INTERGRATION OF OBERLO AND SHOPIFY

What comes to mind when the term E-commerce is used? Do you immediately resort to theoretical understanding complicating its application and use as limited only to the millennials who came up and developed the idea? In general, E-commerce refers to the transaction of buying and selling goods online through provided platforms that make the task simpler. Shopify is an e-commerce takes away the bulk of personal dealings and transactions, transcending past physical barriers in an effort to simplify matters both for the seller and buyer.

How does Shopify work? Shopify is a platform that is tailored to suit an individual’s aspirations whether as a buyer or seller, basically, it helps you run your business only by a click of a button. If you are a new user, the platform has a step-by-step guide feature to slowly introduce you to its features and provides guidance to those looking to switch platforms.

As an E-commerce platform, shopify looks on to ways of making the cost of business easier and faster and as such has adopted to customize its drop shipping feature. To expound this, shopify hosts various e-commerce shops but has exclusive use of apps such as, Oberlo.

What is Oberlo? Oberlo is an app which acts as connectors between the supplier market and the e-commerce shop where the merchant items are displayed that is exclusively in use for the Shopify platform, and lets you import products directly from Chinese super store Aliexpress via the promotion use and enhancement of drop shipping.

Drop shipping is a business model in which a merchant needs not keep stock, but instead handles supple and distribution to clients directly from the manufacturer.

The Oberlo app acts as a drop shipping solution and simplifies product importation directly from suppliers into the store and helps monitor any inventory change or pricing between the market place and the display shop.

To access Oberlo, one can do it in two ways; through the official Oberlo website or from the Shopify app marketplace listing for Oberlo, in which after the installation the app will be saved onto your shopify store where you can choose a free trial option and later pick a preferred payment plan.

How do I import products from Oberlo to shopify store? Importation of a product can be done via the product URL, product issued ID or by implementation of the Oberlo Chrome Extension (which is installed). This is however limited to computers and not accessible to tablets or any hand held device. Open the Aliexpress website and begin to browse for the products your interested in, each product has information such as the price of the product, its rating, the number of times it has been sold and supplier information. With the Oberlo app installed, you will notice the Oberlo icon appears next to a product when you move a mouse over it and the same tag appears on every product page on the Aliexpresswebsite. If you find the product you want to import all one has to do is click on the Oberlo tag and the item will be added to your import list.

When done, open the import list page where you can modify the products before they are added to your store. Here, you can change the name, add the item to a collection and define tags. The description of the item can also be changed and you can set which images are to be imported. From here all the products can be pushed to your shopify shop individually or as a group at the same time.

Once imported all the items are displayed on the �My Products’ page and here you can delete the product from shopify and modify any information relevant to the product.

The integration of the shopify e-commerce platform and the Oberlo app as an exclusive feature enables drop shipping to be as simple as possible to the buyer and seller as well by providing added features such as; Product customization, Creation of multiple user accounts, Tracking of sales, Price automations, Change of product suppliers and tracking of shipment.