The Top Things That You Should Outsource For Your E-commerce Store

As an E-commerce store owner, you probably have a lot on your plate. From managing inventory, talking to suppliers, creating content, managing ads, there’s a lot to do. You can only do so much yourself and you only have so much time on your hand.

I understand that pain because I run a few e-commerce shops myself and I’m swamped with work almost every single day.

Luckily, there are a lot of options out there that can save you time and resources. One of those options is outsourcing your business.

In the e-commerce context, outsourcing is taking a piece of that business equation and relying on an outside individual or service to handle it for you.

Nowadays, you can outsource everything from content marketing and scheduling to your payroll and bookkeeping.

In this article, I’ll go over some of the things I outsource and how it helps me grow my business while I sleep.

1. Fulfilment related tasks

When your business reaches a certain point, the fulfillment tasks can quickly become overwhelming. Let’s face it, you cannot sell without sufficient inventory, yet excess inventory can cost you big bucks. I would say that fulfillment is one of those task that take up a lot of my daily time.

In the beginning you can certainly do everything yourself, but it’ll eventually get to a point where you want to start outsourcing your fulfillments or hiring a VA (Virtual Assistant) to handle it for you. Here are a few task that you can look into outsourcing for fulfilment.

1. Inventory Management — Your virtual assistant can make sure the right amount of inventory is always available for your business.
2. Downloading Barcodes and Labels — Don’t waste your valuable time downloading your own barcodes and labels. A good virtual assistant can manage this task for you.
3. Tracking Shipments — Your virtual assistant can easily ensure that shipments are delivered as promised.

2. Content Writing

We all know that content is king. Your visitors are way more likely to buy if they’ve already seen your content ahead of time. Visitors are likely to come back after you’ve build trust with them.

The best way to build a brand organically for the long term without spending money on advertising is by creating awesome content. If you’re e-commerce store still doesn’t have a blog, then you’re behind the crowd.

Write quality materials that can attract your writers and build trust around your brand for the long term.

I love writing, but I can’t do it everyday. This is why I recommend outsourcing your content.

Here are a couple of things that I always outsource when it comes to content for my e-commerce store:

1. Product Listings — Potential customers will decide whether to click on your product or pass it by based solely on the description. Hire a content writer who knows how to write juicy listings that sell.
2. Email Marketing — Your email list is your most valuable selling tool. These are people who have saved a spot for you in their inbox, and you must keep them happy. An experienced assistant will know how to write emails and get them to convert to purchases.
3. Product Creation — If you have dreams of publishing an ebook or online course, you will need an assistant to help rework your words with a professional tone.

The key is to find a good company to work with that can provide you with high-quality content writing at an affordable price.

If you’re looking to outsource your content, product descriptions, social media postings, then check out GrowthOK.

3. Graphic designs

I usually like to outsource the things that I’m least good at. I’m terrible at graphic design and it’s much easier for me to hire a team of people that’s good at it to provide me with the work.

Here are some of the main things that I outsource for the design side of things for my e-commerce store:

1. Logo Design — your logo represents you and your company. Get it done right by hiring an experienced designer who can create a high quality logo.
2. Listing Images — Pictures are worth a thousand words, and potential buyers want to see clear images of what they intend to spend their money on. Outsource your listing images to a qualified assistant.
3. Infographics — Need to communicate complex data to your target audience? Use a graphic designer to design an easy to read infographic that tells your story.

4. Social Media

Depending on the niche that you are in, social media is the key to success. For example, 65% of my sales for my performance apparel store comes from social media. Instagram to be exact.

They say that posting at least 2x a day across all social media accounts is a great way to attract more visitors and build trust around your brand. That means that you have to spend time going around Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and more to accomplish this.

That is way to time consuming.

To save time, you can outsource it.

I personally like to outsource the following for my shop:

Twitter — On average most top e-commerce stores tweet at least 10–12x a day to gain their follower and trust. If you look at Meh.com , most of their daily deal sales come from social media daily.

Facebook — I use the same social media manager to outsource my Facebook post and comments.

Instagram — This one is the toughest. I usually like to post 1–2x a day. While I can do this myself from my phone, it takes a lot of time to find the correct hashtags and it takes a lot of time to engage with my audience so I outsource this.

Pinterest — You’re going to need someone to build your Pinterest followers and post up pictures of your inventory. This can be easily accomplished by outsourcing it to a social media expert.

If you’re looking for a quick way to create a unique and huge amount of social media content, check out GrowthOK

5. Ad Management

I started out doing all the ad management for the e-commerce site myself. I ran and tested a ton of Facebook ads, but I realized that I just wasn’t good at it. This is when I decided to seek out an expert who’s actually good at it to accomplish this task for me.

Running ads is essential in today’s market, but it can seem like a foreign language to someone who hasn’t been properly trained. Hiring an assistant who knows what he or she is doing can make your Ads reach more buyers and convert at a higher rate.

1. Setting up an Ad-Campaign — Setting up an ad campaign can be complicated, and it is essential to get it right so that you don’t waste money. Outsource this task to a pro.
2. Analyze Campaigns — You will need to analyze your ad campaign data to further optimize it for the future. This task can be easily outsourced to an assistant with experience.

6. Customer Service

Your customers are the bread and butter to your business. You have to treat them well and you must have a good response rate.

Great customer service is critical to your success in e-commerce. Your customers have choices, so make sure they always choose you by outsourcing your customer service tasks to a virtual assistant.

1. Answering Questions — Don’t leave your customers hanging. By hiring a virtual assistant, your customers will have their questions answered quickly.
2. Responding to Reviews — Hiring an assistant with a customer service background is a great idea when it comes to responding to reviews — especially the negative ones. Keeping customers happy is essential.
3. Follow Up — Want to make your customers feel special? Of course! Hire an assistant to follow up with your customers after they purchase from you. This is an easy way to level up your business and keep customers coming back time after time.

7. SEO

SEO will help you rank higher in the search engines and help you stand out of your competition. While advertising works really well, you still need good SEO for the long term. The key to this is to start early and start building up your foundation from the very beginning.

For an affordable price, I like to outsource the following:

1. Keyword Research and SEO — An assistant who knows the ins and outs of SEO will ensure that Google chooses your website based on popular keyword searches.
2. Link Building — Google may penalize your site if you do not build links the proper way, so this task is better left to a professional.
3. Social Bookmarking — A virtual assistant who is experienced in SEO will know how to get your site quality backlinks to drive up your Google ranking.

Conclusion

We all know that running an e-commerce site isn’t easy and that’s why we’re here to help. I hope this article can give you some ideas on how you can grow your e-commerce business while you sleep :)

If you’re looking for high-quality and affordable content for your e-commerce business, check out GrowthOK