I believe one thing that every Shopify store owner concerns about is the shipping time. If your customers can receive their packages earlier, I'm quite sure this will help improve customer experience a lot. And with better customer experience, of course, more and more people will come to your store.

Since most Shopify store owners are doing drop shipping, today I am going to talk about how to reduce shipping time for Shopify dropshipping.

Before I start I'd like to introduce a "new" term, drop surfing, to you guys. Actually, it is not a new thing, but people use this term recently, so it's kind of new.

Drop surfing is a concept of finding more suppliers once you have a winning product. In other words, drop surfing is the practice of basically having multiple suppliers lined up for each product, so when you sell an item via drop shipping, you can pick and choose the cheapest supplier to ship the item for you. (Please click here for more information)

So, obviously if you can do drop surfing well, surely your Shopify dropshipping time will be greatly reduced, and here are my tips for you.

1. The processing time and shipping time advertised are on average. For the shipping time, there could be a delay for some packages, especially during peak season. For the processing time, if the product is ready in our warehouse they can process the same day or the next day after your order. If we have to order from the supplier, the processing time is around 1-3 days including the time we need to receive the product in our warehouse. Sometimes the supplier maybe lack in stock, then we will inform you about the delay. If you have stable orders we normally recommend our customer to buy the private inventory to put in our warehouse so as to accelerate the processing time. We have our own warehouses in YIWU, SHENZHEN, USA (east and west) for better handling of the shipment.

2. Make sure that your suppliers always have what you sell in stock. If your suppliers don't have sufficient inventory, maybe it will take your suppliers a longer time to process your orders since they need to purchase your products.

3. If you are selling the most popular and trending products in the present, I suggest that you have multiple suppliers for your product. Because your items are so popular that you may face the risk that your suppliers may sell out your items.

4. We advise you to order some inventory in case of emergencies. Usually, your suppliers cannot guarantee that they always have your items in stock. So, buying some inventory is always a good choice.

5. If you are selling to America and Europe, I'm quite sure your shipping time will be greatly reduced if your suppliers have warehouses in America and Europe. Just imagine how happy your customers will be when they place an order today and receive their packages 1 or 3 days later. 

Assuming that you ship products across the country, it is important to have warehouses at multiple locations in the country. To have warehouses at almost every location across the country, you will surely need to strain your finances. That is unnecessary especially if you are a small or mid-sized eCommerce retailer. Instead, identify warehouses at strategic locations that can cater to multiple locations up to a certain distance. CJ dropshipping has 2 warehouses in the USA right now and planning to set one in Europe.

6. A good logistics service is vital in reducing the dropshipping time. If you are dropshipping from China, I believe you are familiar with ePacket, cheap and fast. But I would like to recommend a better method, CJPacket, which is much faster and cheaper than ePacket. CJ packet is CJ's own logistics and proved to be reliable, fast and successful.

7. Use intelligent analytics to predict product demand. 

Some areas or regions tend to have demands for certain product categories. For example, regions which, during a time in the year, are extremely hot and humid may need copious air conditioners or coolers. You need analytic's or numbers to predict demand for certain products in certain regions. Accordingly, you can preemptively have sufficient stocks at warehouses in those regions so that you do not miss out on fulfilling a customer request.

8. Avoid committing to a too ambitious delivery timeline to the customer. 

You do not want to commit to an unrealistic or unsustainable delivery timeline and incur customer wrath. However, you need to maintain a fine balance here — you may set an over-aggressive timeline and be unable to sustain it or have a too-relaxed timeline and see customers abandoning shopping carts. In the latter case, your loss can be your competitors' gain. You do not want to deliver after your competitors do. Your delivery time will depend on your supply chain efficiency and you should constantly strive to improve efficiency. Depending on your supply chain efficiency level, set a delivery timeline on the online storefront so that it is visible to the customer.