The use of virtual assistants is increasing. Find out how a suitable VA can help you scale your e-commerce business.

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Outsourcing with virtual assistants and managed services is a reliable, cost-effective solution to grow your team and manage your e-commerce platforms.

For many e-commerce businesses, including Amazon and eBay sellers, growth comes with a price tag. Teams of employees become necessary to handle customer service requests, update listings, manage advertising campaigns, and keep other parts of your business running while you work to make it grow.

Employees are expensive. Interviews, screening processes and onboarding new employees are time-consuming. Building a work environment that ensures productivity and reliability takes time and money. In addition, there is the learning curve: teaching a new assistant about your specific e-commerce business or specific parts of it, e.g. B. How to properly create your Amazon listings.

The good news is that scaling your online business is easier when you have key ecommerce virtual assistants to take care of every aspect of your business. They allow you to automate certain areas of the business and free up time to focus on growth initiatives.

Identify where you need an ecommerce virtual assistant

Not all aspects of your business are conducive to a VA. You must have a hands-on approach to some areas of your business.

How to select eCommerce Virtual Assistant tasks

1. Brainstorm where to offload tasks and responsibilities in your ecommerce business.
2. Identify repetitive tasks in each area that you could potentially delegate to someone else.
3. Outline the larger projects that these tasks could align with or be part of, and prioritize these larger projects.
4. Assign task priority. Tasks that are important but are not getting done or are preventing you from reaching your CEO and growth tasks should be turned off first.

The key to choosing which tasks you want to delegate in your ecommerce business is figuring out which tasks are low-risk enough to delegate and repetitive enough to warrant someone else taking on them concentrated. Task delegation is critical to business expansion. If something is a low-priority task and only happens every once in a while, you might be better off finding the time to do it yourself.

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Common types of virtual assistants

Different types of business-related tasks require different VAs. Virtual Assistants are skilled and experienced in their fields and services, most of which are highly specialized. You will get someone who knows what they are doing, maybe even better than you. As a bonus, if there’s an area of ​​your business you’re struggling with, hiring a VA with expertise in that area could be the way to get the help you need to fill that gap.

Here are some of the most common virtual assistants:

Virtual Administrative Assistants

• Order Manager – Receives and monitors orders placed to ensure efficient processing with supplier partners or fulfillment centers.
• Customer Service – Monitors customer messages and phone calls to ensure fast response times. Processes returns, exchanges, refunds, cancellations, emails, phone calls and live chat.
• Feedback/Review Manager – Streamlines processes to encourage positive reviews and handles negative reviews to mitigate impact.

Creative virtual assistants

• Designer – Creates logos and graphics for social media, designs your online store and takes care of all projects related to user experience design.
• Photographer – Produces high-quality product images. Knows how to comply with the rules for marketplace images on Amazon or eBay.

Virtual assistants for digital marketing

• Content Specialist – Creates blogs, whitepapers and website content based on your digital marketing strategy
• SEO Specialist – Researches keywords for best visibility on Google, Amazon and other search engines. Edits website content to comply with SEO best practices.
• Copywriter – Creates product titles, product descriptions, bullet points, and usage information that lead to higher converting product pages.

Virtual assistants for product management

• Lister – Uploads listing content, fixes errors, and updates product listing information as needed.
• Inventory Analyst – Monitors inventory at optimal levels through Shopify or Amazon’s inventory management system.
• Buyer – Maintains communication with suppliers and manages purchase orders to ensure stock levels are not depleted.

Bottom Line: Hiring a virtual assistant means more time to grow your business.

Daily administrative tasks can take up a lot of time. VAs free up your valuable time to do other business-related tasks, from responding to customer inquiries and complaints, to processing orders, to building your marketing funnels. All you have to do is train your virtual assistant and show them what they need to know about your business.

Alternatively, you can contact a VA from an agency like Wishup who will handle the vetting and training process. Once you have established a relationship with your virtual assistant, you are free to dedicate your time to other important things like expanding and growing your business.

Growing your business means growing your team. Leveraging virtual assistants and remote assistance services effectively, you can get the support you need to outsource the day-to-day tasks that keep the lights on, giving you time to build and expand your business. In this way, virtual assistants are key to freeing up your time and scaling your business.

Author bio

Laura Meshen is a Content Marketing Specialist at Acro Media, a digital commerce development agency with a mission to transform outdated traditional sales processes into digital experiences.