Step By Step Guide To Getting Started

 

Congratulations! You’ve made the decision to start dropshipping with us, but how does it all work and where do you begin? Firstly we would like to welcome you onboard and thank you for choosing us to be your dropshipping partner. 

Trading since 1999, we have many years experience in selling gifts and we are here for you every step of the way. So, let’s get started.

 

 1. Create your account

Sign up now with just a few details. It only takes a couple of minutes. 

 

 2. Update your business information

Once you've created an account and logged in you'll want to ensure your business information has been populated. Click 'Settings' and then 'Account Settings' and populate any missing information. These details are required so that we have up to date information about you and your business so that we can contact you about an order should we need to.

 

 3. Input your payment information

We use a system called 'Auto Payments' to automatically take payment for orders which come through from your account. This ensures that we can process your orders and dispatch them as quickly as possible. 

To set up Auto Payments you will need to enter a payment method and select a monetary balance to be deducted from the payment method each time your account reaches £0. The minimum balance you can set is £50. This means that if you send us several orders and they total more than £50 e.g. £55, we would first deplete the £50 balance sitting in your account and then we would charge your payment method for another £50. £5 of this would be used toward the orders you sent us and the remaining £45 would sit in your account balance for future orders.

 

 4. Search Products

Start discovering new products you'd like to offer your customers. Click 'Search Products'. Here you can use the categories highlighted above or search by a keyword. If you click on a category of filter you'll notice that these appear above the results in pink and you can click the 'x' to remove that filter. The price shown on the product is the price you pay ex VAT. When you find a product you would like to sell, you can click on the product to go to the product detail page, or you can click 'Source Product' from the search page and it will be added to your 'My Products' dashboard.

 

 5. Product Detail Page

If you click on a product you can view the full product information such as delivery information, product description and view any image and video assets. You can click to 'Source' the product which will add it to your 'My Products' dashboard, or if you're placing a quick manual order you can also click to 'Add to Cart'.

 

 6. Manual Orders

Our Manual Orders feature is a handy tool if you'd ever like to order one of our products for yourself as a sample for creating your own photo and video content. It can also be useful should you ever receive an in-person order and you need to process it manually. 

All you need to do is add the items on the order to your cart and click the shopping cart in the top right hand corner to start the checkout process. 

You can either dispatch the order to your customer or you can self-address the order to arrive at your business address.

 

 7. My Products

 Click 'My Products' from the left hand menu to view all the products you have sourced and see an overview about them such as price, stock and whether it's successfully mapped to your store. You can also unsource a product here, although you will need to also manually remove the listing from your sales channel too.

 

 8. Connect Your Sales Channel

We integrate with a variety of different sales platforms such as Shopify and eBay. If you'd like to connect your sales channel go to 'Settings' in the left hand menu and click 'Add Sales Channel' to bring up a list of available connections. On the list you'll see links to help documentation to help you connect each platform. Click 'Add' next to your chosen channel and follow the set up steps.

 

 

 9. Automate Prices

One of the features you will likely want to set up is Pricing Rules which can be found under Settings > Automate Your Prices. You can use this feature to automate changes to your prices e.g. if we were to increase or decrease our prices for any reason, the prices on your listings would automatically change to reflect this. Click Add New Rule, add a rule name e.g. this could be the name of your store and the platform you sell on - ideal if you want to create different rules for different selling platforms. From Source you can select the channel you would like this rule to apply to (you need to integrate your sales channels in order for options to appear in the dropdown), subsource is then the store on the platform you would like this to apply to e.g. if you integrated Shopify and you had two different Shopify stores the different store names would appear here for you to choose from. This section 'Apply to all Suppliers' is always set to 'Yes' as we are the only supplier. Specify categories gives you the option to apply the price rule to just one category which would be useful if you wanted to increase or decrease prices on a set category e.g. Oil Burners to run a sale or other promotion. You can choose to increase the price by a percentage or a fixed value. Next choose whether you'd like to include the shipping price in the product listing price. You can also assign price decimals. Click that you Accept and then click Save. The moment you click Save the pricing rule becomes active. It's worth noting that you cannot have more than one rule that applies to the same Source and Subsource in case they are conflicting. If you'd like more help with pricing rules, we have a guide available in our Help Hub.

 

 10. Listing Manager

In the Listing Manager you can view and edit information about the products you've sourced. You can update the product title and description, price, product type etc. When you make a change click Save and this will automatically update in some sales channels e.g. Shopify, but for Amazon you would need to export the information and upload into your Amazon Seller account. The status also shows you if the product is successfully Live or if there is an error to troubleshoot. Once you've successfully set up your account, Listing Manager is where you will spend most of your time day to day to make tweaks and amends to improve your listings.

 

 11. Orders

You can view any orders you've received under the Orders tab. This area will be useful whilst responding to customer queries e.g. someone wanting to check the status of their order and when it was dispatched.

 

We Are Here To Help

We hope that you enjoy using our website and if you need any help please contact us using Live Chat available from 8.30am-5pm Monday - Friday or email customercare@somethingdifferentconnect.co.uk and we will come back to you as soon as possible.