Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s no different for entrepreneurs either launching a new business or already running one. Getting a little tripped up here and it is natural, but for an online business or eCommerce seller, even little errors can become severely costly down the line.

So, what do you do?

You plan and preemptively prepare yourself so that you can easily navigate the business highway and reach your destination, without taking the wrong exits or worse – crashing into something!

Here are some critical business mistakes you can start avoiding today – for both short and long term of your entrepreneurial life cycle and online business journey:

1. Outsource What You Can’t Manage

Whether you’re a small business online or offline, you can never overlook the importance of getting an “extra set of hands” to take the burden off you! As a business owner, there is sometimes a lack of self-awareness. Entrepreneurs sometimes fall into the habit of micromanaging and not delegating or outsourcing work they can’t handle.

They try to do everything that they possibly can to cut costs, but really, in the long run, they should have outsourced the things that they are not good at and focused on their strengths. If you are aiming for multiple targets at once, you are very unlikely to hit one!

2. Automate Important Functions

In the world of online business and eCommerce, automation plays a crucial role. When you’re dealing with thousands of people worth of traffic and operating on the level of a global audience, automation makes your life easier. It helps to systemize and mechanize vital areas such as emails, sales funneling, lead capturing and so on. Once such areas are set in place through an automated system, your business becomes self-regulating and you can focus on other important things to grow and scale.

3. Offer Services Instead of Products

The benefits of offering services over products is the beauty of ‘intangibility’. You don’t need to manufacture units, warehouse them, ship or distribute them, or worry about refunds and exchanges. Otherwise, all of which can take tons of your time effort, money, and resources.

In the world of online business, services can be easier to scale and influence your customers worldwide – devoid of boundaries and borders, with the lesser hassle and physical framework required.

4. Ignore the Haters

“Haters are going to hate”, as the saying goes! People hate because they cannot digest other people’s success; it hurts their ego and makes them feel lesser knowing they’ve not done as well as someone else. Hence, they vent their frustration in anger, fueled by jealousy and powered by insecurity. Let them be.

You have an empire to build, dreams to fulfill and a legacy to create. Their hate only makes them small. Your ambition only makes you big! So keep focusing on what’s important and ignore the haters.

5. Implement Market Segmentation

This is one of those critical business mistakes that many business owners ignore and hence suffer tremendously down the road. Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market of potential customers into groups, or segments, based on different characteristics.

The segments created are composed of consumers who will respond similarly to marketing strategies and who share traits such as similar interests, needs, or locations.

Knowing, applying and benefiting from Market Segmentation strategies is key in growing your business and targeting critical demographics that respond the best to your services.

6. Be Timely and Be Responsive

Time is money for any business. And for consumers, time is an image.
Just as responding and tackling everyday business situations in a timely + responsive manner is crucial in upholding the health and stability of your business, so is timeliness and responsiveness when dealing with your customers.

It is very important to be timely, efficient, responsive and empathetic in all your business dealings within your company (your employees, stakeholders, etc) and outside it (your vendors, customers, and contractors)

7. Market Research

Operating a business without market research is like shooting darts in the dark. Market research. It is essentially the process that links the producers, customers, and end-users to a company through information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems.

It enables a business owner to generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Not having solid market research in place is one of the gravest of business mistakes you can commit.

8. Be Market-Competitive in Your Services

Your services are your biggest asset. Treat them like gold. And that means offering market-competitive pricing, value, and quality to your prospective customers. Being market-competitive in your services is critical in getting ahead of your competitors and being ‘visible’ to prospective clients or customers in a consistent manner.

If you want to learn from a live example, look Urtasker as the best example for successful business management.

A highly trained, experienced, and efficient E-commerce Consultant under your guidance is practically a secret weapon that any eCommerce or online business owner can employ – giving you the ‘edge’ that your competitors cannot exceed.

So regardless of the size of your business, you can never overlook the importance of getting an extra set of hands to take the burden off you!

With the ever-evolving world of business undergoing rapid technological changes, it is crucial that companies around the globe – particularly those in eCommerce – understand, employ and effectively apply the power of technology and excellent customer service.

This is where world-class E-commerce Consulting Services prove to be detrimental in more ways than one! Great companies and businesses are built on a proven system; constant, efficient, and productive without the hiccups! The same goes for any successful, viable, and effective small business – be it on a local or global scale.

So the question is: can you effectively use your E-commerce Consultant for results-centric, customer-focused, goal-oriented business functions and initiatives that take your business to the next level?

Here are five reasons to hire an E-commerce Consultant in 2018:

1 – Lowering Business Costs

The revenue your business makes is for you to keep. But the costs your business incurs are for you to reduce! They go hand in hand, and a thriving eCommerce or online marketing knows that!

Unquestionably E-commerce Consultant is a great way to reduce operating costs for running your business. Why? Well. Aren’t operating costs one of the biggest things small business owners always worry about? Compared to a regular or full-time employee, an E-commerce Consultant costs less because the business owner does not pay benefits.

If you compare the cost of hiring an E-commerce Consultant with a regular employee, you’ll be astonished at the price gap. The benefit? You will not have to pay any sick leave, casual leave, or any other retirement benefit to your E-commerce Consultant. You pay for the time your E-commerce Consultant works for. No work means no money! Simple!

2 – Higher Productivity

As a small business owner, you should be doing challenging tasks rather than non-core tasks, such as making arrangements for travel, sending invites for a meeting, etc.

Hiring a full-time employee for these tasks is a sheer waste of money when you can easily hire an E-commerce Consultant for these non-core business tasks. A good E-commerce Consultant can be the difference between a productive a non-productive small business. By outsourcing administrative and non-core tasks through an E-commerce Consultant, small businesses free up their time to maximize business efforts – and results!

Successful small business owners know the value of hiring an E-commerce Consultant, allowing them to spend their time only on growth hacking activities.

3 – Turn Weaknesses into Strengths

All businesses and business owners will always have its set of challenges brought on by a particular area of weakness.

With virtual assistants, you can bridge the skill gap in your small business. Gone are the days when E-commerce Consultants used to be only simple remote workers. Now, they are skilled professionals and can do a wide range of tasks.

Whether you need someone to manage social media or somebody to conduct product research for Amazon, Shopify, or eBay, you can easily hire a virtual assistant for the same.

 4- Growing Your Business

What’s the ultimate long-term goal for any business – online or offline, small or big? The goal is always growing, flourishing, bolstering, and scaling to newer, more significant heights. A company that doesn’t scale is like a flower that never grows!

It is easy to scale up with virtual assistants managing aspects of your business. And if you hire an e-commerce consultant from a different time zone, your business will be 24/7 online. As consultants are skilled professionals, you will spend less/no time for training. They will start working for you the moment you hire them. This enables you to scale up at-will, with none of the fuss!

5- Pay as You Go

E-commerce Consultants hold no Legal ramifications or Human Resources regulations to abide by, contrary to when you physically hire an employee to work in-house.

For example, you cannot just fire an employee when there is less /no work to cut down hours and save costs. However, to the contrary, you can end the contract with your E-commerce Consultants abruptly without any legal problem. In essence, you can employ a consultant on a pay-as-you-go basis, giving yourself more leverage and control.

Conclusively, leveraging the power of E-commerce Consultants effectively and proactively in the right manner via the correct strategic approach can bring many dividends to your small business both in the short and long run of things. URtasker is the leading name in providing E-commerce services. For a free trial, click here!

Maintaining a reliable, proactive, and highly productive professional working relationship with your E-commerce Consultant is not only logically necessary; but also crucial both in the short and long run of your business’s lifecycle.

Since an E-commerce Consultant by their very nature is operating in the online space, it is critical to lay down processes and avenues that foster an uninterrupted means of communication, mutual empathy, understanding, professional insight, and goal-focused collective foresight.

Here are a few ways you can not only cement but also sustain, maintain, and regulate a rewarding and captivating professional relationship with your E-commerce Consultant – even from half the world away – every day!

Communication

Communication is the very bloodline of any professional working relationship – be it personal, social, or professional – with anyone, let alone your E-commerce Consultant! One must eliminate communication barriers; so that an active line of fluid, timely, and effective communication is established continually with your consultant.

Devising a systematic outline of workflows, systems, processes, and tasks, as well as daily or weekly follow-ups and regular meetings, is necessary to ensure communication levels are always optimal.

Eliminating barriers to communication and utilizing all the right tools and resources to increasing, bolstering, and maintaining reliable communicative channels enables you to avoid time delays, project mishaps, and meet deadlines.

Realistic Goals

Realistic setting goals is not only essential and time-worthy but also conducive to the overall growth of a business. Goals that are not realistic is the same as shooting darts at a target in the dark!

A highly effective goal-setting process of setting business goals more powerful is the SMART technique. SMART stands for:

S – Specific (or Significant goals).

M – Measurable (or Meaningful goals).

A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented goals).

R – Relevant (or Rewarding goals).

T – Time-bound (or Trackable goals).

Knowledge About Culture

Your geographic location, as well as that of your business, maybe different than that of your E-commerce Consultant.

For example, if you’re locating in New York and your business is based in Downtown Manhattan; your organizational and social culture will be vastly different than that of an E-commerce Consultant based in Hanoi, Vietnam!

Hence, immersing yourself, understanding, and applying the right cultural knowledge in all your interactions with your E-commerce Consultant is vital in building a strong, long-lasting, and rewarding professional working relationship. This shows empathy, respect, and compassion, and you win instant respect in the eyes of the E-commerce Consultant; who, in turn, strives harder to exceed your expectations by putting in that ‘extra’ effort as a natural human response to job-satisfaction.

Knowing culture includes being sensitive to people’s cultural, religious, ethnic, social, and nationalistic rituals, observations, and holidays. Giving your E-commerce Consultant leverage, room, and convenience of celebrating his or her cultural observations in a calendar year speak volumes of your professionalism and empathy as an employer.

Flexibility

Being flexible in terms of work parameters is a great way to smoothen things; build a vibrantly active relationship with your Virtual Assistant.

Remember, your E-commerce Consultant is ‘virtual,’ yes, but that doesn’t mean he or she isn’t human. You are dealing with a real human being, with feelings, sentiments, limitations, personal life, and its many dynamics, etc.

Being flexible in terms of vacation time and other elements of freedom is crucial in making the work environment ‘breathable.’ Many online E-commerce consulting agencies or online businesses lose great  E-commerce Consultants because they end up treating them like a mere ‘cog’ in a big machine, devoid of empathy and flexibility.

Every human being has a ‘breaking point’ in terms of how much they can handle; therefore being flexible in the work environment is of utmost importance!

Training and Development

Your E-commerce Consultant is a valuable asset for both short and long term of things. It is necessary to treat him or her; keeping in mind that investing in their training and development is a tangible and detrimental aspect to your business’s overall progress.

Ensuring that your E-commerce Consultant is continually guided, coached, trained, and developed through various tools, resources, courses, and supplementary education is a great way to build trust, rapport, and genuine compassion. When a consultant knows that you care and value their success through personal development; they will be more receptive to taking your business as if it were their own!

Conclusively, building a long-lasting and strong professional working relationship with your E-commerce Consultant is utmost necessary; if you want to empower your business with consistency, quality, and continual results. Relationship building is an art, and it takes time; however, with the tips mentioned above you can be on your way to cementing great relationships with all  E-commerce Consultants you choose to hire for yourself or your clients. Successfully!

In the world of business, time is money. And money is the end result that any professional, entrepreneur, or business owner wants. It is what the end-goal is; what pays the bills; what makes the world keep turning.

For that end-result to prosper in the right manner, it is crucial to follow a set of specific rules and practices that ensure the fruition of that result.

Great companies and businesses are built on a proven system; constant, efficient, and productive without the hiccups! The same goes for any successful, viable, and effective online business on a global scale.

Here are five crucial steps to hiring the perfect E-commerce consultant for your business – today:

Proven Legitimacy

It is imperative to understand that legitimacy is everything – particularly when it comes to running an online store.

Your online business is the face of your company, the very reason, and the purpose of what you are. If that legitimacy is compromised, it will have a powerfully negative effect on the reputation of your business.

And hence, it is crucial to look for a professional and recognized E-commerce Consulting Agency that has a proven track record of social media proof, legitimate and secure payment methods, and, more importantly, a local representative.

If you hire an E-commerce consultant from a legitimate E-commerce Consulting  Agency, you can be assured you’re in good hands in the short and long run of things – without the hiccups or the hassle. This, in turn, affects your business positively and brings legitimacy, orderly professionalism, and productivity to your own business.

Work Culture

The organizational culture and work environment, a company, encapsulates in its daily functioning and employee fabric are genuinely reflective of its professional worth. The same is true for an E-commerce Consultant that you’re looking to hire for your business.

When searching, it is essential to approach an E-commerce Consulting Agency that has a proven work culture, showcasing the best traits when it comes to areas of Hiring, Training, Employee Development, Appraisals, and Compensation. These parameters determine how the agency is invested in its workforce.

A better work culture automatically paves the way for a more motivated, satisfied, and productive E-commerce Consultant pool. This is a goldmine for any business looking to hire the best of the best, and hence is a critical element you should not overlook when researching the right E-commerce Consulting Agency. (more…)

In the fast-paced world of business and online opportunities, it is easy to get lost in the noise.

Competition, diverging avenues of income, the bombardment of non-stop advertising and rapidly evolving business landscape; are all factors that can make one feel overwhelmed as a freelancer looking to enter the realm of  E-commerce services.

The Challenge

The online paradigm is not the same today as it said 10 years ago. Companies are increasingly going global with a large chunk of their operations, depending on online transactions.

Managing a small, medium, or large-sized business as an entrepreneur today is far more of a challenge than it was years prior; this is where the beauty and power of professional E-commerce Consultant services come into play.

The Dilemma

Unfortunately, many people have had bad experiences with independent  E-commerce Consultants on websites like saying Freelancer.com, Upwork.com, and even Fiverr.com as some of these independent freelancers lack the professional work ethic and industry-relevant skills that ensures quality work.

They are not regulated, as compared to a consultant working under a recognized agency would. An agency ensures that all its consultants are thoroughly trained, educated, professional, and skilled in every area of necessity.

Such mitigating factors are what set apart an E-commerce Consultant operating as a mere scam from qualified consultant working under a specialist agency of e-commerce consultant.

Here are a few of our personal tips on how to embrace a rewarding and truly lucrative career as a progressive and well-equipped E-commerce Consultant – both as an independent freelancer and as an agency employee – the right way!

Do Your Research

It’s crucial to do your in-depth research before deciding to begin as an E-commerce Consultant. What is the market like? Where is it headed? What are the industry trends? What are the patterns of evolving? What kind of demand exists in various niches and categories? What resonates the most with you in terms of your comfort-level and skillset? Where do you see yourself excelling the most?

The power of the internet is a beautiful thing. It allows you to research ideas at the mere tip of your fingers.
Read up articles, blogs, watch videos and online podcasts, go to your local library and look up books on the subject of E-commerce Consultant Services; join online discussion forums and partake in various communities.

Prospect the Right Customers

Not prospecting the right customers (those who will pay for your services) is like walking shooting darts in a dark room! Knowing what prospective clients will be ‘ideal’ for your services, expertise, and niche of interest; is as essential as the real work you’ll do for them as an E-commerce Consultant.

Not all clients are ‘created equal’; hence, it’s crucial to do your research in understanding, scouting, scoping, and evaluating the ideal avatar or customer demographic for what you have to offer.

A great way is to study companies, entrepreneurs, and small businesses on LinkedIn, various business forums on Facebook and other social media, prospecting at trade shows, seminars, and conferences, etc.

Understanding Competition

You can’t be a great consultant if you don’t understand your client’s competition.

The highest most successful companies in the world like Coca Cola, Walmart, Apple, and Caterpillar – all spend millions every year in merely research and development. And that includes evaluating + continually evolving with their competitors in the market.

Knowing your strengths and weakness and identifying that of your competitions is a great asset and the strongest of weaponry you can possess as a professional and highly dynamic E-commerce Consultant.

Read up books, articles, online journals, and, most importantly; the official websites of each competitor to get an in-depth understanding of it all. Locations, business models, industry trends, and patterns, these are all important parameters to evaluate when it comes to knowing your competition.

Staying ahead of the competition gives you and your clients the edge that no amount of money can buy!

Freelancers VS Company – Where to Start?

There’s no concrete answer to this, as it depends on your comfort level and preference. However, ideally, the best way to start is via a company.

Being associated with a recognized and professional e-commerce agency allows you to polish your skills; gain the necessary organizational, problem-solving, analytical, communications, technological, and strategic knowledge to prosper as a consultant in a controlled, regulated, and highly dynamic professional environment.
A company will invest in your training and self-development and treat you like an irreplaceable asset because of it. Knowledge is power, and working + learning, while you go, is excellent leverage to have as someone just starting.

Growing as an E-commerce Consultant

A great way to grow is through constant marketing your services via social media and various online + offline channels. Classified sections on newspapers, magazines, websites, local community bulletin boards, paid Facebook advertising, reaching out to prospective clients and professionals on LinkedIn, and so forth.

Networking plays a crucial role in growth as an E-commerce Consultant in the competitive and cut-throat online arena today. As the saying goes, “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.”

Self-investing in yourself through reading books, learning on new industry trends; adapting to the latest consultant challenges, and refining yourself as a professional are all elements of pristine professionalism that will make you stand out from the rest and attract clients in hiring you.