It’s already mid-September now, dropshipping during Q4 is the most profitable time of the year. Every dropshipper in the eCommerce industry has been preparing for this.

If you are looking forward to making good use of the last four months of the year 2021 and getting your dropshipping business to the next level, this article is exactly what you need.

What is Q4？

Q4 stands for quarter four, the last season of the year, from the beginning of October to the end of December. As a dropshipper, Q4 is definitely the most potential season for making big sales throughout the whole year.

Not to mention, with more and more people purchasing from online stores instead of normal retail stores, the e-commerce sales during such a season will only be higher and higher.

Let’s see how many special events are there and what are their exact dates this year.

Events in Q4

Why do you need to prepare for Q4？

Picture the final test back in school, if you start to prepare weeks or months in advance, your chances of having a better result are much bigger, it’s the same for the sale in the holiday season. Another reason why you need to be ready before the season starts is that your customers are searching for gifts as early as mid-October.

However, except for these two, the main reasons why you need to prepare beforehand are as follow:

#1 Ads fee

If this isn’t your first Q4, then there’s no need for me to tell you how crazy the ad fee during Q4 could be. No matter which ad platform you are using, they’ll all raise the fee as everybody knows how important commercial is during the sale season.

#2 Expensive Shipping

The shipping is already expensive during holidays, not to mention with the COVID situation keeps spreading globally, it’ll be even harder than usual to ensure the shipping, as the shipping line might get cut off significantly. 

#3 Fickle Inventory

Huge demand comes with big pressure for suppliers, the supply being out of stock is nothing new during Q4. Waiting for restocking is definitely going to drag down the delivery and hence damage your sales.

Online sellers aren’t alone in obsessing about delivery deadlines—holiday shoppers want reassurance that their packages will arrive exactly when you say they will.

#4 Delivery delays

As mentioned just now, the international express line is very unpredictable due to the pandemic. Plus domestic quarantines and short of labor, the delivery time becomes very unreliable, thus unexpected delays of delivery should be expected by all prepared dropshippers.

So, what can CJ do for you to cope with these crucial challenges? 

With the holiday season already in gear, now is the time to take action. And here you have a checklist to see what are the things that you need to do to get yourself ready!

Q4 Check List

✅ Optimize your store NOW

If you know you need to make some changes to your website, don’t wait. You will want to make sure all updates, improvements, and fixes are tested and implemented way before the holiday rush begins, so you can avoid the risk of costly breakages and downtime.

✅ Test your website load

During the holiday shopping season, your site may need to handle a significant traffic increase. This is why it’s a good idea to run tests ahead to make sure your site can handle a sudden uptick in visitors without crashing.

✅ Be prepared to upsell

Upselling can be surprisingly easy during the holidays when many customers are more than happy to get as much of their shopping done in as few transactions as possible.

So make sure you add the option of related products recommendation on the product page and during the checkout process, which will boost your sale by triggering more impulse purchases in a flick.

✅ Study the product trend

You’ll want to start studying the product trend now, as it helps you recognize the winning product when you see them and save time on sourcing.

CJ’s Youtube channel has tons of product recommendations, if you want to stay a step ahead of your competitors, go check it out.

✅ Make the discount plans

Holidays are the SALE days! People are already excited because of the holiday vibe, and your special discount will only make your customer enjoy shopping even more. However, making sure you still can have reasonable profit while offering a discount, needs some cautious planning beforehand. 

✅ Test & find your best advertisements beforehand

Don’t wait until the end of October to start advertising. Instead, start now, test your advertisements and find out which is the best one.

This will keep your ad costs low and make sure you are advertising in a cost-efficient way. We’ll also talk about advertising tips in our next video, so remember to turn on the notification bell if you don’t wanna miss out.

Make your preparation smooth

#1 Get your own private inventory for winning products

The risk of losing customers due to the crazy shipping and inventory circumstance can be avoided by pre-stocking. Having your own inventory for your product can make sure the processing time and quality.

Also, it would be even better if you can find the local fulfillment warehouses, which will only make the whole process quicker and smoother.

You can get your private inventory and stock in CJ’s warehouses with no storage fee, and with the private inventory, when there’s a new order, the item will be picked out and dispatched directly within 24 hours, which is definitely a game-changer. 

Another important reason why having a private inventory is highly recommended is that, if you choose the private inventory in our overseas warehouses, you are more likely to be trusted by your customers.

Products that are shipped from domestic warehouses will show “dispatching domestically” for tracking, which is for sure gonna ease your customers’ concern about the delivery time.

A very big reason people tend to use the local online platforms more is that they believe it’ll cut the waiting time shorter. So imagine if you have both competitive prices and fast domestic delivery, who wouldn’t choose your store?

#2 Stock your own products to the fulfillment warehouse

If you have your own fixed suppliers who provide you the product you trust but can not handle the storage and shipping, then you can choose a fulfillment center to help you out.

CJ offers this kind of solution for dropshippers, we have 8 fulfillment warehouses globally that can help you with both storage and fast shipping, AND, to get this service, you don’t necessarily need to get your product from CJ at all!

Also, the global warehouses project is still under fast development, in the near future, CJ will provide more and more choices for our clients!