When an entrepreneur starts a new business, it becomes very important to look after the foundational stages and strengthen them before moving on to the growing stages of the company. There are a lot of tasks that go into starting a business and preparing it to go live among the target audience.
While you have a strong focus on sourcing the core aspects of executing your business, you cannot care to ignore the backend and other crucial tasks, such as setting up the online store, handling customer support, uploading products, writing content, etc. Therefore, most businesses tend to hire a VA as their first professional assistant at the start of the business.
Do you want to know how a VA can help new eCommerce businesses during the start of their journey? Well, this article will enlighten you with the needful!
What initial services demand the assistance of a virtual assistant?
Hiring a virtual assistant for Amazon FBA, Shopify, Magento or other such eCommerce platforms is quite common today, as it helps entrepreneurs save money on hiring full-time employees without compromising on the required skills and experience. Some of the services that the VAs can provide to the new eCommerce entrepreneurs are:
1. Setting up the Online Store
The first and most important thing is to have online visibility. While you are putting efforts into sourcing the best quality products for your customers, let VAs handle your need for an online store.
For instance, you can hire a Shopify virtual assistant to get a dedicated store ready with all features integrated. In addition to that, you can also expect the VA to integrate add-on Shopify apps into your online store to enhance its functionality and meet your business requirements.
2. Product Listing
The next big thing for eCommerce businesses is to list their products strategically and in an organised manner. Handling it all by yourself might be a bit of a complex task to achieve, for which you must consider hiring a VA for the job. Let the VA upload your product list and categorise them as suggested.
Following that, they will also write the descriptions of your products and give each one of them an SEO-rich title. This will help your products gain more visibility in the search engine rankings.
3. Customer Support
The next crucial thing that VA helps eCommerce businesses with is customer support. When you are handling the core operations of your store, it becomes difficult to respond to consumer reviews, emails and other such support queries responsively.
Therefore, you can hire an eCommerce virtual assistant to ensure your customer support proficiency is not deteriorating, even at the start of your business. With such an effort, you will be developing a good rapport between your brand and that of the customers right from the initial days.
4. Marketing
For every new eCommerce business, the key to thriving is linked to optimal marketing measures. Therefore, you need a strong mind as a backup to help you with the right strategies or tactics to win the marketing game in this eCommerce world. You can always hire a VA to get that level of assistance.
Whether it is implementing SEO practices or running paid ads and social media marketing tactics, VAs are skilled in marketing proficiencies. They would run a detailed analysis of your target audience and have a closer look at market trends to execute the best marketing strategies for your store to thrive.
Beyond these services, there are a lot more activities that go into sales, analytics, inventory management, order tracking and other such attributes. Depending on the level of streamlining you need for your business, you can hire dedicated VAs on demand.
Why are VAs the first consideration for professional help for eCommerce entrepreneurs?
Over time, it has been a bit common for business owners to hire virtual assistants for their dedicated store operations. The need for it mostly arises in eCommerce businesses but the demand for VAs is not limited to just this sector. May it be IT, real estate or other such industries, VAs have been dominantly providing their capabilities to assist business owners in strengthening their foundational or growing stage.
From the perspective of the eCommerce business, entrepreneurs are most likely unaware of the basic ground rules that they must follow after they go live with their stores. Therefore, they are considering hiring a virtual assistant who is experienced in the field and has been offering similar services to various eCommerce clients. The reasons why a VA should be your first hiring consideration for an eCommerce business include:
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Maintaining the Accuracy Standards
Most entrepreneurs tend to hire a VA for operational tasks that they aren’t sure they can perform themselves accurately. And hiring a big team with full-time employees at the start of the business isn’t feasible for the pockets. So, a VA is considered the best pick!
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Put the Tasks in a Specific Order
Every entrepreneur has a specific plan in mind to execute the initial business operations. But, over time, it turns out to be a bit complex to bring all the associated operational tasks into a specific order. It means deciding what needs to be done in what instances won’t be easy to assess. Therefore, hiring a VA can help you streamline that aspect and put your tasks in proper order.
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Assistance in Building a Team
If you intend to build a team for your core eCommerce operations but lack the skills to evaluate the best experts in dedicated roles, virtual assistants can help you with that as well. The expert VAs will shortlist the candidates and take their interviews to give you the best employees for the dedicated roles.
Bottom Line
The starting days of a business are quite crucial, as you need to tighten all the loose ends right from the initial setup. It is to ensure that your substantial growth doesn’t get hindered anytime soon. Just like most businesses, you must also hire a VA as your first remote employee to guide you on the right path for setting up a strong foundation for your business.
With that move, you can then be assured of getting your product listing, store creation, marketing, sales management, order tracking, and other such tasks handled by experts in the industry. And this will pave the path for your eCommerce store to experience thriving growth.
