It has never been so difficult to recognize when an online shop is not a real online shop. In this article, learn what it means when a webshop is not a real webshop, how to recognize such a shop, and how the entire business behind it works. This will help you avoid accidentally spending money online just on junk.
When the online shop is not a real online shop
The Dropshipping Trend
Many users are not really familiar with the terminology yet. Dropshipping refers to the e-commerce concept of offering products that are sold directly from a manufacturer to the end customer via an e-commerce solution. In this case, the e-commerce solution, the online shop, is just a kind of intermediary platform between the product manufacturer and the end customer.
While it was still laborious a few years ago to be able to implement a solid e-commerce solution, today there are mature tools for the average shop that allow you to set up a web shop cost-effectively. There are platforms that perfectly support so-called dropshipping. In short, it works roughly like this:
A student, a pupil, or a supposedly clever businessman installs such a shop. Additionally, he installs a dropshipping plugin. Now he can choose from many manufacturers from all over the world from almost all products in the world which he would like to sell in his shop. He selects his range and sends this request to the manufacturer (or manufacturers). They look at where the shop is located, which Target audience is likely to be addressed, and send back a price list for each product. The student now has his purchase price. This all happens within the plugin and is associated with no effort for the operator.
Now he can add any margin and start “his business.” What he sells, he will never see. The manufacturers ship the goods in the dropshipping model directly to the end customer. So the shop operator also knows nothing about the quality of his products.
Now the shop needs a few trust factors so that the end customers also shop diligently. According to Google, product reviews also help with this. These can be conjured up with other shop plugins. This makes it possible to import reviews for products that have nothing to do with the shop itself, but are simply product reviews for the corresponding products.
The catch here is the target audience. We all know, for example, that with a review on booking.com, it very much depends on who wrote it. However, the dropshipping shop operator doesn't care in which language a review was written, because these plugins also offer the translation. Additionally, reviews can be purchased, which are more poorly than properly cobbled together in low-wage countries.
So, dropshipping means that a provider offers products they do not know and promotes them with reviews that might come from some user in the Far East and do not align with the quality standards of the current Target audience. And dropshipping also means that the shop owner does not need to have any knowledge of their business. They can happily sell clothing items, for example, even if they have no clue about fashion, the related production process, materials, and manufacturing.
Content preparation, multilingualism, blog posts: All AI-supported
Now artificial intelligence (AI) comes into play: With a few clicks, the shop owner can generate suitable content (e.g., blog posts), offer the shop in different languages, and translate product descriptions. It appears to the user that there must be a reputable company behind it because otherwise, all the effort wouldn't be possible. Well, that's no longer the case, and AI makes it possible.
Getting to the bottom of the issue
It doesn't work without minimal effort
If you want to know what's really behind an online shop, you can't avoid minimal effort. Here are a few points that can separate the wheat from the chaff.
Read the imprint
Be critical and read the imprint. Who is behind the solution? Is it a company or just a name (student, pupil)? What legal form does the company have? Are there contact details that actually allow you to contact the business? Is there possibly an excerpt from the commercial register?
In a solid and trustworthy imprint, you will find, among other things, content on these points:
- Company address (real, postal address)
- Contact with email and phone (a number that can also be tested)
- Names of the company owners
- Information on the company's entry in the commercial register
- possibly the excerpt from the commercial register
Critically question product reviews
If an item from a rather unknown shop has 64 reviews, that should make you think. Look at the reviews. Is there anything meaningful? Especially read the bad reviews, because these are usually real reviews, while the 5-star reviews can be bought in large quantities.
Here is an example of very suspicious reviews that are not meaningful anyway.
Fortunately, for legal reasons, some plugins support the note that a review comes from an external source, if that is the case:
Take the article in hand on site
Challenge the shop owner: Can you view and handle their products somewhere in Switzerland? Make an appointment and do exactly that. However, do not specify in advance which item you want to view – otherwise the shop owner could determine exactly this item themselves. Test whether they have a kind of warehouse and really know the products.
What we at michelangelo intimo do against this dropshipping trend
With the quality brands Zimmerli, HANRO, ISA bodywear, and VINZ Silkwear, we sell products that cannot be easily copied and are known worldwide. Nevertheless, we want to raise awareness among our customers about the topic, e.g., with this article.
Our imprint has been set up as suggested. You will also find our extract from the commercial register there.
We do not cheat. We do a lot to ensure that our customers from Switzerland, who buy the products from us, write product reviews. However, this is an almost hopeless endeavor (who likes to write reviews!). Nevertheless, we do not buy reviews. We want genuine opinions from our real customers and not a purchased opinion, e.g., from a South Korean.
We regularly write a Newsletter, with which our customers notice that we engage with our products and manufacturers and want to offer them the best of the best Swiss brands.
And we always have an open ear for all concerns. Contact us with questions – gladly also on the topic of dropshipping – at 044 809 70 44. We look forward to hearing from you!
