E-commerce retail businesses who are looking to expand into new markets can opt for wholesaling. Companies that have the potential of manufacturing large quantities of products can readily sell their items through a B2B Model that allows users to set up a wholesale storefront as an extension of their existing online store to help them expand their businesses.
This article will provide a comprehensive understanding of the Shopify Wholesale Channel. It will also mention the key features and benefits that users get while using Shopify Wholesale Channel to fulfil their wholesaling needs.
Table of Contents
Prerequisites
- Understanding of Content Management Systems.
Introduction to Shopify
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Shopify is an Ottawa-based Software as a Service providing company that operates in the eCommerce industry. It is a Cloud-based platform used to build and host eCommerce websites. Shopify is the world’s most popular Content Management System that companies use to open online stores for selling their products in a digital space. Shopify is different from other widely used CMS platforms like WordPress and Blogger as it is used to create websites solely for eCommerce businesses. Small and Medium-sized firms choose Shopify to scale up their business as the platform allows them to reach a broader audience that helps them increase Sales figures.
Shopify provides various features and tools that enable users to effectively carry out Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Customer Engagement Operations. It comes with thousands of pre-built website templates that can be customized according to users’ needs. With Shopify, users can create aesthetic-looking websites that help improve their brand value.
Shopify is a multi-channel CMS platform that allows users to sell and advertise their products on various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Multi-channel Marketing helps businesses tremendously increase their online visibility and customer engagement. It is a Subscription-based Service that hosts and manages websites optimized for smartphones. Shopify also provides features to let users manage their shipment and payment needs effortlessly.
Over time, Shopify has gained immense popularity and has more than one million clients spread across over 170 Countries worldwide. Many industry-leading companies like KKW Beauty, FitBit, Penguin Books, Hyatt Hotel Corp, RedBull, Kylie Cosmetics, and others use Shopify as a preferred platform to meet their eCommerce needs.
4 Key Features of Shopify
Shopify being the world’s most used CMS platform in the eCommerce industry offers numerous features that help users sell their products. Below are a few notable features provided by Shopify:
1) Shopify Analytics
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Shopify comes with various analytics tools that let users understand the performance of their eCommerce websites. Users get the benefit of viewing all critical analytics data, including total sales, customer actions, customer demographics, and many more, on a unified dashboard that helps them make better and quicker business decisions. Shopify offers support to multiple third-party integrations, including Google Analytics, that can be used to enhance the platform’s analytics capabilities further.
2) Shopify POS
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It is a feature offered by Shopify that lets users sell their products in the real world through pop-up stores. The purchases made in offline sales are directly connected with the company’s Shopify inventory that eliminate the need for maintaining separate sales records for online and offline Sales. The smartphone application is available on Apple devices and can also be used to create Marketing Campaigns for walk-in customers.
3) Shopify Dropshipping
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Shopify Dropshipping allows companies to tie up with wholesalers and list third-party items on their websites. Companies need to forward purchasing information like billing addresses to wholesalers, who then take care of the entire shipping process on behalf of the company. This especially helps small businesses to sell a wide variety of products through their online stores. Shopify app market has many applications like Oberlo, CJDropshipping, and Trends that enable users to drop ship products.
4) Shopify SEO
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Effective Search Engine Optimization is vital for businesses to expand their online presence. Shopify comes with many out-of-the-box SEO tools that help users optimize their websites to improve their search rankings on multiple search engines. Increased online visibility leads to more traffic and customer engagement on websites. Shopify also provides support for hundreds of third-party app integrations to further enhance the platform’s SEO capabilities. Some of the notable applications available on the Shopify app store include Smart SEO, DH SEO All-in-one, Plug-In SEO, and AVADA SEO.
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Understanding Shopify Wholesale Channel
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Wholesaling on Shopify allows users to offer the same products to wholesalers that are listed on their online store at a different price point. This feature allows companies to expand their business by creating separate storefronts that are extensions of online stores. The wholesale storefronts are password-protected, so users need not worry about security issues. In the Shopify Wholesale, Users also get the option of listing wholesale-only products to their stores. Shopify allows users to set minimum, maximum, and quantity increments for each product.
Shopify Wholesale Channel is a good option for companies with enough product stocks but does not want to invest more in Marketing to grow their businesses. This feature is only available for users who have subscribed to Shopify Plus. The Handshake Marketplace can be used to sell wholesale products if someone has not subscribed to Shopify Plus. Users can upgrade to Shopify Plus at a minimum price of $2000 per month.
4 Shopify Wholesale Channel Features
Shopify wholesale channel comes with many useful tools and features that let users effortlessly manage and operate their wholesale business. Below are a few notable features of the same:
1) Customer Dashboard
Wholesale customers need to stay more connected and informed about their products and shipments as compared to online retail customers. Shopify addressed this need and provided dedicated customer dashboards that display all the critical information regarding their orders. Shopify Wholesale customers can view their orders, make payments, reorder products, and lots more using the customer dashboard feature.
2) Automated Updates
Shopify Wholesale solution automates the process of sending notifications to customers regarding any developments in their orders or payments. Users get access to a centralized customer order page that displays all necessary information, including transaction history, purchasing history, and many more. Shopify Wholesale users can send automated emails and messages to wholesale customers about any updates from the customer order page.
3) Personalized Pricing
Unlike others, Shopify offers various personalized pricing options for Wholesale Customers that users can set according to their needs and strategies. Users get to set flexible prices for each product listed on their storefront for wholesale customers. Shopify has also provided a feature that lets users fix a minimum and a maximum number of orders for particular products. These features help businesses carry out their operations effectively without compromising on margins and profits. Users get the option of setting percentage or volume-based pricing for wholesale customers. These flexible pricing options enable eCommerce companies to make better decisions for increasing Sales.
4) Custom Domain
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A Custom Domain helps customers find a website quickly. Shopify lets users set custom domains for their wholesales channel storefronts that help them increase their brand value. Domains for online and wholesale stores remain different, making it easier for users to manage and customers to navigate.
For example, an online store’s domain name is “www.commerceonline.com“, and users can create a separate domain for their wholesale storefront like “www.wholesale.commerceonline.com“.
4 Benefits of Shopify Wholesale Channel
Users get many benefits and advantages while using Shopify Wholesale Channel to sell products online to wholesale customers. Below are a few notable benefits of using Shopify for wholesaling:
1) Increased Market Reach
Shopify Wholesale customers help companies considerably boost their online visibility through indirect promotions. If products offered by companies are up to the mark, wholesale customers can help them increase their market reach that leads to a boost in Sales.
2) Secure and Reliable
Shopify Warehouse offers password protection for storefronts that makes it a secure platform. Additionally, all the websites built on Shopify come with SSL certification and are L1 PCI compliant to ensure maximum security of customer data, including payment details, shopping address, phone numbers and many more.
3) Better Management
Shopify Wholesale users have access to the customer order page, the entire management process becomes much simpler. All the necessary order and transaction information gets displayed on a unified screen that helps users make quicker management decisions and run their business smoothly. Users also do not need to worry about collecting Sales Taxes while using Shopify, as it is the responsibility of wholesale customers. Wholesaling is a more stable way of generating revenue as wholesale customers tend to place repeated orders for an extended period of time compared to retail customers.
4) Better Margins
Shopify Wholesale Channel can help users increase their margins on products to help them accelerate their growth. With features like flexible pricing for products and variants, minimum order quantity, and volume-based pricing, companies strategize their pricing policies to increase margins and earn more profits. As businesses grow, the volume of orders keeps increasing from wholesale customers. Increased production volume causes a decline in manufacturing costs that leads to increased profits.
Conclusion
Shopify Wholesale Channel is an effective way for businesses to scale up their operations and enter new markets. The aforementioned features and benefits will help companies carry out their operations effortlessly while increasing profits.
As you get started with Shopify Wholesale, vast volumes of data linked with your customers, products, and services will be generated. Handling this massive amount of data across all of your company’s applications can be a difficult undertaking. Integrating, Cleaning, Transforming, and Loading your data into a Data Warehouse for future business analysis would demand a portion of your engineering bandwidth. A Cloud-Based ETL tool like Hevo Data can successfully automate all of this.
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Hevo Data with its strong integration with 100+ Sources & BI tools such as Shopify (Free Data Source), allows you to not only export data from sources & load data in the destinations, but also transform & enrich your data, & make it analysis-ready so that you can focus only on your key business needs and perform insightful analysis using BI tools.
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Share your experience with Shopify Wholesale in the comments section below.