Getting Started With Oberlo
Let's talk about Oberlo!
What is Dropshipping?
It is a supply chain management method in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer, another retailer, or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer.
It is also a great way to help pre-commerce merchants break into the online marketplace, and enables our existing merchants to expand their product offerings with just a few clicks.
How does drop shipping work?
Since Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn't keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. As a result, the merchant never sees or handles the product.
Oberlo is a Shopify supported app that allows merchants to easily import products to their Shopify store, from Oberlo Supply and AliExpress and then use dropshipping to ship their products directly to their customers. Since the company’s founding in 2015, merchants using Oberlo have sold over 85 million products. Shopify purchased Oberlo in 2017.
Oberlo is a free app, and automatically sets merchants up on the Starter plan that allows for 500 product imports, and 50 orders per month. If merchants exceed that limit, they will need to upgrade their subscription in order to process those remaining orders or import excess products. Merchants can cancel their Oberlo subscription by deleting the app, or by closing their Shopify store.
Getting started with Oberlo
Follow along and install Oberlo on your test shop. You can find it in the Shopify App Store.
When you’ve installed the app, it will take you directly to the Oberlo dashboard. It looks like this:
- Dashboard: Oberlo dashboard overview.
- Products: Search products, view your import list, and see a list of products you’ve pushed to your shop.
- Orders: A list of your open Oberlo product orders.
- Notifications: Notifications about product availability and pricing changes.
- Help Center: Oberlo community, blog, help center and support contact information.
- Admin: Takes you to your Shopify admin.
- Settings: Change your shop settings, manage pricing rules, update payment information and manage report settings
- Profile: Manage your profile, change your subscription and log out.
You can access Oberlo from your store admin by clicking Apps > Oberlo.
Oberlo Supply and AliExpress are two different marketplaces.
Oberlo Supply is an internal marketplace, where you can find a wide range of products from various suppliers, and dropship them using the app.
AliExpress is an online retail service that connects directly with the Oberlo app. It is a marketplace of vendors, mainly within China, that offer the sale of products internationally.
The Oberlo app allows merchants to import products from both of these marketplaces.
Merchants can follow these steps to import products to their Shopify store: Click the Products icon in the left-hand menu:
Enter your search terms, select a category, then click Search to bring up a list of products.
Hover over the product and click Add to Import List.
If you’re still deciding, click on the product to see more details.
Then click the Add to Import List button to begin the import process.
Next, click on Products in the left-hand admin, and then click Import List. This will take you to a list of products that you’ve selected for your store.
Here you’ll have the option to edit the product description, add tags, edit variants, and select product images before pushing the product to your shop.
Click Push All Products to Shop to publish your entire list of products to your Shopify store, or click Push Product to Shop to publish individual products.
Important: Never duplicate Oberlo products in Shopify, or delete and re-import Oberlo products via CSV. This severs the sync with Oberlo. Orders for Oberlo products will then need to be fulfilled manually and won’t be affected by Oberlo’s automatic updates for shipping.
Oberlo products are synced by specific back-end code. If the product is altered by duplication, variants created manually, or imported via CSV, Oberlo can no longer read the code - it’s as if it doesn’t exist at all.
To create pricing rules, click on Settings > Global Pricing Rules.
The first screen the merchant will see is the global pricing rules settings. This allows them to set general price markup rules for their entire catalogue of Oberlo products.
For example, a product that costs $10 USD would have it’s price set at $20 USD (10 X 2 = 20). With this setup, when a $20 product is purchased, $10 is paid to Oberlo and the merchant keeps $10.
Merchants can use the advanced pricing rules to set their markup cost based on the cost ranges of products.
For example, products in the range of $0 - $10 have a 1x price multiplier, products in the range of $10.01 - $20 have a 1.5x price multiplier.
The money that is paid for the product that is being ordered goes directly to the supplier. Oberlo does not collect any additional commissions from orders.
The pricing rules that the merchant sets will be automatically applied when they push their products to their store:
To see what delivery methods are available for a product, click on the product, then click the shipping details dropdown. You’ll see a pop up open with all of the available shipping methods.
This is what it looks like with Oberlo Supply:
This is what it looks like with AliExpress:
Click Settings > Suppliers to choose your preferred method of shipping. This will be the default method for all of the orders.
We recommend that merchants choose ePacket for shipping. This method is a free to the low-cost option available from most suppliers, with one of the shorter delivery times ranging from 10 - 20 days.
Long shipping times are one of the biggest concerns that merchants face. It is the merchant's responsibility to set clear expectations by defining a shipping policy and displaying it properly on their website. Most suppliers offer other shipping methods, such as DHL, FedEx or USPS, but the shipping costs for those companies often cost more than the products themselves, another reason that we recommend ePacket.
In the Custom note section, merchants should leave a note for suppliers to let them know that the merchant is a dropshipper, and not to include any branding or invoices in the packages.
Important: When a merchant is using Oberlo, there is no need to use Shopify Shipping or purchase labels.
To order products from Oberlo Supply, merchants can follow these steps:
Click on the Orders tab in the left-hand admin:
This will take you to your Order dashboard:
Click on Order Products. In the pop-up, click the Order Products button to confirm your payment information and place your order with the supplier.
Once you’ve placed your order, the status icon will update in your order list.
Ordering products from AliExpress
To start the ordering process, click on the Order product button. If the order contains items from different suppliers, click the Order AliExpress Products button:
You will be directed to AliExpress website, where items will be added to a shopping cart automatically. You will be asked to log into your AliExpress account. If you don't have one, create it for free.
Do not place orders as a guest as you won't be able to track them later and your customer will receive a letter from AliExpress.
After that, you will be redirected to the order confirmation page, where Oberlo Chrome Extension will fill in customer's shipping information. If something is not added automatically, fill in manually. You will only need to scroll down, add your credit card details and click on "Confirm and Pay" button. You can choose to save your CC details for future orders.
After you place the order, you can see it on AliExpress > My Orders page.
When a merchant places an order for an Oberlo Supply product, the app will automatically fulfill the orders in their Shopify admin as soon as the supplier has shipped the products.
Important: In order to use Oberlo’s automatic order fulfillment feature, the merchant must select Do not automatically fulfill any of the order’s line items in Settings > Checkout.
When the supplier has shipped the order, the status icon will update to Shipped.
This will update the fulfillment status of the order in your Shopify admin:
Important: Most apps do not integrate properly with Oberlo, especially the ones that involve product bundling and order fulfillment. If you see errors here, make sure the merchant does not have those types of apps installed.
These types of apps create variants with a discounted price, and the variants created on Shopify won't sync with Oberlo. Oberlo only recognizes items and variants that were imported directly through the Oberlo app.
Examples of these types of apps are Quantity Breaks and Product Bundles.
Fulfilling AliExpress orders
After 3-7 days an order is shipped by an AliExpress supplier and the status of the order changes from Payment being verified to Awaiting delivery. A tracking code will also appear next to the order.
Once the tracking code appears next to the order on AliExpress, you need to fulfill your order in the Shopify admin.
Important: It is better to log in to your AliExpress account in another browser tab before ordering products. This way the automation process will not be disturbed. Also, make sure your AliExpress cart is empty before placing a new order.
Oberlo Chrome extension is a tool that allows merchants to link products previously imported from AliExpress to Oberlo. You can install it from the Chrome web store.
With the Oberlo Chrome extension installed, merchants can browse AliExpress and add products to their Oberlo import list. Merchants must be using Chrome and the Oberlo Chrome extension if they plan on importing products directly from AliExpress.
Once the extension is installed, merchants will see the Oberlo icon in the bottom right corner of the screen. When they find a product, they can click this icon to add it to the Oberlo import list. Products can then be pushed to the store from the Oberlo app.
Overriding products
Sometimes a merchant may have to override products they have already imported into their Shopify store. This may be because:
- A product is out of sync. If this is the case, orders will be missing in Oberlo.
- To change the supplier of the product. If the merchant finds another supplier who offers a better price, this will replace it and allow orders to still be processed correctly.
- The merchant has manually added AliExpress products to Shopify. This will allow them to connect the products directly through Oberlo, to automate their ordering process, as opposed to doing it all manually.
- When a merchant has the auto-updates feature turned on, and the inventory is set to “unpublish.” This could cause products to be deleted. This happens when the supplier makes changes on their end such as editing skus or variants. The override will allow to upload the same product that is still available by the supplier, but was removed.
Merchants can import previously existing products from AliExpress to Oberlo. Search the product in Oberlo and add it to your import list. Click on Products > Import List and then click the Action dropdown menu. Click on Select product to override.
Select the products to change and then click the Override button:
Next, the merchant can click the Push and override button to push the product to their shop and override the existing product.
