DEV Community: Luk C

Why Shoplazza choose Amazon Web Service AWS as primary infrastructural platform - episode#1

Luk C — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 22:01:08 +0000

November 2021
Estimated reading time: 20 mins

Shoplazza is a leading global eCommerce Saas platform offering trusted powerful tools for global merchants to start, grow, market and manage their business of any size digitally, in simple terms, bring the brick-and-mortar stores online. Shoplazza commits to make eBusiness simpler, cheaper and better for anyone with its global platform and services that are engineered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to deliver reliable, safe, seamless online shopping experiences for consumers around the world. Our merchants can effectively and economically leverage their businesses to scale at a global scope in just a few clicks.

Table of contents:
Episode 1
Shoplazza Software-as-a-Service model
Cloud computing concept
Episode 2
What is AWS and services offered?
Episode 3
Shoplazza eCommerce architecture
Episode 4
Deployment of Shoplazza applications

Shoplazza SaaS model

Whether you're a startup entrepreneur with an idea for a revolutionary new product or service, or you are anxiously working hard to expand present business at national or international scope. An online store with fully-operational-cycle functions, where customers from all over the world can easily find and access your digital eCommerce business, has been a trendy and proven business model for merchants of all sizes.

Traditionally, merchants either build a website or hire an expert to do that. However, as the rapid advancements in online eCommerce technology, anyone with a willing mind now is empowered and enabled by Shoplazza SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) based products. Okay, enough for the mystical high-tech jargon.

In plain English, Shoplazza offers an online platform where global merchants can access its unique products and services via monthly or annual subscriptions for building a fully functional online eCommerce store, such as with the implementations of product display, email subscription, traffic redirections, digital ads, shipping trackings, payment gateways and other business features that you need to complete a commerce transaction in any brick and mortar shops. In Shoplazza's case, you as a merchant only need to focus on your most important tasks, such as product design, customer services. On the other hand, Shoplazza, as a store-building-service-provider, will manage, maintain and scale all the online infrastructural systems, such as cyber security, platform stability, global web accessing speed, server side scaling etc.

This is roughly how Shoplazza serves global merchants, even though there are so much more
Underlying works being carried out behind the scene. Therefore, a clear boundary is drawn here, Shoplazza offers powerful online store building tools and management systems to merchants who are responsible for building, selling, managing any activities concerning their trademarks, products and services.

Why SaaS?

We've briefly covered the topic of SaaS and Shoplazza SaaS models. But you may still scratch your head with a big WHY? Why SaaS for eCommerce?

Let's put ourselves in a simple scenario. After a successful marketing campaign and concerted sales effort, dozens of customers either subscribe to your services or place dozens of orders for your products. Traditionally, merchants build their own store from scratch, rent servers and purchase storage to allow and maintain a certain acceptable speed for customers to access, browse, order or take other activities. It is expensive, inconvenient and complicated to scale up with your back-end resources. Once hardwares are invested, if the black-friday seasons once passed, traffic and in-bound order related processing workload reduces, it is not an economic way to handle regular business seasonal surges.

You’re ecstatic—until you realize you never architected your product for this level of success. You were so busy coding, raising capital, marketing, and selling, buying hardwares and softwares. But you never planned how you could scale your business freely with a Saas product.

With Shoplazza's one-stop drag-n-drop store-building tools, merchants can enjoy totally worry-free business solutions as Shoplazza handles elastic scaling up-n-down for back-end systems. Also, tons of free-of-charge built-in applications that help merchants to manage all aspects of their digital business are offered in Shoplazza AppStore, which are also deployed through AWS to ensure merchants at any corner of the world have a seamless experience of applying the needed Shoplazza built-in applications to their operations. We will talk about application deployment later at episode 4.

Benefits of moving your business to Shoplazza cloud

Go-to-Cloud is a very trendy topic during recent years, as the booming of cloud technologies. In fact, cloud computing includes tools and applications like data storage, servers, databases, networking and software. Rather than owning their own computing infrastructure or data centers, companies can rent access to anything from applications to storage from a cloud service provider.

Cloud computing transforms IT infrastructure into a utility: It lets you ‘plug into' infrastructure via the internet, and use computing resources without installing and maintaining them on-premises.

Cloud computing is on-demand access, via the internet, to computing resources—applications, servers (physical servers and virtual servers), data storage, development tools, networking capabilities, and more—hosted at a remote data center managed by a cloud services provider (or CSP). The CSP makes these resources available for a monthly subscription fee or bills them according to usage.
Compared to traditional on-premises IT, and depending on the cloud services you select, cloud computing helps do the following:
Lower IT costs: Cloud lets you offload some or most of the costs and effort of purchasing, installing, configuring, and managing your own on-premises infrastructure.
Improve agility and time-to-value: With cloud, your organization can start using enterprise applications in minutes, instead of waiting weeks or months for IT to respond to a request, purchase and configure supporting hardware, and install software. Cloud also lets you empower certain users—specifically developers and data scientists—to help themselves to software and support infrastructure.
Scale more easily and cost-effectively: Cloud provides elasticity—instead of purchasing excess capacity that sits unused during slow periods, you can scale capacity up and down in response to spikes and dips in traffic. You can also take advantage of your cloud provider’s global network to spread your applications closer to users around the world.

The term ‘cloud computing’ also refers to the technology that makes cloud work. This includes some form of virtualized IT infrastructure—servers, operating system software, networking, and other infrastructure that’s abstracted, using special software, so that it can be pooled and divided irrespective of physical hardware boundaries. For example, a single hardware server can be divided into multiple virtual servers.

Virtualization enables cloud providers to make maximum use of their data center resources. Not surprisingly, many corporations have adopted the cloud delivery model for their on-premises infrastructure so they can realize maximum utilization and cost savings vs. traditional IT infrastructure and offer the same self-service and agility to their end-users.

If you use a computer or mobile device at home or at work, you almost certainly use some form of cloud computing every day, whether it’s a cloud application like Google Gmail or Salesforce, streaming media like Netflix, or cloud file storage like Dropbox. According to a recent survey, 92% of organizations use cloud today (link resides outside IBM), and most of them plan to use it more within the next year.

Today, we covered a few simple concepts concerning cloud services and Shoplazza SaaS model. Next time, we will talk about AWS services and why Shoplazza chose AWS.
To subscribe to Shoplazza Blog for free learning, click here.
To start your 7-day free trial with Shoplazza store building products, click here.

Creating a CRUD API With Node js - Shoplazza coding camp

Luk C — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 21:57:56 +0000

As a application developer, are you dazzled by all those cutting age fancy terminologies and jargons? If you are a Javascripter, lucky you, Node.js definitely will help you manage the back-end during your AppDev process. If you are new to eCommerce platform App development domain, it's imperative to understand and get your hands dirty on the construction of API. There are several ways to build API, today I will use Node.js (based on Javascript language) to build a CRUD API.

Don't worry, let's get to some basic concepts before we hit on the road.

What is CRUD?
CRUD stands for Create, Read, Update, and Delete.

Create - To insert any record to the database.
Read - To retrieve records from the database.
Update - To update a record in the database.
Delete - To delete a record in the database.
Express is one of the most popular web frameworks for node.js. It is built on top of node.js http module, and adds support for routing, middleware, view system etc. It is very simple and minimal, unlike other frameworks that try do way to much, thereby reducing the flexibility for developers to have their own design choices.

Mongoose is an ODM (Object Document Mapping) tool for Node.js and MongoDB. It helps you convert the objects in your code to documents in the database and vice versa.

Table of contents:
Create a Node project
Create an employee model
Create API
Read API
Update API
Delete API
Deployment (a topic for next time)
Creating a Node Project
To begin with, let's create a simple Node project named crud.

mkdir crud
cd crud/
npm init -y
touch index.js
package.json

"scripts": {
"start":"node index.js",
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
},
After creating it, install all the required packages like express, body-parser, and mongoose.

express - To structure our web application to handle multiple different HTTP requests.
body-parser - To read the request body and to parse it into JSON format.
mongoose - To connect with MongoDB.
npm install express
npm i body-parser
npm i mongoose
Once done, create the server file. To do that, copy the below code to your index.js file.

index.js

Just by starting the server, you should see hello world getting displayed on the browser. (http://localhost:8000/)

npm start

Also, create three other folders named Controller, Routes, and Models. My project structure looks like this.

project structure

Creating an Employee Model
To perform any database operation, the first thing we need is a schema. So let’s create it first.

Below, I have created an Employee schema with attributes empName, empEmail, and empMobile.

Models/emp.js

const mongoose = require('mongoose')const empSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
empName: {
type: String,
required: true
},
empEmail: {
type: String,
required: true
},
empMobile: {
type: String,
required: true
},
})module.exports = mongoose.model('Emp', empSchema)

Create API

Now let’s start creating a restful API. Initially, I am creating a Create API that inserts an employee recorded into our MongoDB database.

So, to do that, I am creating a routes file named emp.js where we write all our routes for the employee Model.

Routes/emp.js

const express = require('express')
var router = express()
const create = require('../controller/emp')
const bodyparser = require('body-parser');router.use(bodyparser.json())
router.post('/create',create.create)module.exports = router

The below code gets the request and response from the route and it creates an Emp object. Once created, it saves the object to MongoDB. If any error occurs, it is also handled automatically.

Controller/emp.js

Once done, call the employee route in the server file with a prefix /emp.

index.js

const router = require('./routes/emp')app.use('/emp',router)

Read API

Now let’s retrieve all the data that are stored in the database. To do that, create a new route.

Routes/emp.js

const express = require('express')
var router = express()
const create = require('../controller/emp')
const view = require('../controller/emp')
const bodyparser = require('body-parser');router.use(bodyparser.json())
router.post('/create',create.create)
router.get('/',view.view)module.exports = router

After creating the route, create a new function named view in the employee controller. Just by calling the function find, we can retrieve every record from the collection.

Controller/emp.js

const Emp = require('../models/emp')
const mongoose = require('mongoose')function create(req,res,next){
let empName = req.body.empName;
let empEmail = req.body.empEmail;
let empMobile = req.body.empMobile;
let emp = new Emp({
empName,
empEmail,
empMobile
})
emp.save().then((data)=>{
res.send(data)
})
}function view(req,res,next){
Emp.find({}).then((data)=>{
res.send(data)
})
}module.exports.create = create
module.exports.view = view
On visiting the URL http://localhost:8000/emp, you will see all the employee values getting displayed.

Update API

To create an update API, create another route as done above. To update a record, we make a patch or a put request.

Routes/emp.js

const update = require('../controller/emp')router.patch('/:id',update.update)

Now move towards the employee controller and create a new function named update which will update the employee record.

To update a record, we should find if the record exists in the database. This can be done by the findByIdAndUpdate method wherein we have to pass the _id of the record and the values, we want to change.

Controller/emp.js

function update(req,res,next){
Emp.findByIdAndUpdate(req.params.id,req.body, (err,emp)=>{
if (err) {
return res.status(500).send({error: "Problem with Updating the Employee recored "})
};
res.send({success: "Updation successfull"});
})
}module.exports.update = update

Make a Patch request to http://localhost:8000/emp/ with the data to be changed. This will update the employee record.

Delete API

Creating a Delete API view is the most simple one out of all. To delete a record from a database, we make adelete request. As we did earlier, create another route for deleting a record. The route should have a parameter id that tells which record should be deleted.

Routes/emp.js

const remove = require('../controller/emp')router.delete('/delete/:id',remove.remove)

Inside the controller, create a function named remove for deleting employee records from the database. Deleting a record can be done using the findByIdAndDelete method which is similar to the findByIdAndUpdate method. It also requires the same _id.

Controller/emp.js

function remove(req,res,next){
Emp.findByIdAndDelete(req.params.id, (err,emp)=>{
if(err){
return res.status(500).send({error: "Problem with Deleting the
Employee recored "})
}
res.send({success: 'Employee deleted successfully'})
})
}module.exports.remove = remove

On making a delete request to the URL http://localhost:8000/emp/delete, you can delete any record from that database.

There are many choices to deploy your applications, such as Heroku, we will discuss it next time.

Well, that's about it. Stay tuned with SHOPLAZZA blog!. Happy coding time!

Shoplazza's battle against review site bias

Luk C — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 18:59:29 +0000

Table of content:
Is review site offering unbiased reviews?
What is the common challenge?
Arguments from SHOPLAZZA

Biased reviews to popular website builders, well, it’s an inevitable topic as well as a common challenge that we all have to look into. Before we tackle on it, let’s take a quick look over a few basic definitions.

A review website. (According to Wikipedia)
A review site is a website on which reviews can be posted about people, businesses, products, or services. These sites may use Web 2.0 techniques to gather reviews from site users or may employ professional writers to author reviews on the topic of concern for the site.

Bias
Bias is a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief.[1] In science and engineering, a bias is a systematic error. Statistical bias results from an unfair sampling of a population, or from an estimation process that does not give accurate results on average.

Website builders (such as SHOPLAZZA, Shopify, BigCommerce etc.)
Website builders are tools that typically allow the construction of websites without manual code editing. They fall into two categories:

1) Online proprietary tools provided by web hosting companies. These are typically intended for users to build their private site. Some companies allow the site owner to install alternative tools (commercial or open-source) — the more complex of these may also be described as content management systems.

2) Offline software that runs on a computer, creating pages and which can then publish these pages on any host. (These are often considered to be “website design software”, rather than “website builders”.

Is review site offering unbiased reviews?
Online reviews are omnipresent in our day-to-day life, Google Reviews, TrustPilots, UberEats review etc. In short, we are required to give reviews almost every time we purchase a product or service. Usually, you get a lot thanks from vendors when giving a positive one, or an apology after posting a negative comment.

Basically, they can be categorized into two genres:
1) Review by submitting proofs.
2) Review without submitting any proofs.

What is the common challenge?
It is not as complicated as you might think. Allow me to break it down for you.

The context:
For SHOPLAZZA, as you may have already known, we provide global eCommerce solutions by offering leading online website building technologies and a basket of featured tools for worldwide merchants to build their online stores and be able to sell cross-border.

In simpler terms, as a leading web-building technology provider, we aim to help work with people and communities who wish to start and stand out their business ideas of all shapes and sizes, with or without actual field experiences. Our simplified web building platform enables everyone a simpler and more effective way to identify, commercialize and visualize their online presences, to convert dreams and ideas into actions.

Therefore, under this circumstance, SHOPLAZZA and all other web builders, we can not prejudge nor set barriers to anyone who comes to our websites and purchases a monthly subscription plan, then to build their stores and operate their business. Because we do not set preliminary prerequisites for our users, we simply believe that our technologies and services should benefit everyone, especially small to medium business owners. Having an online presence and expanding to a global market may be a viable solution for many business owners and individuals to cope or meet the emerging challenges from global pandemics.
The common challenges that we face on day-to-day basis:
In order to maximize its commercial interest, some of the review websites offer monthly or annual subscription plans to enterprises. For those who do not subscribe or use their services, as SHOPLAZZA, majority of the reviews are negative and without a single shred of proof.

These review sites do not put any efforts to investigate whether their claims or complaints make sense or valid, for instance, Shoplazza offers web building technologies, and we are not responsible for online shopping order related disputes. But Review sites, like TrustPilot, deliberately delete positive comments but to keep the unvetted negative ones, to influence the market perception against a particular enterprise. Is this counted as bias produced by a biased website?

The review websites do not check or require proofs from people making a claim or complaint online. Unlike UberEats, they require consumers to submit a description and a photo to validate their claims, and also communicate to the merchants. Review sites like TrustPilot, they do nothing but simply allow all negative comments to take place.

Voices from SHOPLAZZA
I would like to shed some lights concerning some of the challenges that we face before the official launch of the global website (shoplazza.com). Therefore, we proactively communicate with our existing and future merchants and partners regarding some of the negatively unverified comments from certain review websites.

The nature of the services provided by SHOPLAZZA.
SHOPLAZZA offers eCommerce online store building technologies, the same as Shopify. We empower thousands of merchants to start their online business from any size and at any time. It is most unfortunate that not every mechant can provide the most satisfactory services to the buyers.
Our technology is marked as “power by SHOPLAZZA” as an industry custom placed at the footer of the website that is using our technology.

Risk control measures taken by SHOPLAZZA.
1)We recognize how important it is for SHOPLAZZA to keep unqualified merchants off our service where buyers can conduct online shopping more confidently. We have developed a set of policies and procedures that outline what is and is not allowed.

2) As a global partner to Google, Facebook, PayPal, Stripe and other well-known companies, we align our policies and procedures with them to ensure a conformity of such standards. Our risk team is joined by experts in fields such as technology, financial institutions and public safety.

3) In compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) , we also employ automation and machine-learning technologies. This ensures our actions are conducted timely and our rules are applied in the most appropriate scenario. Our goal is to protect buyers from unpleasant online shopping experiences, but also keep our merchants safe from false allegations.

The point of commencement of SHOPLAZZA global operations
Our Global website was only published last month and we are in the process of rolling out our global marketing plan in Q3 of this year.

In a more technical perspective, we have not started building our SEO strategy and promoting through SEM activities. Hence the search engines have not been able to provide a more complete profile of our brand yet.

Problem of authenticity of the comments.
It has come to our attention that a certain amount of negative reviews has been published through some review websites, which severely mistaken SHOPLAZZA as the merchant who did not provide satisfactory services to those buyers. This is evidenced by quoting “powered by SHOPLAZZA” directly in those comments.
One example of the review site is TrustPolit. Following its user interface, anyone registered through an email account can post any comments without providing any legitimate supporting documents. Hence all of its published reviews are not verified neither in their authenticity nor in accuracy. And we are not the only victim of such unjustified comments, Shopify is also rated poorly on TrustPolit. We are very concerned over the business integrity demonstrated by TrustPilot.
We understand that those negative reviews may produce a false impression upon SHOPLAZZA and may also raise concerns of our credibility. Having said above, we are fully confident in our technology and values delivered to our merchants, and we are also trusted global partners to Google, Facebook, PayPal, Stripe and other well-known corporations.
To subscribe to Shoplazza Blog for free learning, click here.
To start your 7-day free trial with Shoplazza store building products, click here.

Luc Chan
Data analyst who is going rogue on cloud architecture

Shoplazza: Ultimate AliExpress dropshipping guide of 2021

Luk C — Sat, 06 Nov 2021 18:35:59 +0000

During the pandemic, we have witnessed a surge of Shoplazza account subscriptions, massive traffic towards Shoplazza built-in extension specifically designed for dropshipping – SKUowner, more existing merchants came to us and inquired about how to sell on hybrid by selling inventory with dropshipping items.

AliExpress dropshipping is the next generation business model for most success-longing eCommerce entrepreneurs, and the proven reasons for that are,

It is easy to start
Requires minimal investment
A source to earn quick money
The irony is all these statements above are true. Yes, AliExpress dropshipping is profitable, easy to start, and not dead yet. Many people have raised this concern about starting dropshipping with Aliexpress due to the ongoing US-China trade war. But, so far, it has not affected the dropshipping model.

Table of content:
Reasons to dropship on AliExpress
What you need to know before dropshipping on AliExpress
How to determine the Best-Selling products
How to determine the best supplier on AliExpress
Import customer reviews from AliExpress to Shoplazza Stores
FAQs
What is DropshippingBefore we dive any deeper, let’s do some recaps for dropshipping and AliExpress newbies who have fewer ideas what is dropshipping or AliExpress.

Dropshipping is an online business model, it allows the online merchants to only display the products and relevant supporting information (product feeds) on their own platforms (online stores, marketplaces) while not keeping any physical inventory.

When an online shopper places an order at merchant’s online store, the merchant directs that order to the end-supplier along with the shopper’s purchasing details. In following, the supplier will fulfill the order, meaning that supplier will complete the packaging, shipping out to the shopper.

What Is Dropshipping | How Does Drop Shipping Work? (2021)

What is AliExpress
AliExpress is an global eCommerce marketplace where the majority of China-based suppliers and manufacturers list their products from almost every product category to the global buyers. When we tell you almost every category, it means literally every product niche. You will find millions of products from an expanding product pool.

Since AliExpress is based on Chinese manufacturing capacity and its integrated supply chain, the products listed on AliExpress are at a significantly lower cost comparing to any other platforms. In China, people often use “factory price” describe the price for anyone who buys in volume or the product at a significantly cheaper price. The manufacturer only adds on a slight margin on the cost of product.

The competitive purchasing price derives from the incredible manufacturing power in China. That is why many of the dropshipping apps constructing their system over AliExpress. Without a proper profit margin, it will be extremely hard for any dropshippers to reach their threshold by covering all possible costs and expenses.

How to Start Dropshipping with AliExpress? - Mailmunch

What is AliExpress Dropshipping
You, as merchant, who opt the suppliers from AliExpress to package and ship out your sold dropshipping product, meanwhile both of you and AliExpress will abide the aftersales rules set by AliExpress to ensure a safe and satisfactory shopping experience from you and AliExpress platform.

Some pros and cons
Here, I list some pros and cons to ensure your better comprehension regarding the benefits and drawbacks of this business model before you jump into it.

Pros:
Simple, fast to start and set up.
No need of requiring heavy investments on system, on fulfillment and especially on inventory where merchants usually spend the most on.
Easy and quick to scale.
Low risks, because with minimum capital requirement and investment.
No inventory or stock required.
No warehouse, shipment, or delivery management, simply to track.
Cons:
It takes time to determine and research on products, suppliers regarding credibility.
Unforeseeable shipping delays and complexities.
Supplier stock issues, particularly on sizes, colors.
Profit-margin requires careful design and consistent customer support which you as merchant need to set up.
Why people still dropship on AliExpress
AliExpress is the biggest B2C product sourcing platform that offers competitive product price, several options of express shipping and aftersales guarantees. Common dropshipping apps like Oberlo or DSer, they all connect and base their product recommendations and ordering system on AliExpress.

For AliExpress, it is free to sign up, and the suppliers are very agile to corporate and usually offering very customizable services.

Many people have the stereotypical impressions or misconceptions that if Chinese suppliers may have language barriers to comprehend and deliver the demands of the products. It is totally wrong; we never hear a single case about complaints on linguistic communications. Almost every supplier offers English communications, some even offer French, Spanish, German, Japanese etc., depending on their destination market. AliExpress is made to serve the international market, it is not serving any product in China. In China, people use TaoBao, TMall.

What you need to know before dropship on AliExpress
Sell through your online store from SaaS Shopping Cart platform like Shoplazza

Before landing on AliExpress and starting conversing with the suppliers, you will definitely need to set up an online store to execute following key functions in order to complete an order and receive your hard-labor proceedings.

Display products feeds which you crawl or sync from AliExpress, Amazon or eBay.
Setting up your selling price which satisfy your profit margin targets.
Setting up payment process to allow shoppers to purchase in their favorable ways.
Offering flexible payment options to allow shoppers to purchase greater value items with ease.
Offering customer supports and aftersales services.
I personally highly recommend Shoplazza, as it provides most of the tools with no charge or any subscriptions to support and optimize AliExpress dropshipping functions, such as through SKUowner. (Click to read article, Quick guide on dropshipping by SKUowner from SHOPLAZZA.)

Through SKUowner, you can fast sync any product feeds from AliExpress and Amazon, then display them in your store.

What is SKUowner?
Shoplazza-exclusive built-in plugin, SKUowner, helps you to one-click import product feeds from AliExpress directly to your online store, and it will automate the order process by sending the order that you receive from your online store directly to the designated supplier on AliExpress. You can download and use it with no any charge from Shoplazza AppStore. It helps you release the expensive routine expense and easier to achieve your threshold point.

SKUowner automates the functions to import products to your store, therefore, you won’t have to add products manually. It also syncs your store with AliExpress, so if there are any changes on price or inventory, you as merchant will get notified instantly.

When you receive an order from your store, simply you just need to inform your AliExpress supplier with customer information to prepare and ship out the product.

ePacket Delivery
EPacket service is a result of an agreement between the Chinese and Hong Kong governments with US postal serving to make the delivery faster within 7-15 days with shipping cost almost equal to none. The products (mostly) are coming from China, so ePacket shipment is the quickest and cheapest way to deliver goods worldwide, especially to the United States market. The cherry on top is that ePacket allows product tracking on EMS (Express mail service) and USPS (US postal service) via 13-digit tracking number on the parcel.

To get ePacket deliver, download Wechat first

Well, not a significant requirement, but you would need a WeChat to converse with your Chinese suppliers. Once you break-the-ice on the chatting option on Aliexpress, the suppliers would demand you come to WeChat to resume the conversation. As you probably know, Facebook messenger and WhatsApp do not work in China. (Click here to read full guide on ePacket delivery from Shoplazza blog.)

If you purchase by volume, get some cash reserve

Aliexpress is completely free to use; however, you need to pay the suppliers right away once they release the products, if you do purchase by large volume. You will receive full payment from the customer, but PayPal or other payment options take some time to clear the payment. So, you will need some cash in hand to pay the supplier on time in order to ensure the shipping speed from the supplier.

How to find best-selling product on AliExpress
Before starting on anything, you need to select a profitable niche. Only after figuring out your niche, then you may proceed to browse, search and finalize your hot trending items to sell in your online store.

To figure out best-selling products, here may be a simple remedy for you to consider. Here, I will introduce few places where you can look into in order to find reference on best-selling products proven by the global demographical data.

Source 1. Go to Amazon best seller
Amazon is one of the largest ecommerce marketplaces, if some product is the bestseller in this market, then there are favorable chances that it would be trending worldwide.

Let’s take a simple example; let’s say, if I sell t-shirts and hoodies. Here I am looking for a unique and trendy product to sell in my niche. I simply went to Amazon Best Seller categories -> Clothing & Shoes. Then you can sort out the items by volume, by ratings etc.

Source 2. Google Trends.
I have to be double sure about how many people are looking for this item. For that, Google trends are the best option I have there. This item is killing it right now, showing the best trends in the last five years. In just two steps, I found the product that could become the bestseller product of my store. Now, the only requirement left is to find a suitable supplier on Aliexpress to dropship this product.

How to Select the Best Supplier on Aliexpress
Once you know what product you want to import in your store, it is time to select which supplier deserves to become your associates.

It is not very hard to validate a supplier. Aliexpress mentioned the last six months’ performance of a supplier so you can quickly check the authenticity of a supplier by reviewing their performance summary.

Step 1: Go to Aliexpress and Find Your Product
To find my product, I went to the categories of Men’s clothing, and as hoodies are already in trend, it showed me hoodies on top.

Step 2: Visit the Supplier’s Store
Before finalizing any supplier, always visit their store to check how much variety they have for a single product line.

Step 3 Positive Feedback (90% or higher)
This step is the most vital part of validating a supplier. You can get the feedback summary report. To get the summary, go to the top of the store page and click feedback.

The feedback is good, 97%. However, the communication rating lower than other sellers, and that could change my perspective about this supplier. Communication is crucial for me. So, I would rather check other suppliers then decide after evaluation. That’s how you need to evaluate an Aliexpress supplier.

Import customer reviews from AliExpress to Shoplazza
Importing reviews from AliExpress to your Shopify store is very easy. All you need is one of the free built-in plugin available from SHOPLAZZA AppStore. For this example, we are using Ali Reviews apps to easily import products reviews from AliExpress to our Shoplazza store.

Simply go to AppStore from back console dashboard.

Scroll down find Review Crawler. Click to enter the app page and follow the instructions to install.

It is that simple to not just sync product feeds, also customer reviews with free and featured Shoplazza built-in extensions.

Aliexpress Dropshipping FAQs
Q: Is AliExpress Standard Shipping better?
AliExpress standard shipping is an often free method of shipping that delivers all around the world. Even though ePacket is considered the best shipping option usually, but when ePacket delivery is unavailable, then AliExpress standard shipping is the next best choice.
Here are more details on AliExpress shipping.

Q: How to deal with AliExpress returns?
If you want to return an item on AliExpress due to any reason, then here’s a simple way of opening a dispute on AliExpress.

From your AliExpress account, click “My Orders”
Click Open Dispute in front of the order you want to dispute
Add your refund request and submit the dispute
Q: Are there any Aliexpress alternative suppliers in the US?
There are a number of alternatives out there. Even if you are only interested in dropshipping suppliers for US then there are tons of them.
Check out dropshipping suppliers like Dropship Direct, Ah Goo Baby, Amzer, Cost Tag, Dropshippers, and Kole Imports.

Q: Can the customer see the actual price of the item when they track AliExpress order?
Just provide your customers with the tracking code, and they won’t be able to see the actual price of the item. Tracking details through third-party apps like 17Track, etc. only show the status of the order and do not reveal any prices at all.

Q: How to find Diamond suppliers on AliExpress?
Back in the day, top suppliers on AliExpress had a Diamond rating that meant they were one of the highest-rated suppliers. However, AliExpress got rid of this rating system. Now, all the suppliers have badges on their profile that show the quality of a supplier. The supplier with the most badges on their profile is the top-rated suppliers.

Q: Does epacket ship Worldwide?
Yes, ePacket ships worldwide as long as it’s available. However, some suppliers use AliExpress standard shipping instead of ePacket which also delivers worldwide.

Q: What products on Aliexpress can I dropship with 300-400% profit margins?
There are numerous products that you can sell for a high profit margin; these include, but not limited to Shapewear, Jewelry, and mobile phone covers. It all depends on your target audience and the market where you are selling.

Q: Is it safe to use debit/credit card on AliExpress?
Yes, it is completely safe to use your credit/debit cards on AliExpress. AliExpress is an international website owned by the reputable Alibaba group, so their online security is up to date.

Q: How does payment occur with AliExpress?
Currently, AliExpress supports the following payment methods on their platform: Boleto, Visa debit/credit, MasterCard, QIWI, Western Union, WebMoney, Maestro debit card, and bank transfer.

At last.

That’s all for today, we covered enough topics about AliExpress and dropshipping. Nonetheless, you will always run into some new unforeseen issues, it happens to everyone of us. In that case, don’t panic, contact Shoplazza merchant success team, let us work out the solution together.

Stay tuned for more dropshipping related articles with SHOPLAZZA blog.