Dropshipping is a retail model that allows stores to sell products without keeping stock in-house. When a customer makes a purchase, the store orders the product from a third-party supplier and ships it directly to the customer.
This approach is a significant shift from the traditional model, where businesses buy in bulk and have to invest in stock management. For e-retailers, this also shortens the supply chain by removing your store from the product journey.
Large department stores used a variation of dropshipping as far back as the 1960s, mailing orders from warehouses to home addresses. Unfortunately, working at that scale required great specialization, and dropshipping has since become a fast-growing retail model for online store owners, particularly during the rise of the e-commerce sector.
Today, eCommerce stores have access to dropshipping extensions, a powerful tool that simplifies the dropshipping process from the convenience of your web browser.
What are the Best Chrome Extensions for Dropshippers?
For all its advantages, dropshipping still has the occasional drawback. While you cut out stock management, you still need to link products to buying customers. And keeping up with third-party suppliers means tracking stock availability, product quality, and supplier reliability.
Luckily, the dropshipping industry has developed software to combat these exact issues, and we’re breaking down five of the best dropshipping Chrome extensions for your Shopify store.
- CommerceInspector
One of the best tools available, the CommerceInspector Chrome extension, uses AI and Google Analytics to create powerful data-driven insights. These are an asset for businesses trying to find their most profitable niches, products, and audiences.
Commerce Inspector pulls public data from major platforms like Facebook and Pinterest and creates suggestions based on collected data. Insights include:
- Audience targeting
- A product’s sales potential
- Profitable market trends
For all the intricate calculations and integrations behind its data analysis, the CommerceInspector user interface is still easy to use. It’s simple, clean, and structured to give you relevant information with just a click on a product or store.
- Shopify App Detector
Keeping up with the competition is crucial in a sector as fast-paced as e-commerce. The Shopify App Detector is the perfect Chrome extension for finding the best plugins driving your market.
Shopify offers around 4000 plugins that stores can install, and the Shopify App Detector can find the specific apps any store is running. This gives you an actionable list of all the plugins your competitors use to generate traffic, boost conversion, and run their dropshipping services.
- Alitools Shopping Assistant
Working with the right supplier is key to dropshipping. Alitools Shopping Assistant keeps one of the largest free databases of online sellers and products. The Chrome extension tracks price history, customer feedback, product quality, shipping times, and supplier reliability, among other metrics.
The rating system rates suppliers between 0-100 and updates every two weeks. It gives you all the information you need to find the right partner for successful dropshipping. It even tracks daily changes to product prices to help you find the best deals for your store.
- ShopMonitor
Want to know which products are in high demand the second they go up for sale? The ShopMonitor Chrome extension sends you a notification whenever a store adds new products. This is particularly helpful for keeping up with the consumer needs in your niche so you can pivot to meet them as they arise.
ShopMonitor lets you export CSV files on each product on Shopify for added functionality. You can then import the files to your store to start selling the products, which is perfect for updating your catalog and placing orders without manually formatting the files used to process them.
- Oberlo
The Oberlo Chrome extension adds a lot of flexibility to your dropshipping business plan. It lets you quickly find and add products to your Shopify store that can go on sale immediately. This enables you to customize your catalog with just a few clicks while automatically updating prices from a network of suppliers.
As a “virtual warehouse,” Oberlo also offers you real-time order tracking. When you place an order, you’ll always know the shipping status of the product without having to follow up with suppliers.
Make Dropshipping Work for You
Dropshipping has come a long way in the last 60 years, and that’s primarily thanks to the tech developed around it. While the method could represent a flexible, scalable way for entrepreneurs to find profitable markets on Shopify, starting any business still requires nailing down supply chain logistics.
Not only can the setup take work, but all supply chains present some risk一especially for businesses moving away from traditional models. But the question isn’t if dropshipping can work around these issues, but how it’s developed to address them directly.
The Chrome extensions listed are designed to keep your store competitive, reliable, and responsive to consumer needs. We recommend CommerceInspector as the top Chrome extension to install if you’re looking for that all-in-one tool. Its data-driven insights give you the inside track on buyer trends, high-profit products, and the sales strategies you need to grow your dropshipping business.
Install the free Commerce Inspector Google extension today to start tracking a Shopify store’s product launches, best sellers, traffic, sales, ad campaigns, apps, and more.
