If you own an eCommerce store, you likely experienced a significant rise in sales during the pandemic. As brick and mortar stores had to close, the number of people shopping with eCommerce stores rose dramatically. While increased sales and more visitors to your site are a positive thing, you may have found running an online store throughout the COVID-19 pandemic quite stressful.
Every eCommerce business owner wants their online store to be successful and ensure their products are bought by customers far and wide. However, there is no changing the fact that there are limited hours in the day and that you cannot continually work without taking a break.
Being self-employed is always a busy job. There are likely to be constant demands on your time, but finding ways to run a successful business without working yourself to exhaustion is essential. If you are looking for ways to make your eCommerce store less time-consuming to run without negatively impacting its success, these ideas should help:
Divide Your Time
Multitasking is considered to be the height of productivity, but this is often not the case. When you have a lot to do, you may find yourself falling into the trap of dipping in and out of tasks. Trying to balance too many tasks at the same time is likely to leave you with lots of half-finished jobs.
To overcome this problem, it is helpful to divide your day into sections and allocate tasks into blocks of time. For example, spending 30 minutes each morning responding to emails rather than checking them throughout the day and getting distracted from other tasks. Giving each task your full attention should help you to get more work done more efficiently.
Streamline Transactions
Having an unreliable payment system that causes you problems can be a major hassle. When payments are not processed correctly or customers complain that they cannot check out their goods, dealing with this issue can take up a lot of time. To avoid this unnecessary hassle, you need to find the best payment system for your business. If you want every transaction to be seamless for your customers and yourself visit this site to learn more about the point of sale systems available.
Reduce Customer Queries
When you receive calls and emails from customers asking the same questions time and again, it is time to take action. While chatting to customers is great, it can take up a lot of your time and impact your productivity. Writing a frequently asked questions page that contains all the answers to your most common queries should help ensure you receive far fewer interruptions in your day and that your customers find the information they need quickly.
Take Advantage Of Analytics And Automation
Many e-commerce platforms and CRMs offer in-built analytics and automation features. Analytics can help provide useful data to help you improve your marketing and budget ahead. Automation can meanwhile be used to automatically take care of tasks for you (such as sending abandoned shopping cart reminders to customers and other automated messages). Together they are valuable tools that can make your life much easier. Basic e-commerce plans may not include these features, so you may need to weigh whether upgrading your plan is worth the added convenience. It will cost more but could be the key to boosting your business. Besides, you can always use specialist financing such as Shopify loans for startups to help you take this next step. With the right software at your disposal, you’ll free up time and be able to find new ways to make more money.
Being busy is great, as it means customers love your products and want to keep spending their money at your store. But, it is also essential to find ways to manage your stress levels. Hopefully, this advice will help make your life as an eCommerce store owner a little easier.
