Explaining Drop Ship Websites And Product Feeds

Many small home businesses are into the drop shipping business now

. They would have a website that just receives the order. The purchased item is stocked and shipped by the drop shipper. However, it may not be as simple as that. There are changes at the suppliers end often, and you must adjust accordingly to make the business run smoothly. For instance, certain products may go out of stock, and there can be those that the supplier is not offering anymore. Then there could be some products that the supplier has added recently. If you do not know about these additions, you will not be able to offer them to your customers. Often, the drop shipper might as well change the pricing of some items.

Product feeds help you find out all these changes. Once you know about them, you can make the necessary adjustments.

What Are Product Feeds?

A product feed is a file that contains detailed product information. Your drop ship supplier should be providing this file to you from time to time. The file contains detailed information about all the products offered, their individual prices, and maybe even the number of items on stock. If you are selling online, you must also be able to download information about all the products you are offering from your website.

Once you have both the files, you should run a comparison.

What You Should Look For When Comparing The Product Feeds

Identifying products that are out of stock: Once you compare both the files, you can easily find out the products that are still on offer at your website but are out of stock at your suppliers end. You should promptly remove these products from your website.

Products that have been discontinued: Often suppliers discontinue offering certain items. The product will simply disappear from feed file supplied to you once the last item has been dispatched. Often the supplier will not send you any personal information about these discontinued products. You can find it out from the files, though. So you must compare the two files to identify these.

Identifying products whose prices have been changed: Sometimes the supplier might increase or even decrease the price of certain products. If the price has been increased, you will have to increase the sales price at your website as well, because otherwise you will end up with a loss. On the other hand, if the price has been reduced, it is for you to decide whether you want to keep selling at the same price for higher margins, or whether you want to reduce the price for greater competitive edge.

Identifying products that can be added: The supplier may add some products to stock that you may not be aware of. However, by comparing the product feed, you can find out about them, and you can then offer these items from your website as well.

by: Jane M Dawson

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