Introduction
When starting your dropshipping store, you may be wondering if it is best to stock one product or go the multi-product route. Both of these solutions can work, and as with any business strategy, each has its own specific nuances, advantages, and disadvantages.
Your ultimate decision will be based on what your objectives are, and it is, therefore, imperative to have identified these before starting your store. There are various aspects to take into consideration that will impact your decision, and it is worth asking yourself the following questions:
- How much time are you prepared to commit to your store on a daily basis?
- Customer service
- Store maintenance
- How much time and money are you prepared to spend on branding and marketing your store and products?
- Optimising your site
- Running ad campaigns
- Product promotions
- Updating social media
- Are you looking for a more passive income stream?
- Do you have a specific area of expertise, for example, a niche market?
- What is your current skill level?
Dropshipping store strategies
It is important to understand the different types of dropshipping stores and the strategic approach each one uses. There are 3 main types of dropshipping stores:
- One-product store
- General store (multi-product)
- Niche store (multi-product)
Each of the above strategies is different and requires a different approach. Understanding how each store operates and which aspects you need to prioritise or focus on is critical. Let’s look at each one in detail.
One-product dropshipping stores
As the number suggests, one product store sells one product in a specific category. These products generally will have variants of that product and can include accessories that will go a long way to contributing to your upsell strategy.
Advantages of one-product dropshipping stores
The one-product store strategy has many advantages most of which can be attributed to the simplicity that one product provides.
Customer perceptions
One-product stores are often perceived as more trustworthy, based on assumptions due to your store’s specialisation, that you must be an expert in this area. This leads to the assumption that your products must therefore be of superior quality.
Branding and marketing
It is far simpler to create a brand identity around one product as opposed to a niche market or general store. And from a marketing perspective, it is straightforward to identify who your target market or audience is, enabling your branding and marketing campaigns to be highly focused and cost effective.
Future marketing campaigns will be easier as you can target your existing audience, knowing that they are interested in your unique product.
Your business is also more likely to rank from a search engine optimisation perspective due to the specific longtail keywords that are being searched for. This will definitely help with your conversion rates as, firstly, your potential customers are searching for a very specific product. Secondly, customers that are searching for a specific product are more likely to click on specialist stores as opposed to general stores.
Setting up your store
It goes without saying that setting up a one-product store will be a lot easier and faster than creating a niche or general store. However, having one product to focus on reduces the amount of work substantially.
People often underestimate the time it takes to create exciting and engaging product descriptions, images, or videos, as well as ensuring that each of them is optimised from an SEO perspective. It is also far easier to make changes to a single product range than one with multiple products, each with its own nuances.
Sourcing your product
Managing a single-product store is a dream when it comes to dealing with suppliers!
Building a meaningful relationship with a key supplier has many advantages. Once your store gains traction and generates volume, it is easier to negotiate a better cost price, thereby increasing your margins. If the volume of orders is spread across several suppliers, you won’t have as much leverage.
And let’s be honest, no one likes to have administrative challenges. Dealing with 1 supplier and 1 product is far less admin-intensive than dealing with 5 suppliers and 50 products. As a result, you are less likely to run into challenges from a quality and delivery perspective.
One product store challenges
By this stage, you may be feeling like a one-product store is the way to go, but it’s worth noting that it also has some significant challenges,
One-product stores are more likely to fail at the beginning than multi-product or niche stores. The best comparison is that old adage of not putting all your eggs in one basket. If your chosen product doesn’t initially sell or gain traction, you have no other products to compensate for its lack of demand.
As your store is only focused on a single product, keeping your potential customer’s attention can be more challenging, so your branding needs to be on point. So differentiating yourself from your competition will need to be a priority, and you need to create unique content and custom images to highlight your store’s speciality.
General dropshipping stores
General stores sell products from all categories; in other words, the product selection has no specific theme. A popular general store strategy is to sell trending products. However, as they are not limited to a specific category, they can change their products according to what is in demand and becoming more popular. These types of stores will also focus on best sellers and those impulse-buy types of products.
Advantages of general dropshipping stores
Just like most of a one-product store’s advantages stem from its simplicity, many of a general store’s advantages stem from its flexibility to “test” the market.
Product independence
Unlike a one-product store, you are not dependent on a single product for your store to be profitable. If one of your product ranges is not working, you have other products that compensate for its lack of performance. And ultimately, you can easily replace it with another product.
Product flexibility
One of the biggest advantages of starting a general store is its flexibility from a product perspective. By offering a wide range of products, you can quickly gauge your customer’s interests and test new products without risking your entire range.
Similarly, because a specific category or niche does not limit you, you can add trending, best sellers or impulse buy products without adjusting your entire branding strategy.
Customer insights
Having a multi-product store means you have a wide audience, allowing you to target multiple market segments. In other words, you can test the market through ad campaigns where you can target different audiences with various products, which will provide those all-important insights as to what strategy/products are most effective in which areas.
General dropshipping store challenges
As we mentioned earlier, people often underestimate the time it takes to create exciting and engaging product descriptions, images, or videos, as well as ensuring that each of them is optimised from an SEO perspective. Doing that across multiple products is time-consuming.
Even though platforms like Shopify have simplified the process to some extent, creating custom product descriptions and images is what takes the most time.
Marketing
Future targeted marketing campaigns based on past customer interactions can be challenging as your customer base is made up of a diverse range of people with varying interests. You cannot take advantage of much commonality from a marketing perspective.
General stores don’t tend to gain much organic traffic as your store will not be seen as an authority relating to specific keywords.
Continuous research
Multi-product stores are a definite no-no for anyone looking for a more passive income stream! That is, general stores tend to work on selling those trending/best-seller products. And as a result, you must continually research, trying to identify the latest trends and products. You need to always be on the lookout for the latest thing!!
Multiple products = multiple suppliers
Generally speaking, multiple products equals multiple suppliers, bringing along its own complexities.
Asides from the fact that dealing with multiple suppliers reduces the likelihood of being able to negotiate on cost prices as your volume is spread and not concentrated with one supplier. This is particularly important when you are a smaller store – it is far wiser to be relatively important to one supplier than unimportant to multiple suppliers.
And finally, you are more likely to land up with customer support challenges with multiple suppliers. This can be especially challenging when a customer places an order containing a number of products from different suppliers, which can negatively impact your delivery obligations.
Niche dropshipping stores
Niche stores sell multiple products from the same category; however, those categories can be as broad as a clothing store or a store focusing only on men’s clothing.
Advantages of niche dropshipping stores
Customer perceptions
Niche stores, like one-product stores, are often perceived as more trustworthy. This is based purely on the assumption that because your store focuses on a particular niche, you are more likely an authority on the subject, and as a result, your products are probably of high quality.
Branding and marketing
A niche market makes it far easier to identify your target market or audience, and as in the one-product store, this will enable your branding and marketing campaigns to be highly focused and cost-effective. These campaigns tend to have higher conversion rates as the potential customer is already interested in your market segment.
Future marketing campaigns will be easier as you can target your existing audience, knowing that they are interested in the type of products you sell.
As a niche store, it will also be easier to rank from an SEO perspective as you can optimise your pages, create targeted content and appear in relevant search terms.
Product independence
Unlike a one-product store, you are not dependent on a single product for your store to be profitable. Instead, you can offer a variety of products within a specific niche, creating that much-needed diversification often lacking in a one-product store.
Niche dropshipping store challenges
Niche dropshipping store challenges are similar to those of a one-product store.
If your niche is not popular and you are battling to make sales or gain traction, there are no other products to compensate for its poor performance.
As your store is focused on a niche market, keeping your potential customer’s attention can be more challenging, so your branding needs to be on point. Differentiating yourself from your competition will need to be a priority, and you need to create unique content and custom images to highlight your store’s speciality. And as always, creating engaging and original content demonstrating your authority on the subject is also key.
Conclusion
As you can see, all three have their own specific nuances, advantages, and disadvantages. Our least favorite is the general store, as you will battle to differentiate yourself from your competition, and it is the most time-consuming out of all 3 of the strategies.
Although the one-product store has many advantages, it is worth remembering that it is more likely to fail than a multi-product store. On the other hand, a niche store has many of the same advantages as a one-product store but will provide that sought-after product diversification.
At the end of the day, the best option will depend on the type of products you are selling, as well as what your objectives are.
