Dropshipping Order Transmission
Online Shop — Paint by Numbers
The Challenge
A personalised paint-by-numbers online shop received orders via Shopify — with varying motifs, sizes and colours. Each order had to be manually extracted from the shop email, entered into the dropshipper's Google Sheet, and size/colour combinations had to be translated into supplier-specific codes. For orders with a customer's own uploaded photo, there was the additional manual effort of file transfer. At just 10 orders per day: 80 minutes of admin work, a handful of errors per week, and a scaling problem that would have grown linearly with increasing shop volume — making any growth directly translate into more manual overhead.
Management Summary
30-second overview for decision makers
Starting Point
Every Shopify order was manually reviewed, image links manually assigned, codes manually converted, and data manually copied into the dropshipper's Google Sheet — 8 minutes per order, error-prone at every step.
Action Taken
In 2 days, a fully automated pipeline was built with Make.com: Shopify webhook → AI code conversion → automatic Sheet entry → image to Google Drive → WhatsApp confirmation to the dropshipper.
Result
0 manual steps per order, 0% error rate, 8 minutes saved per order — and the system scales with shop volume without any additional effort.
Recommendation
Ideal for any shop that manually forwards orders to suppliers, fulfillers, or dropshippers — from around 5 orders per day, the automation pays for itself within a few weeks.
Process — Before & After
Manual vs. automated — step by step
Before — Manual
After — Automated
My Approach
Fully automated pipeline with Make.com: an incoming Shopify order triggers a webhook. An AI handles the conversion of colour and size combinations into supplier codes — defined directly inside the Make.com prompt. The order automatically lands as a new row in the dropshipper's Google Sheet. If a customer uploads their own image, a second parallel workflow starts: the image is saved to Google Drive, and the link is automatically added to the Sheet. Finally, a WhatsApp message notifies the dropshipper.
Assessment
The Result
Every order — standard motif or custom photo — is processed fully automatically. No manual intervention, no transcription errors, no missed notifications. The dropshipper receives all the information they need immediately after the order is placed.
Project Documentation
Tools Used
- ◆Make.com
- ◆Google Sheets
- ◆AI
Automated Process
- ◆Order in Shopify
- ◆Make.com webhook triggered
- ◆AI converts codes automatically
- ◆Row added to Sheet
Results
- ◆0 — Manual steps
- ◆100% — Errors eliminated
- ◆−8 min. — Time per order
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