requirements

Shopify is completely Cloud-based and hosted application. This means that you do not need to stress about updating or maintaining the application and web servers. This provides you with enough flexibility to manage your online store from any corner of the world using the mobile app that you can download from the app store. All you need is a smart device with good internet speed.

Shopify Pricing

There are five Shopify pricing plans which include:

• Shopify Lite: At $9 per month, you can sell as many products as you want but you will not have a functional online store.
• Basic Shopify: This plan gives you a serviceable online store with two staff accounts – all for just $29 per month.
• Shopify: This option costs a monthly charge of $79, but it allows you a reporting feature and gives gift cards too.
• Advanced Shopify: With 15 staff accounts and a great progressive reporting feature, this plan costs $299.
• Shopify Plus: This premium plan costs a whopping $2000 monthly, but there’s some room for discussions. With heavy security, API and more, the Shopify Plus is for large businesses that require advanced features and functionalities where some customization is possible.

Shopify Templates

Shopify provides more than a hundred aesthetic and amazing template designs. Hence, you can be certain that you will be able to find a template that suits your style and the brand identity of your online store.

The basic $9 per month plan offers you with 10 free template designs. The template designs can be embedded to your Youtube page, if you have any, to display your story.

Along with that, the Shopify template designs also consists of a header slideshow in order to feature various products of your online store. Shopify website templates have an incredible product framework system that can be changed according to the number of products that are being displayed.

Also, they are fully customizable which means that you can get a unique theme for your store and attract customers with modern design and easy-to-browse sections.

Shopify Plugins and Extensions

Shopify provides you with a wide range of plugins and extensions in order to expand your online business. These plugins help you to receive more visitors and help you stand out among the crowd.

Shopify Marketing and SEO

In this era of the Internet and Technology, one of the best ways to increase traffic to your website is blogging. Luckily, Shopify consists of a built-in blogging feature that enables you to create different types of content to increase traffic. The blogging feature of Shopify is quite different from WordPress, but it enables you to use tags.

The SEO tool for Shopify is very easy to use. You can change the tiles of the page, add headings and provide meta descriptions.

Shopify Payment Processing

Shopify has its own payment system which is completely incorporated with your online store and you do not need to rely on any third-party account.

Shopify Payments enables you to manage your online store and the payments in one place.

Shopify has more than 100 payment gateways available. Along with that, Shopify enables you to accept credit cards and you can also set up a Bitcoin payment system. Besides, there are additional payment processing methods which include cash on delivery and bank transfer among others.

Shopify also integrates with PayPal, hence once you open an online store, you can easily sign up for a Paypal Express Checkout account at the click of a button.

Shopify Security

Shopify is devoted to providing a secure shopping experience for both you and your clients. It has been certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant. Subsequently, all the online stores of Shopify are consequently PCI compliant, which guarantees that your clients have a sense of security when shopping from your website and ensures that your online business is authentic and safe.

You will need to follow certain regulations while running your online store on Shopify, which includes:

• Site and server vulnerability checks by Approved Scanning Vendors (ASVs)
• Security audits of the company
• Self-assessment questionnaires (SAQs)

Shopify Customer Service

Shopify provides excellent customer service to its users. The web application is accessible through the majority of channels. Shopify customer service is available 24/7 by email, mobile, phone and, live chat. There are also separate contact numbers for customers who reside in North America, Australia, UK, and New Zealand.

What to Consider Using ROPO for Your Business in 2019?

Pause enough to ask the all-important question: does my business use ROPO?

Often ROPO has led to remarkable business improvement. Renowned merchants have given it a license. To increase the marketing and sales of your business, use both online and offline stores.

There are some things you must consider when using ROPO in your industry. In this article, we will expose features to put in place in your physical store and the techniques to use with ROPO.

ROPO Meaning

ROPO means, ‘research online, purchase offline.

For example, if you want to buy a laptop, you begin by checking the prices and reviews on the Internet. Once you get the laptop that best suits you, you proceed to buy it in a physical store.

That is the heart of ROPO.

ROPO has been trending in industries such as finance, healthcare, tourism, and business.

In 2015, research on brick-and-mortar commerce, PWS, indicated that 85% of the customers prefer buying from a physical store to an online store.

Here are some reasons cited; suitability of the product, sense of touch and certainty of the product. In short, you get what you can see.

Below are tips to help you better your online customer-business interaction.

Tips to Improve Customer Experience Online

Customer experience is a paramount thing which determines success or failure of any business. It’s how customers interact with your products or company.

Every single interaction with your clients determines whether they will trade with you in the future or not. If the communication is not up-to-date the clients can always look for a better option to meet their needs. Provide an outstanding online customer experience to surpass your competitors.

Here is what you should consider.

Customers’ Reliance on Online Product Review

According to Bizrate Insights, most customers look at product reviews before making a purchase. It was indicated that 40.8% of the respondents said that they did so often. Online product review plays an integral role in the shopping process.

Thus it’s right to conclude that online review influences customers’ disposition on physical shops. Ensure that your clients can review your products after purchase. This review will help you garner more customers to your business.

Use platforms like Trustpilot, Bazaarvoice, and Yotpo to include the reviews to your online store.

Create a Responsive Mobile App

A responsive mobile app necessitates customer experience. Online customer experience can either lead to massive customer exodus or increased customer loyalty.

Consider creating such an app which will help you to keep in touch with your clients when using ROPO. The mobile app responds well to different browsers.

Just in a few scrolls, your customers will have an opportunity to see your products. It’s easy to use since it comes with extensive documentation to provide friendly customer support. While your blog attracts new customers, the app helps to maintain your regular clients.

Use Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality has been in existence for a couple of years. It will help your customers to extract the object and put it in a physical environment. It gives a clear mental picture of how the object will appear on the new site.

With cars, for example, AR enables you to put the vehicle in the driveway. Once in the entrance, one can open the doors, walk around and examine the inside of the car.

Now, AR in retail gains momentum and the number of apps with AR are continually growing. One of the companies that has used this technology successfully was IKEA. Their IKEA Place ARKit app helps to find the perfect fit of the furniture pieces in the room.

Some expert think tanks have heeded that by 2020, AR will reach a wide-spread market use. It has evolved from being an innovative technology to the problem-solving app.

In-Depth Data Analysis

You need in-depth information analysis of your business to improve your customer interaction.

Using filtering, for instance, you can choose what you need to track. You can target one job function or a group. You also can predict the customers’ behavior and plan your marketing campaign targeting the right customers.

You can also use location attendance report to show trends in your business. Examines the fluctuating prices in the course of the days of the week, fault the ones you are unhappy with and optimize on the ones you find profitable. Determine what causes the fluctuation in sales and deal with it.

Enhance Your Offline Marketing Techniques

In as much as ROPO is the order of the day, you don’t need to abandon your offline marketing techniques.

In 2012, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in CBS interview admitted for a need of a physical store. Three years later Amazon opened the first physical store in West Lafayette.

Amazon started with an online store before it extended to an offline store. You would not want to underrate such a decision. Here are a few reasons why offline marketing techniques are essential.

The Touch-And-Feel Factor

It is good to be everywhere that your clients want you to be. Some customers would like to touch and feel the product before they can buy.

There has to be an offline store to allow customers to interact with the products at a personal level. Some customers need to interact with you before they can buy from you.

Omnichannel Experience

ROPO uses the omnichannel experience to link clients to both online and offline stores. You can’t run away from this fact. Some customers engage with the company using desktop or smartphones.

You should maintain the interaction of these channels to better marketing of your brands. Try to offer personalized experiences across all channels. Ensure that there is no gap created between offline and online stores. Make sure that all your staff is well versed with both stores.

POS systems will help you to control your inventory and seamlessly sell across all channels. For the further understanding of what are the capabilities of POS systems, read our related article.

Track Customer Behavior through Loyalty Cards

Many businesses focus on acquiring new clients to the extent of not focusing on the old ones. To keep your business on track, you need to interact with all your customers. Design a loyalty card or a reward program to track their behavior and movement.

You need to extend your love to your clients by giving discounts and incentives. This practice will remind them of your brands and business. If they turn up again persuade them to sign a loyalty program for rewards and incentives.

The great example is at the Sephora store. They have a loyalty program for those who shop online as well as a card with accumulation discount that operates offline when you make a purchase. Here how the loyalty program looks on their website:

Customers who get rewards for buying, keep purchasing from your business.

Conclude Customer Research with Price Adaption

Make a research of your customers’ behavior as well as competitors price range before you can tag a price to the new product. Try to change the existing products to suit different customer needs.

Companies that export products or those introducing new products use price adaptation. The adaptation is based on the research of the customers’ needs. When you contrast the features that the customers want and the specifications of your products you will be able to determine the price.

What is Dropshipping: The Ultimate Guide

Dropshipping has gained popularity in recent years; that said, there’s a lot of people who don’t know what dropshipping entails or what it means, exactly. That’s why we’ve created this guide, which will help you to determine whether you should be starting your own dropshipping business this year.

Dropshipping Definition

Dropshipping is a business model where the retailer or business owner doesn’t keep products in stock. Instead, he or she partners with a manufacturer or dropship supplier who ships orders directly to the retailer’s client.

How Dropshipping Works?

Dropshipping is started when a client makes an order. You, the dropshipper, will then send the information to the supplier. The supplier will take the information you send them and have the desired product shipped to the client directly from its warehouse.

Dropshipping Model

The main way to make money through dropshipping is with a commission. That’s because dropshipping business owners don’t have an inventory; instead, they recommend suppliers or retailers to clients.

Benefits and Pitfalls

To help you get a better understanding of whether dropshipping is right for you, here are some of the dropshipping cons and pros you might find in dropshipping.

Benefits

• When you use drop shipping, you have fewer chances of losing revenue because you don’t have extra inventory.
• You can use upselling to increase revenue
• You don’t need to have a storage area
• Everything is digital

Setbacks and Pitfalls

• You can expect there to be high competition
• You might not be profitable for a while
• Dropshipping is considered unsafe when it comes to products

Who Can Use Dropshipping and Succeed?

Pretty much anyone can use dropshipping. Still, here’s a small list of the various kinds of entrepreneurs who may want to start a dropshipping business.

• Beginners: If you’re new to the business world, you may not have a complete grasp on how everything works. Because of this, you may want to turn toward dropshipping for its simplicity and its low-cost.
• On a budget: Now we can move onto budget entrepreneurs. Other kinds of businesses can require a large startup cost. All you truly need with dropshipping is a domain name and host for the store.
• eCommerce Business Owners: eCommerce business owners are some of the most qualified to run a dropshipping business. That’s because they likely know their target audience and the tools at their disposal to increase leads and conversions.

How to Start a Dropship Business: Can You Dropship Products Easily?

If everything you’ve read so far sounds good, you may now be wondering how to start your own dropship business without tons of work and procedures.

Investigate a Market

The first thing to do is look at the market you’re interested in delving into. You need to know which niche you’ll be working in and which platform you’ll build your business on. WooCommerce, Shopify, and Magento are all solid options for anyone who wants to start a business.

Magento® provides a large number of extensions so that every site is unique and customizable.

Woocommerce is a free plugin that you can install with WordPress.

Shopify is a good alternative for anyone who is looking to scale their business.

Finding the Perfect Dropshipping Products to Sell

You need to choose your products carefully if you want to have a successful business. If you have specific dropshipping niches in mind, you may want to look at different products that will sell within the chosen niche.

Finding the Right Dropshipping Supplier

Finding the right people to supply your business with products is a must. Since you’re the one taking orders, you want to make sure that your company is reliable. Part of this reliability comes from your suppliers.

If you’re looking for suppliers, you might be finding suppliers for dropshipping in other countries. Dropshipping suppliers USA, for example, often decide to find suppliers in China.

Amazon Dropshipping

If you choose to, you can turn toward Amazon for your dropshipping business. If you want to use Amazon, though, you’ll want to be aware of the following two conditions: you can’t use the name of another supplier for any packaging slips you send to clients and you can’t buy products from a supplier just to have them sent to a customer.

Aliexpress Dropshipping

You can use Aliexpress for any number of items. There are some dropshippers who prefer to specialize in home care, while others work with jewelry more than anything. The great thing about Aliexpress is that it has a large following and you can buy products from suppliers to sell them for the amount you want. Usually, delivery takes significantly longer than other platforms; however, the prices are hard to beat.

Alibaba Dropshipping

The slogan for Alibaba is “Global trade starts here”. This site works like a middleman, which will make a connection between buyers and suppliers so that everyone has the best experience possible. You’ll often find that this site will not charge you money when a transaction is made.

eBay Dropshipping

When you decide to use eBay, you’ll have complete responsibility for the quality of the service. If a supplier doesn’t send a package on time, for example, you’re held responsible. Because of this, you need to choose the right suppliers.

Find Clients

Your entire business relies on the clients you have. When you have loyal clients, you can trust that your dropshipping store will become successful. Still, you have to find these loyal clients.

The first thing you should do is turn toward your close friends and relatives. If they order your products and like what they receive, you can ask them directly to leave you reviews. You should also look into your different marketing options to determine how you can reach a large number of people.

Streamline Business Processes: Taking and Sending Orders

Dropshipping works efficiently because the dropshipping company does not need to have any inventory; instead, the dropshipper will receive an order from a customer and will send this order to the supplying company. This company will then send the order to the client or customer.

In doing so, dropshippers can save themselves a significant amount of time and can focus more on customer service.

Running Your Drop Shipping Business

Dropshipping itself is rather straightforward; however, there are a few things you can do to increase your chances and successfully running a dropshipping business.

Start Dropshipping in Social Media

If you want to succeed in this business, you need to consider social media. That’s because platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, can provide you with an unlimited number of options. You can create different accounts to improve your SEO. You can also decide to buy ads that will show up on the profiles of potential customers.

Create a Simple eCommerce Site

Creating your dropshipping site is easy because you don’t need much to complete it. All you truly need is to have a domain name. You can use platforms like WordPress, Shopify, or Magento to create your online store. You can use extensions to personalize this store and to ensure that your customers know what they can expect when they order from you.

Growing Your Dropshipping Business

We want to share some practical steps that we’ve collected from the most successful entrepreneurs, and you can use them after you start your dropshipping business.

1. Try to check the supplier with your own order. Buy some product and ship to you and your friend’s address, and check the delivery time, package and all the discussed conditions.
2. Use only the effective advertisement on the Internet, but from the beginning use the free options. With the verified advertisement methods, you can test your business model faster and more effectively.
3. Spend little by little. Don’t use big budget and analyze your actions, and you will come up with revenue.
4. Try to focus on the products that you interested in, because you may sell them with more probability.
5. Analyze the level of competition, because some product line has it at a high level and for the newcomer, it might be harder to carve out a niche.
6. Besides the dropshipping, you can try to earn money with an affiliate program.

Overall, you’ll have to focus on your customer service and marketing if you want to succeed.

How to Grow Your Clothing Business: 9 Practical Tips

Are you planning to grow your commercial business? Read our 9 marketing tips, try them, and see the results right away. 

Tip 1. Develop Your Brand

First, what you need to do along with defining your target audience is to create your brand visuals and overall brand identity. If you want to be memorable in people’s minds, you need to have a “face” of your business. This includes logo, mission, vision, and making the list of what type of clients do you serve to. After the research of the market, customers, and competitors, you are ready to make your brand standing out from the crowd.

Tip 2. Build a Sales Funnel

If you want to have a successful business, there are a few things you should do first. A sales funnel is the journey your customers make on their way to purchasing your products. To know more about how to build a sales funnel, read this paragraph.

Research the Audience

If you want to build a business, you need to know who’s going to be shopping at your store. You also need to understand what your potential customers expect of you so that you can figure out how to meet their needs.

In the process, you should research what your target audience doesn’t like about shopping. You can use Google Trends and statistics from leading research websites like Statista to predict what the demand will be on your product.

Create Buyer Personas

Because your customers are unique, you’ll want to create different personas that are based on several factors. You’ll want to consider why different people buy their products, how they use products, and what motivates them to purchase products.

When you consider all these factors, you’re going to create your buyer persona. You will write their age, gender, salary, and particular user flow to show why they will buy your product. Then, you name each persona. Next, you will have your 3-4 buyer personas and will use them to create your marketing strategy.

Tip 3. Develop eCommerce Business Marketing Strategies

This part is especially useful if you’re wondering how to grow your sales. The way you market your business is one of the most critical factors in running it. This will help you to attract customers, increase the number of your leads, and double your sales results.

Create Valuable Content

When you have a qualitative content as one of the points in your marketing strategy, this ensures that your customers keep coming back. That’s because your customers will be interested in what your business has to say, and as such, you can see your sales increase drastically.

Examples of valuable content include blogs, videos, social media posts, advertisements. Look at famous brands’ examples. Puma made a campaign called #rundalism that has gathered Puma running teams from all over the world to conquer half marathon in the Lisbon.

Why did they do it?

First, to attract customers’ attention to their Hybrid collection of sneakers. They’ve gained the loyalty of people by making the event in Lisbon and used different channels to promote the whole campaign (Instagram, YouTube).

Also, like sportswear and accessories company, they used influencers, professional runners, and enthusiasts to attract different people to jogging as a lifestyle. An excellent way to improve your business’s content is to have influencers develop it. As such, your customers can read about your products from people who have tried them.

Involve Influencers

Influencers are some of the best ways for you to spread the word about your clothing store. You can send them free samples of your clothing so that they can post their personal opinion about your products. This will give your customers a real sense of your business, and they’ll be more inclined to buy from you. Influencers can create a video, photo, and other content types based on your marketing strategy and needs. It will save you time and make your content richer and customer-oriented.

To effectively start with influencer marketing, try some useful tools to find them, and analyze the results of your cooperation:

• HypeAuditor – help you to find the best influencers in Instagram and get the report about their account activity to choose the best match for your clothing brand;
• Brandwatch – explore the database of Twitter users and find influencers to reach the right audience;
• Kred – paid tool for finding influencers as well as monitoring, analyzing, and involving them to your marketing campaigns;
• Traackr – a program for managing your influencers’ network and measure the results of content, events, and campaigns with them.

We also found a great example of successful influencer marketing from Boxed Water. They use micro-influencers from Instagram to attract people to their environmental initiative campaigns.

Thousands of influencers and their followers are involved and participate in initiatives called Better Planet. It is great when you commit to world problems and promote your brand through social and environmental initiatives.

Try to identify the demand by creating a sustainable clothing line and use it as the advantage of your brand. You can check the examples of Scandinavian clothing stores and their sustainable campaigns in our previous article.

That’s not all. Next, you will explore how to connect with your customers in other ways.

Tip 4. Identify New Opportunities

Recognizing when you have an opportunity to improve your marketing strategy, it’s important to use all possible ways to attract customers to your store by providing them something valuable.

Build an Email List

You can do this by creating a pop-up section on your website so that interested customers can sign up to receive emails. In doing so, you can provide them with updates and information about your online clothing store. You can also add a subscription box to your footer, add an abandoned cart extension to return customers to their carts.

Look at the example of Riley Rose – Forever 21 beauty boutique. They made a recognizable pop up on the main page by giving 15% off for the subscription.

The second great placement for an email subscription box is a footer. They named customers who will join their newsletter as VIP clients. That makes it a unique personalization for any customer to feel valuable.

Create a Customer Loyalty Program

This is one of the best ways for you to get your customers to spend more money more often. Clothing companies like Forever 21 have been doing this for years. This company provides customers with points for every dollar they spend, and after they’ve accumulated enough points, the points translate into money they get back. For every 300 points they gain, they earn $5.

Tip 5. Open a Pop-Up Store to Test a New Market

If you want to test out a new market, you should consider using a pop-up store to help you decide whether your products would work in this market. That’s because you never know how you’re going to do in a new city or with a new target population and as such, a pop-up store is more effective than immediately renting out space.

Tip 6. Partner with Other Companies

You may want to collaborate with a famous brand to develop your fanbase more efficiently. When brands collaborate and create eCommerce business partnerships, their fanbases can be combined. As such, you may find your consumer base increase considerably when you decide to do this.

An example of this is H&M and Kenzo, who launched their collection in 2016. This eclectic collaboration was named Kenzo X H&M and was designed for customers to have the perfect summer look.

Tip 7. Learn From Other’s Examples

If there’s anyone you particularly admire or a business plan that you want to model, you may want to consider researching how these business owners have run their businesses. This can provide you with a good idea of how you can improve your business and how you can adopt more efficient strategies to grow it.

Watch the video about how to create an eCommerce brand with Gretta Van Riel, an eCommerce entrepreneur who run 4 businesses and made 8 figures selling products online.

Tip 8. Keep Your Eyes on Trends

When you have a clothing brand, it’s important that you keep up with trends. This will ensure your clothing is always in style and as such, you don’t have to worry about your customers outgrowing your clothing.

Market Most Popular Products

If you already selling some products that you think won’t make you succeed, you need to look at the trending products to sell. These are the products that are popular all over the world or in specific markets. We can’t provide you with a full list of such products, because the trends are changing continuously. However, we have a complete guide on how to search and monitor changes in trending products.

Tip 9. Diversify Your Product and Service Offerings

One of the best ways for you to reach a large number of people is to have a different way to promote your existing products for new consumers or find a new market opportunity to expand your current product line. The more diverse your products, the more people you can speak to. When it comes to clothing, every individual has their style, and if you can produce products that talk to some of them, you’re ensuring that your store will be selling more.

Consider a Franchise Model

There are all kinds of business models that you can follow. One of the best ones for you could be a franchise model. In this, you can take the opportunity to expand your clothing business exceptionally. In doing so, you can have stores in many towns and countries that function across different populations.

A perfect example of this model, adoption has the GAP company. It offers franchise opportunities for international markets. It is available for business owners who have extensive experience in retail.

Think Outside the Box

This is a lifetime advise, but you know that creativity stands in the first place when it comes to developing something. Look at what you have now, and think about how you can change or improve some business processes or products/services that you sell.

For sure, this list can be extended to more tips. But, we’ve highlighted only tested strategies that you can use now for your business benefits.

How to Clear Magento Cache

If you run a store on Magento, you know that page caching helps to increase the speed of Magento based website. Below we explain how to clear cache in your Magento store from admin or command line.

How to Clear Magento Cache

Step 1: Login to your Magento Admin Panel
Step 2: Go to System >> Cache Management

Step 3: Next, you need to identify what cache type that you want to refresh. Each cache type has description, you can read it before deciding which one you need to enable.

Step 4: In the next step, in order to clear cache, please choose the types of Cache that you have enabled >> Refresh >> Submit

“Flush Magento Cache” help to remove all the items from the cache that have Magento tag.

“Flush Cache Storage” removes all the items from Cache both those with Magento tag and those without it.

Let’s move on to the small guide on how to clear cache from the command line.

How to Clear Magento 2 Cache from Command Line

To flush Magento 2 cache:

1. Go to Magento root directory
2. Type: php bin/magento cache:clean and php bin/magento cache:flush

php bin/magento cache:flush

Removes all items in the default Magento cache (var/cache) and the var/full_page cache that have a Magento tag.

php bin/magento cache:clean

This command removes all items in the cache. This is the equivalent of deleting the entire contents of the cache folder on the server. If your system uses an alternate cache location, any cached files used by other applications will be removed.

If you are looking for the extensions to have Magento 2 full page cache and control your website performance, you can check our list of the Top 3 Magento Full Page Cache Extensions.

Another Story About the Broken Shopping Cart in Magento 2

We’ve already investigated the broken cart bug in cases when administrators delete simple child products. But, as it turns out, there can be other reasons for this bug.

Magento 2 has a very convenient feature for store administrators: they can change product type as they wish. When creating a product, an administrator can set the product weight, resulting in the product having the type “simple.” They can also not set the weight, resulting in a “virtual” product. Moreover, when administrators remove the weight from an existing “simple” product and save it, they get a “virtual” product and vice versa. They can also take any simple product that isn’t part of a configurable one and make it configurable on the product editing page, using the configuration component.

We will elaborate on this last scenario since in the hands of inexperienced users it could create issues for store users. This article will be about how to use this feature properly.

Chapter 1: Background

Let’s say there’s a Magento 2 store with the following cast of characters:

• the developer who made a site based on functional specifications and provides support for it.
• the store administrator who creates products, process orders, etc.
• the customer who is buying something in the store.

This store sells clothing and hats since these are products that usually require configuration.

The administrator created a simple product and made it available for purchase: a cap with a white pattern on a black background (CAP1).

Chapter 2: Product Changes

The customer goes to the store and adds this product to their cart, but for some reason, they don’t make a purchase and the product stays in the cart. The customer doesn’t return to the site again for some time. Then, the same exact cap appeared in the store’s inventory, but with a black pattern on a white background.

The administrator decided to turn the existing product, CAP1, into a configurable product with a color attribute. This is easy to do on the product editing page. In this instance, the product becomes configurable after saving, and two simple child products are automatically created.

This couldn’t be done in Magento 1 since product type could only be set when creating a product. You had to create a new configurable product and link the child simple products to it. The new product would have a new URL, and that would start age-old SEO problems.

Chapter 3: Error

So, the administrator turned the simple product into a configurable one, and a drop-down list with color choices (or visual swatches) appeared on the product page on the front end. Now the customer decides to log in again and complete the purchase, but when they go to their cart, they get a 503 error.

The customer can’t proceed to checkout to complete the order, so they go to the Contact Us page and write a complaint to the manager. The manager then creates a bug report for the developer. The developer looks at the server logs and sees the following error:

[Tue Mar 05 19:20:54.026160 2019] [php7:error] [pid 8691] [client 127.0.0.1:58142] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Call to a member function getValue() on null in /var/www/magento23/vendor/magento/module-configurable-product/Model/Quote/Item/CartItemProcessor.php:86\nStack trace:\n#0 /var/www/magento23/generated/code/Magento/ConfigurableProduct/Model/Quote/Item/CartItemProcessor/Proxy.php(103): Magento\\ConfigurableProduct\\Model\\Quote\\Item\\CartItemProcessor->processOptions(Object(Magento\\Quote\\Model\\Quote\\Item))\n#1 /var/www/magento23/vendor/magento/module-quote/Model/Quote/Item/CartItemOptionsProcessor.php(84): Magento\\ConfigurableProduct\\Model\\Quote\\Item\\CartItemProcessor\\Proxy->processOptions(Object(Magento\\Quote\\Model\\Quote\\Item))\n#2 /var/www/magento23/vendor/magento/module-quote/Model/Quote/Item/Repository.php(74): Magento\\Quote\\Model\\Quote\\Item\\CartItemOptionsProcessor->addProductOptions('configurable', Object(Magento\\Quote\\Model\\Quote\\Item))\n#3 /var/www/magento23/vendor/magento/module-checkout/Model/DefaultConfigProvider.php(430): Magento\\Quote\\Model\\Quote\\Item\\Repository->getList('1')\n#4 /var/www/magen in /var/www/magento23/vendor/magento/module-configurable-product/Model/Quote/Item/CartItemProcessor.php on line 86, referer: http://magento23.loc/index.php/

This is the error for Magento version 2.3. Earlier versions will show a slightly different error, but the essence is the same. The error occurs because when automatically converting the product type, the product type in the cart changed, too.

The configurable product in the cart should have a child element, as well as configuration options—but it doesn’t since the product wasn’t configurable when it was added to the cart. The error appears in the processOptions method when attempting to receive the value of the ‘attributes’ option, which for the reason mentioned above does not exist. The method code is below.

public function processOptions(CartItemInterface $cartItem)
{
    $attributesOption = $cartItem->getProduct()->getCustomOption('attributes');
    $selectedConfigurableOptions = $this->serializer->unserialize($attributesOption->getValue());
    if (is_array($selectedConfigurableOptions)) {
        $configurableOptions = [];
        foreach ($selectedConfigurableOptions as $optionId => $optionValue) {
            /** @var \Magento\ConfigurableProduct\Api\Data\ConfigurableItemOptionValueInterface $option */
            $option = $this->itemOptionValueFactory->create();
            $option->setOptionId($optionId);
            $option->setOptionValue($optionValue);
            $configurableOptions[] = $option;
        }
        $productOption = $cartItem->getProductOption()
            ? $cartItem->getProductOption()
            : $this->productOptionFactory->create();
        /** @var  \Magento\Quote\Api\Data\ProductOptionExtensionInterface $extensibleAttribute */
        $extensibleAttribute =  $productOption->getExtensionAttributes()
            ? $productOption->getExtensionAttributes()
            : $this->extensionFactory->create();
        $extensibleAttribute->setConfigurableItemOptions($configurableOptions);
        $productOption->setExtensionAttributes($extensibleAttribute);
        $cartItem->setProductOption($productOption);
    }
    return $cartItem;
}

Chapter 4: Solution for Broken Cart Using Product Aftersave Event Observer

The developer thought about the situation and decided that the user’s cart shouldn’t be broken, regardless of what the store administrator did. The developer implemented the following solution: they added a product aftersave event observer to the broken cart module.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="urn:magento:framework:Event/etc/events.xsd">
    <event name="catalog_product_save_after">
        <observer name="fix-customer-cart" instance="Web4pro\BrokenCart\Model\Observer" shared="false" />
    </event>
</config>

class Observer implements  \Magento\Framework\Event\ObserverInterface
{
    protected $cartCleaner;
    public function __construct(\Web4pro\BrokenCart\Model\QuoteItemsCleaner $cartCleaner)
    {
        $this->cartCleaner = $cartCleaner;
    }
    public function execute(\Magento\Framework\Event\Observer $observer)
    {
        if($product = $observer->getEvent()->getProduct()){
            if(($product->getTypeId()=='configurable')&&($product->getOrigData('type_id')!='configurable')){
                $this->cartCleaner->execute($product);
            }
        }
    }
}

If a configurable product’s type becomes configurable when it’s saved, the product should be removed from all users’ carts. Indeed, after its type was changed, the product in the example is no longer the same cap with a white pattern on a black background that the customer added to their cart.

eCommerce rules dictate that the product should be deleted from the user’s cart. Now the store administrator can change the product type at will, without it resulting in the problem described above.

Which Magento Dropshipping Extensions to Use In 2019?

If you are experiencing some difficulties with how you manage your warehouses and orders, then you should consider using a dropship extension.

This is by far the best eCommerce solution to achieve efficient management and optimization of the drop shipping business.

These tools enable you to start up an eCommerce store whether you are dropshipping with Magento or any other eCommerce site. With these dropshipping extensions, you won’t have to worry about any complicated shipping procedures as they do offer simpler solutions when it comes to fulfilling orders.

Using these tools allow you to store products in different warehouses located in different parts of the region and thus making it easy to fulfill the order by shipping directly from the nearest depot rather than getting the goods from the store.

Anyway, Magento is one of the popular eCommerce platforms, let us look at a few Magento dropshipping extensions that you can use in 2019.

List of 7 Magento Dropshipping Extensions

Without any further ado, here are some excellent Magento dropship extensions you can use.

Dropship by Unirgy

If your business is growing fast and you don’t have any idea on how you can handle a lot of products from your many suppliers, this is what you need. This extension offers great features that can allow you to manage your business even when dealing with multiple clients without any issues.

Aside from letting you manage your products, this extension comes with extra features as add-ons to make it more powerful.

Some few main features include such options:

• manage the lists of your suppliers,
• generate the purchase orders automatically for suppliers based orders from the customers,
• flexible commission structure and calculations,
• support for both the standard and external check out like PayPal,
• send automatic shipment notifications to your clients.

Additionally, the extension also has an easy to use user interface to help you control all the customer-vendor interactions.

Packages available

The extension supports both Magento versions, Magento 1.x and 2.x.

Price

A pricing plan starting at $950. You will also get your money back if you will not have been satisfied within the first 30 days of purchasing this extension.

Dropship by Xento for Magento 1&2

If you are a Magento user and you are tired of managing your orders manually, it’s time you considered getting some help. Yes, I’m talking about purchasing one of the many available Magento 2 dropship extensions, one more like Xento.

This is another perfect solution for Magento users as it will enable you to manage your orders quite easily by using its automated features.

Xento allows its users:

• manage any warehouse or any fulfillment center completely free of charge,
• send orders to your customers depending on your customization,
• product export and stock import,
• track number import to let your clients know that their items have been dispatched and are on the way.

Packages available

The tool currently supports both Magento versions 1 and 2.

Price

No subscriptions or any fixed annual fees only a one-time payment of about $726.

Dropship by Magestore

Magestore is also another big name that has been in the game for quite some time, developing Magento 1 and 2 extensions. With over 40 extensions in the market, you can already tell they are some of the best e-commerce solution providers.Using this Magento dropship extension will see you save a lot of time and also cut down on the costs of keeping and inventory.

Other advantages you can enjoy using this extension:

• manage multiple projects, customization, payment integration,
• show order listings to your clients and allow you to create orders and cancel requests,
• easy order fulfillment among others.

With all the POS features offered by this extension, you will be able to cut down the waiting time by a huge percentage and therefore guaranteeing you 100% customer satisfaction.

Packages available

This extension is available for Magento 1 and 2 versions.

Price

Available upon the request.

Dropship by Boostmyshop for Magento 1 & 2

With everything pretty much automated and an easy to use user interface, you can improve your business greatly.

The extension can also allow you to track both your purchases and private sales easily. You can manage the rules to select the best supplier, controlling the workflow and select the items to dropship.

It is a part of the Embedded ERP Extension Suite, so you can get even more features from this extension development company.

This dropshipping extension to help in three major fields including:

• order management,
• vendor management,
• inventory or stock management.

Packages available

This extension is available for Magento 1 and 2 versions as well as for Open Source and Commerce edition.

Price

Using this tool will however require you to pay a small monthly fee or pay annually depending on the plan you like. The price starts from €199.00.

Using this provided guarantees you great customer support, no code encryption, regular updates and most of all, you will get to have your money back if you are not happy with it after 15 days of purchasing the product.

Dropship by Webkul

Here is another great Magento dropshipping extension from Webkul developers that you can use to improve your business. This is achieved by using the platform to optimize all your shipping activities and managing your warehouses.

You can also use it to import items to your store without any hassle. This is an excellent solution for those looking to create a store without having a warehouse and thereby saving the customers some time.

Among other features you get such options:

• set more than one shipping method The buyers can then choose them according to what they like,
• locate your different warehouses with the help of Google maps,
• import products from AliExpress, manage warehouses and select a shipping method for each one of them.

Packages available

The module currently supports Magento 2.

Price

It is available at around $199.

Dropship M2 by Medma

This is the first release of this dropshipping extension supporting Magento 2.x version.

This extension offers a platform for traders to be able to order bulk items and ship them to different warehouses while also assigning orders for each of these warehouses.

Among some features provided by this module include:

• the ability to export customer feedback,
• configurations to enable or disable sign up questionnaires,
• allow or forbid different store functionalities to a client depending on their status and a user approval system that forbids the customers to use the bulk order feature.

Packages available

This extension is available for Magento 2.1 Open Source (Community) only.

Price

This is a great e-commerce solution for those who would often want to know their clients first before doing any business with them thus enhancing the security of the store. You can currently get this great module at $99 only.

Dropship by Webshopapps

If you are looking to bring some powerful flexibility to your Magento eCommerce store, you should try using this module. It currently supports Magento 1 and 2 versions.

This Magento dropship extension is integrated with ShipperHQ module and can allow multiple providers to log in to a warehouse among other functionalities.

The module is regarded as one of the best when it comes to shipping products from various geographical locations.

With this module, you also can:

• choose your carrier and place orders for each warehouse,
• allow your customers to choose their desired shipping method,
• automatically send email notifications to alert your customers when their orders have been dispatched.

Packages available

This extension is available for Magento 1 & Magento 2.

Price

A 30 days free trial to see if it suits your needs.

Best Magento Aliexpress Dropship Extensions

Aliexpress is also a very well known name when it comes to the eCommerce sector and below are some Magento Aliexpress dropship extensions you can use for your site.

Aliexpress Dropshipping by CedCommerce

As mentioned before, Aliexpress is a major player in the eCommerce industry and when they decide to come up with an eCommerce solution like this one, you can be assured that it’s something worth checking out.

Other features that you will be able to enjoy include:

• bulk imports from the Aliexpress stores,
• setting synchronized pricing for the Magento 2 stores,
• set different prices on different products and easy inventory management.

Packages available

This is a Magento 2 Aliexpress dropship solution, to mean it supports Magento version 2 thus allowing its users to easily connect and use Aliexpress dropshipping tools.

Price

You can get this amazing dropshipping solution at $299.

Magento AliExpress DropShip Automation by Webkul

If you are looking for a dropship extension that is easy to configure and can also optimize your dropshipping activities, this is what you need. Magento 2 Aliexpress dropship automation is, therefore, a workable dropshipping extension that is worth checking out.

It comes with a lot of great features and also offers competitive prices and more products, making it a great solution for someone running a drop shipping business that is more consumer-oriented outside China.

This extension will improve your business by allowing you:

• manage your stores easily, letting the shoppers choose their preferred shipping method,
• easy shipment from different warehouses,
• allow you to see the products inside the warehouse.

Packages available

DropShip automation is working only for Magento 1.x versions (i.e. 1.6.x.x, 1.7.x.x, 1.8.x.x, 1.9.x.x).

Price

This extension will only cost you $199 with some additional costs if you are looking to be offered support for either 3 months, 6 months or for a whole year.

In the past few years, the dropshipping business model has seen huge growth. With so much knowledge and awareness, the world has indeed become a global village. As the business is continuing to gain much popularity, many people are slowly jumping on board hence making the competition even much tougher and difficult to maintain on a small scale.

WooCommerce Review: Is It a Good Choice for Running the Store?

Are you thinking of building an eCommerce website suiting your business needs but are not sure how to? Are the crunching numbers of expenses worrying you? Well then, there is a perfect solution awaiting you! Creating websites on WordPress is now a universal trend; yet creating an eCommerce platform remains tough. We’ll consider how to conquer this task.

The Benefits of Using WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular CMS that attracts a million users for its simplicity and cost-effectiveness. Among benefits are the simplicity of the interface, SEO-friendliness, and flexibility. Also, it is an attractive base not only for a blog, or a corporate site but for an eCommerce store. WordPress has a lot of plugins for its stable work and extended functionality.

A WordPress plugin makes this job easier than you can imagine. Such is the task of WooCommerce. WooCommerce is essentially a WordPress plugin, which lets you create a useful eCommerce website. With this, you can easily generate and manage an online store.

Let’s Start with WooCommerce Features

WooCommerce provides you with many features and opportunities. These features include:

• Mobile-friendly design
  WooCommerce is not only easy and user-friendly on your desktop and laptop but also on your mobile phone or smartphone.
• Search Engine Optimization
  As WooCommerce runs under WordPress, it can enjoy all the features of WordPress. One such important feature is SEO tools and plugins. It has built-in SEO plugins like Yoast and offers well-structured CMS that can boost your online presence with its SEO tools.
• Discounts
  Running an eCommerce website is not an easy task. WooCommerce makes this task as facile as possible. With it, you can create discount coupons and cards for your customers to enjoy on the website.
• Analytics
  Assessing the performance and statistics of your website is essential. WooCommerce allows you to assess these data using analytics. You can also integrate your site with Google Analytics for free.
• Stock level tracking
  With the help of WooCommerce, you can keep track of your stock and inventory levels accurately.
• Sales Report
  The website will design for you a report by calculating the number of sales you generated from the eCommerce platform.
• Product data panel
  A separate panel for the display and information about products will make your customers’ experience very smooth and easy going.
• Automatic tax calculations
  With WooCommerce you no longer have to care for calculating taxes on the products bought. It automatically calculates taxes such as GST and VAT.
• Geolocation support
  This is an advanced feature of WooCommerce site that connects your store’s location and provides support to customers.
• Store management
  Online store management cannot be seamless than this. The various features of WooCommerce mark your store management as noteworthy.

Pros and Cons of WooCommerce

WooCommerce provides many benefits to both its creator and users. These are:

1. Free to download: The biggest benefit of WooCommerce is that it is completely free! The base plugin is freely downloadable. However, later if you purchase additional premium extensions you will have to pay for them.
2. Professional look: If you are intimidated to design your eCommerce site then WooCommerce will do the work for you. With its design interface, your website will boast a professional look.
3. Flexible: The interface of the website is highly flexible. You can customize features according to your needs such as categorization, sales price, independent attributes, order panel, invoice generation, and tracking.
4. Simple to use: Despite WooCommerce having the outlook of a professional website, it is relatively simple to use. It is a user-friendly eCommerce solution. It has all the features needed for a professional site to operate and write blogs.
5. Popular: According to BuiltWith, WordPress generates about 84.14% of all websites on the Internet. This gives them a massive platform, increasing the popularity of WooCommerce site which occupies 4.17 % of websites that use it in the Entire Internet.

Despite all the pros, WooCommerce has its cons too, which are:

1. Learning curve: As WooCommerce is generated by WordPress, you have to be familiar with the main website first. Your ability to learn and ease of use depends on your understanding of WordPress.
2. Additional work: WooCommerce is not exactly an independent website; thus it has some more work involved. These are web hosting, maintaining site security and the implementation of extensions and plugins.
3. Negative reviews: Not all reviews of WooCommerce are positive. Some people who reviewed the site complained about the API, website issues and glitches, mounting costs and lack of customer service.

Apparent Ease of Use

WooCommerce is notably a website, which is facile to operate despite its professionalism. The product information panel is very straightforward, and so is the website navigation. With a little bit of surfing, you can be an expert too.

Server Requirements

The list of requirements to run a store on WooCommerce successfully is the following:

• PHP version 7.3 or greater
• MySQL version 5.6 or greater OR MariaDB version 10.0 or greater
• The WordPress memory limit of 128 MB or greater
• HTTPS support

How Much Does WooCommerce Cost?

Initially, you can start using WooCommerce free of cost. It is freely downloadable from various sources given you have WordPress.

However, later, you will have to pay for some charges. These include:

• Extensions,
• Plugins,
• premium features,
• domain name,
• SSL certificate,
• web hosting costs.

WooCommerce Templates

There is an abundance of templates and themes available exclusively for WooCommerce users. This is perfect for an eCommerce platform. You can adjust accordingly to the type of product and service you are providing with your website and according to your level of professionalism. The price varies from free options and up to $130.

WooCommerce Plugins and Extensions

You have all the extensions available on the WooCommerce website. Choose between simple and free to use extensions or paid ones. The cost of the paid extension is up to $299. With these, you can enhance the already existing features of accounting, payment gateways, marketing, reporting and more.

WooCommerce Marketing and SEO

WooCommerce has fantastic SEO tools. This means there is a higher chance of your website to appear when people search. Not all other eCommerce platforms provide such facility. This automatically enhances its marketing capabilities and reach. Great SEO tools like Yoast or all in One SEO Pack can help you to make your store visible on the web.

Payment Processing Options

After providing the information regarding your location and currency, you will get many options to make payment. WooCommerce has such out-of-the-box payment capabilities:

• Direct Bank Transfer
• Cash on Delivery
• Check Payment
• PayPal
• Stripe

Businesses in the U.S. typically pay by PayPal, Stripe or Square as their merchant agent. Third party payment options are also available such as Authorize or Amazon. It also accepts bank transfers, check payments, or cash on delivery. WooCommerce has added Apple Pay by users’ request. Payments with Apple Pay will be processed through Stripe. Besides, you can choose any payment processors among 100 available on the WooCommerce site.

Another popular payment system is QuickPay. This plugin works well with WooCommerce and allows you to secure capturing of the payment from order overview. You also can return money or cancel the order from one place.

Security Level

The security level of your eCommerce site will depend on the security offered by WordPress and your web host provider. You can enhance the security levels by purchasing an SSL certificate. It will ensure secure connections from a web server to the browser. The CMS itself is safe. However, for more robust security, you need to look at security patches as additional protection of your store data.

WooCommerce Customer Service Quality

Customer support options in WooCommerce are limited, such that there is no option for live chat or call. Furthermore, customer support is not available to third-party products. However, there is an option to send emails to clients. You can also refer to the WordPress development agency to get WooCommerce paid support. However, the rate may differ from the service range and company.

We’ve considered all the main WooCommerce features, pros and cons as well as some advanced characteristics. We hope that it will help you to decide whether it is suitable for your business or you need another platform. In the end, we want to highlight what customers say about WooCommerce in action: