I. INTRODUCTION
Drop shipping has been a vital part of E-commerce. Once it
used to be a complex concept in context of implementation
and maintenance. With the modernization of technology, drop
shipping has also advanced. Once every step needed person to
person interaction like making contacts with companies and
suppliers for registration, hiring consultancy for various
processes and it used to cost far more than what it does today
since everything to automated and just a few clicks away. No
dedicated staff is either needed as the GUI based applications
can be managed by any ordinary startup owner. Moreover
security modules for data security and payment methods have
put out a great word for E-commerce and hence supply chain
management has been thriving.
For starting a drop shipping business we can take the first step
from ‘Spocket’ which is an integrate able app consisting of
inventory of reputed suppliers/manufacturers. Spocket uses a
wide pool of merchants primarily from US and Europe unlike
most of the applications nowadays that rely solely on Ali
express. Moreover Spocket has an excellent repute in the
market and it provides up to 60% discounts to the retailers
along with timely and efficient delivery of a few days rather
than months or weeks like other applications. Moreover, drop
shipping automation is a modern technique where the use
Of APIs automates the communication of inventory between
the supplier and drop shipping company. This technique
ensures that the inventory is updated in real-time to overcome
the rate of order cancellation. Customers can see the number
of pieces left or the update in price, offers etc. Traditionally
this would have been done manually over letters or calls and
the company would have to manually update the rates,
inventory. The advancement has overcome the human error
and hence made the system more efficient and effective.
Conversational marketing is an advanced strategy to keep your
customers intact with system. Chatbots and Live chats
motivate them to have a customized experience and experts
catalyze this process in real-time.
As for the requirement manpower, a company needs not to
have technical staff to keep their website for drop shipping.
Content Management services (CMS) like Magento, MODX
etc. are some advanced GUI based web management tools
designed to be used by a normal internet user. With this
system one can easily add, remove and modify content of their
web pages where they are managing their business. Similarly
big data management tools like Hadoop can ease in keeping
large volumes of data secure and managed. Data analytics help
eBay look for patterns which ultimately help then making
policies and improvements. Moreover data management can
help a e-commerce business during system or financial audits
since everything is pre organized and well documented.
It is essential that your E-commerce site is optimized for best
performance and deliver error free services to the buyers. For
that tools like GTmetrix are available that analyses the site for
any errors and suggests required action for best performance.
Customer experience is greatly considered and if your site has
technical faults, it is likely that the visitor may not return to
your site and find a stable and error free site. Similarly sites on
slow servers may pose the same threat to your business.
Several benchmark platforms judge your website for all these
issues and advise or even offer improvements.
Use of AI to improve user experience and keep track of what
interests a particular buyer can boost the e-commerce. Drop
shippers like eBay and Amazon use AI to learn the needs of
clients and gives inspiration based on that. Machine learning is
the most advanced technique nowadays in E-commerce. User
profiling is a sub sector in machine learning which guides the
system on what a potential customer has interest in. For
example if a user keeps looking for mobile phones section, the
system learns that what sector of the inventory is of their
interest. System would suggest attractive offers to this
particular client and even send them emails whenever an
exciting offers come up.
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Importance of mobile platforms has risen since smartphones
arrived. Users feel comfortable in using dedicated apps rather
than websites where one may have to log in every time.
Mobile apps of one’s drop shipping business can induce
significant credibility and interest in customers. Moreover
interconnection between your application and their financial
services that are now provided by every bank can be
interrelated. Users will find ease in tapping from one app of
your for shopping and tapping right on the next app to make
payments.
The latest news from E-commerce is the use of Virtual Reality
(VR) and Augmented Reality to provide user with real life
sample or experience of your products. How a set of furniture
would look in their room for real or how a specific garment
would look on the buyer, everything can be visualized in real
time.
When a drop shipping site is authorized by a reputed company
like VISA, PayPal etc. for partnerships, the user trust develops
the sooner. Having trust badges from such giants present a
great impression. Similarly trust badges from cyber security
companies provide ease to customers while transferring funds
online. One must consider legal and compliance requirements
before going into drop shipping business. Legal agreements
are a major requirement between suppliers and yourself as
well as drop shipping policy of your company must be
available online.

A. Background
The basic idea of drop shipping involves selling goods mostly
on a large scale without keeping and storage or inventory of
them in actual. We would just connect the buyer seller via our
platform and keep our share in the sales. The world is moving
towards this concept and various small scale startups are now
running at town levels. This idea has a huge potential as we
can see how eBay kind of drop shippers are now worth multi
billions. A research on latest tools and techniques to make the
concept smart and maintainable could be very helpful.

B. Motivation
Implementing a drop shipping business needs not just the idea
but also the study of various technological advancements that
can be used to implement the idea. Various tools available to
help the process should be kept in mind like we have
discussed here. Planning should be accordingly like what
CMS has to be used, what data management service needs to
be adapted. Legal and compliance formalities should be kept
in mind. So the motivation behind this work here is that a
checklist of tools and requirements for implementation needs
to be made beforehand and later on just focusing on the sales
rather than shifting the technology behind the system.

C. The main contributions of this paper
The main contributions behind this work are:
 Propose a smart E-commerce setup where various
advanced tools are used for their individual role in
keeping the system
 Data management techniques via advanced methods
is a must to apply idea as it help in reaching out to the
concerned customers via analytics
 Use of secure payment modules to ensure the client
trust while transferring/refunding money. Customers
nowadays would directly check payment modules
and then come towards what you sell.
 Suggesting ‘think outside the box’ kind of ideas to
stay in the upper side on innovative ideas like the use
of VR/AU and provide customers with a real-time
experience
 Emphasizing compliance with regularity
requirements to maintain a reputation amongst the
competitor
D. Structure of paper
The paper consists of 4 parts. Introduction is the first one
where the whole idea is described along with description of
various technologies and tools that can be used. Second part
consists of details on how the research was performed and
how the material was gathered, Third part shows the results of
research while the fourth part discusses various aspects related
to the future of the research performed as well as the personal
remarks and the last part concludes the overall research.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
Data collection: Various big names in E-commerce were
studies like eBay, Alibaba etc. There timeline of technological
advancement was noted. Various technologies adopted were
listed.
Generalizing: Since most of the big names have dedicated
closed source software, general use software was searched that
anyone can use with the same purpose.
Shortlisting: the most important were selected since there is a
list of similar tools but only some are adoptable due to quality
and reputation.
Study relevant research: Various articles, blogs and journals
were studied
Annotated Bibliography: A table consisting of most relevant
information along with description and personal comments
was made that led to finally writing this report.
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III. RESULTS
Advanced technologies and techniques have made Ecommerce
too easy to implement and handle. Everything is
automated and the supply chain is ready to start its
functionality right away. Just the effort of putting a word out
about your drop shipping business is needed. Once the chain
starts, tools are helpful enough to take over the management
and security of your system. Before starting any online
business particularly related to drop shipping, the already
available pool of helpful technologies should be taken into
account. It would lower the future complications caused by
any technological factor. Ultimately it is found that there are
so many advanced tools to use for one’s drop shipping
business that keeping the supply chain going has never been
easier and it is keeping a good pace in making it easier.
4. DISCUSSION
Automation tools like Spocket can speed up the process of
implementing the idea without a flaw. It gives away all the
necessary industrial linkages along with pre bargained rates.
So one can say it takes away the most part of headache one
otherwise would have to bear. Use of payment gateways based
on a third party that already has a name of working with giants
like eBay adds trustworthiness to the business. However the
support issues always occur if one is going for a global
coverage. Many countries do not support PayPal or American
Express yet. So adding too many companies for money
transfers is not feasible. APIs can be used to make the system
smart and efficient however they can be tricked by attackers
(competitors). The learning of your system might make the
system inefficient. Content management services have
completely subtracted the cost of keeping dedicated
professionals to manage websites. Similarly online consultants
can optimize the website with one-time costs showing how
advanced techniques have aided in cost-cutting for E commerce
businesses. A challenge faced in keeping up in the
race with competitors is cross platform presence, which can be
costly and complicated in maintaining. Similarly VR/AR are
fascinating but require additional costs for implementation and
continuity. Chatbots are an excellent way of first catching and
making customers to shop, secondly cost cutting as no
dedicated staff is needed to answer queries. Trust badges are a
great and fast way of communicating your reputed
acquaintances however some companies might just add badges
without any background relation. Compliance and regulatory
affairs are a living problem that needs to be addressed time to
time, location to location.

Room for improvement: like the limitations and
shortcomings we have discussed, there is a room for
improvements which may be brought by future technologies
or improving the pre-existing ones.
Generalized Payment methods: Many drop shipping giants
have this limitation of payment support options country to
country. A simple and generalized payment module or
company can overcome this issue and set a new direction.
Supporting Crypto-currency: With many countries
legalizing crypto-currency, it can open a new horizon and lead
E-commerce towards a more feasible system.

V. CONCLUSION
The use of modern technology has advanced the concept of E commerce
which once was frowned upon due to its limitations
and insecurity. Since it is a cheap way of starting a business
without actually holding inventory at your workspace, it is a
brilliant idea for many brains looking for an opportunity.
Technology has made the trust gap lesser between customer
and drop shipper and tools, APIs and modules have made it
easier to implement, maintain and run. There are negligible
gaps in this method which the rapid technological
advancement will fill in no time.

 

 

By:  Jawad Malik