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Starting and building your
online store business is not that difficult to
do. And running it is much easier as well. For the most part, your day to day business
operation will always be the same.
Business operating hours: Standard business hours are from 9:00am to
5:00pm Monday through Friday, your time. And
attending to your business during these hours is
the best way to run your store. You’re more than welcome to work as many hours
as you can or as you want to. But as far as
dealing with customers, and taking and placing
orders, cut off time should be 5:00pm, 6:00pm or
7:00pm the latest. And you can continue to work
on and update your website after hours as well. |
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Your business hours of 9:00am to 5:00pm or
9:00pm to 6:00pm or even 7:00pm as well should
be stated on your contact page after or below
your contact form or contact details.
For example:
Phone Hours of Operation:
Monday - Friday: 9:00AM - 5:00PM EST
Saturday - Sunday: Closed
Tel: 1-800-123-4567
If you’re using a call forwarding service
provider such as RingCentral.com for example,
then RingCentral will forward all calls to you
during your selected business hours and send all
calls after business hours directly to voicemail
automatically.
Setting standard business hours has always been
the best way to run a business and the
professional way as well. But you are more than
welcome to work as many hours as you wish.
Your average business day
The first thing you’ll want to do when starting
off your day is to check your emails first.
NOTE: It would be best to have an email program
on your computer such as Microsoft Outlook for
example, to make it easier for you to check and
stay on top of your emails at all times as such
programs remain open and receive emails every
few minutes and automatically as well. This is a
much better option than having to log into an
online email account just to check email every
few minutes.
NOTE: Your email address should always be
support, info, or [email protected] and
not [email protected]. The latter is
unprofessional and the former is standard
business practice.
The first thing you’ll want to do is check the
emails that came in over night or after business
hours and respond to those emails first.
You’ll have different types of emails to deal
with:
-Customer emails
-Distributor emails
-Distributor tracking number emails
-Voicemail notification emails
-Order confirmation emails
Many times, it’s better to read over and deal
with the customer emails first.
You can check your order emails to see what
products the orders are for and where the orders
are going to be shipped to. But before attending
to and placing those orders online it would be
best to go through and read your customer emails
first. |
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Sometimes, a customer will
send an email to request a change on their order
such as a change in the ship-to address or to
add an additional product or accessory to their
order without having to pay any additional
shipping fees. And it would be best to
accommodate the customer as best as you can in
order to fulfill and satisfy their request. And
this is just one of the reasons why it’s best to
check customer emails first before placing any
orders online with distributors.
Distributors will also send you tracking number
emails and you’ll want to send those out to your
recent customers before they start calling and
asking for their tracking number.
You’ll also want to check your voice mail just
in case a customer called to make changes to
their order via telephone. And this would also
be a good time to return phone calls to
potential customers as well. Just be sure to
check the differences in time zones to make sure
that you’re not calling the customer at an hour
that may not be convenient for them.
For example, if you’re based in New York, then
calling a California customer at 9:30am EST
would not be the best time to call them seeing
that at this time it is only 6:30am PST in
California. You can find out where the customer
is located by the area code of their phone
number on the order. And these are just a few
simple details to make note of.
After you’ve read and responded to email and
voicemails as well, then you can proceed to
place orders online.
First, check the order emails to see which
product the customer ordered and where the
product is going to be shipped to.
Then check with your preferred distributors to
see which distributor has that particular
product in stock, at the lowest price and at a
warehouse location closest to the customers
“ship-to” address. The closer the distributor
warehouse is to the customers’ location then the
lower your shipping costs will be, while the
shipping costs to the customer will remain the
same no matter where the product gets shipped
from.
Many distributors have multiple warehouse and
distribution locations strategically placed
across the country, and by ordering the product
from the distribution warehouse closest to your
customer it allows you to save more money on
shipping while making more profit on the
shipping charge as well.
Once you’ve determined which distributor you’re
going to use to fulfill the order then you can
proceed to place the order online via the
distributors’ website or you can call them to
place the order over the phone. And sometimes,
you may be able to get a better price over the
phone by talking the sales rep down a few
dollars or more.
Once all emails and voice mails have been
responded to and you’ve placed all of your
orders as well, then you can proceed with the
rest of your business day in a calm and
effective manner. |
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Your things to do
list
An effective and organized way to run and manage
your business would be to work from a “things to
do list” and by doing so you can manage to get a
lot more accomplished in much less time.
For example, a typical “things to do list” can
read as follows:
-Respond to all emails, or at least those that
need to be responded to
-Send out all tracking numbers via email to
recent customers
-Respond to all voicemails, and return all phone
calls that need to be returned
-Complete any unfinished business
-Place all orders online or by phone
-Check your competitors’ websites to see if any
new products are out on the market
-Build and add a product page for product abc, Panasonic xyz and all accessories for those
products as well.
-Add hot selling product Sharp abc to main page
-Add product xyz and mmn to your comparison
chart
-Create and add product review for product bbb
-Add and respond to any open link exchange
request
-Check status and statistics for any ongoing
marketing campaigns such Google ads, banner ads
etc..
-Start, create and launch a new marketing
campaign for product ddd
-Call back potential customer Mr. Davis at
3:00pm
-Check availability for product ggg
-Check to make sure customers received their
packages for previous orders
-Send out courtesy emails to customers who did
receive their orders
This may seem like a lot of things to do, but
it’s really not. And when you’re working from a
“things to do list” you get things done much
faster and in an organized manner as well.
And if you still have products to add to your
website then that needs to be your main daily
activity until you’re done adding all products
and accessories to your online store database.
And from there, it’s just a matter of adding new
products as they arrive on the market. |
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Remember, the more product
pages you have on your website then the more
traffic your website will get. And when you’re
caught up on having all of the products you’re
wanting to sell listed on your website then it
becomes much easier to maintain your store. And
then maintenance becomes a matter of adding new
products when they the hit market.
And when adding products to your website, be
sure to place your new and most popular products
in the “What’s New” and “What’s Hot” section on
your main page.
Build a product page first for those new and
popular products and then link to those pages
from the product image, description and a “click
here” link on your main page.
You’ll also need to add most of your new
products to your comparison charts as well.
You will be receiving orders during the day,
online and by phone, (if you provided a phone
number on your website).
When those orders come in, then you can start
shopping around with your distributors to see
which distributors has that particular product
at the lowest cost and closest to your customers
location as well.
Once you find the product and have decided on
which distributor to use, then go ahead and
place the order online or by phone and then
continue to work from your “things to do list”.
Many times, distributors have sales, rebates and
special promotions going on and it would be best
to subscribe to any email list that they may
have in order to be notified of any such
promotions.
If there are any special sales or rebate offers
on popular products then be sure to place those
products on your main page.
If you receive word or notice of a new product
coming out on the market soon, then be sure to
build a product page for that product even
before it comes out on the market in order to
start taking pre-orders for that product as
well. |
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Marketing and Advertising your website
Aside from taking care of
all necessary business tasks, you should be
spending the bulk of your time marketing and
advertising your business online.
You can work on SEO
(search engine optimization) optimizing your
pages for the search engines and creating more
search engine optimized door way pages for your
website.
You can check on your
competitors’ websites to see what’s selling and
what’s not.
You can continue
exchanging links and responding to link requests
as well.
You can work on that press
release for that new product that just came out.
You can check on your
pay-per-click or any on going marketing
campaigns that are active.
You can launch a new
marketing campaign for a new product as well.
You can participate on
online forums that are related to your niche
market by answering questions on products,
recommendations, etc in order to bring in more
targeted traffic to your website. |
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You
can continue to write articles to work on your
article marketing campaigns or place other
peoples’ articles on your website in order to
create even more search engine optimized
webpage’s.
You can send out emails on
a new product arrivals or announcements on
products coming out soon in order to take
pre-orders for those products as well.
Marketing and advertising
is the lifeline of your business and it’s
important to spend the bulk of your time on
marketing. And the more time you spend on
marketing your business then the more traffic
your business will receive. And the more traffic
your website receives then the more sales you’ll
make as well. And at the end of the
business day, 5:00pm, 6:00pm or whatever the
time may be, then you can finish off any last
items on your things to do list in order to
close down shop, if that’s what you want to do.
Or you can continue to work without any
interruptions as well.
You can send out tracking numbers for orders
received that day.
You can check on tracking numbers online to make
sure customers received their packages for
previous orders as well.
Then you can send out courtesy emails to those
who did receive their package for that day
thanking them for their order.
You can finish any last minute emails that just
came in.
And then once you’re done everything you need to
do and have put in a hard days work, then you
can close down shop and spend the rest of the
day with family or friends or whatever you want
to do.
Running an online store business is not that
difficult to do, and in fact can become pretty
simple as well. And after you’ve been running
your business for some time, then everything
else becomes routine. And in time, it won’t feel
like work any more. It will just become a way of
life. |
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Dealing with Customers |
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How to Minimize Interaction with Customers |
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How to Deal with Customers via Email |
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How to Take and Place Orders |
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