Friday 17 August 2012

Make a profit while enjoying your weekend

It's Friday and I'm sure many of us are looking ahead to the weekend, thinking about the various activities you're going to take part in or just taking comfort in the thought of being able to relax for a few days away from work. However, when running a small business, you need to remember that running an online store is a full time job and that doesn't just mean Monday to Friday. Depending on the type of store you run, working only during the week is going to result in you missing out on huge amount of traffic.

However, just because your store needs to be open everyday to make sure you achieve the maximum number of sales, it doesn't mean that you need to spend all your time sat at your desk working, not having any free time to relax and indulge in various activities. To do this you need to be able to effectively manage your time, ensuring your online shop doesn't suffer.

All at once - When a customer places an order on a weekend, they know that most likely, the product won't be shipped out until the first working day of the following week. This means that you can check your orders on a Saturday afternoon for example, package them and have them ready to ship out first thing Monday morning. While this may take you an hour or two, doing it all in one go is better than staggering it throughout the day as the orders come in, meaning you don't have any time to do anything else. Any orders that are made on Sunday can then be processed, packaged and shipped on Monday.

Employ someone - Depending how big your online business is and how much money you are making, you may think about employing someone to run your store on a weekend. This will give you the free time to enjoy your weekend. However, when deciding to to employ someone you need to spend time to ensure you employ someone who you have full confidence in and that you know will be able to handle all aspects of your store. At the end of the day, any problems that occur during the weekend are just going to give you a headache when you return on Monday morning so you need someone who will ensure everything runs smoothly.

Automate messages - The easiest way to still run your business while enjoying your weekend is to setup automated email messages for the weekend. When a customer purchases an item, an automated message will be sent to them letting the customer know that their order will be processed first thing on Monday morning. While the customer wants their produced to the processed and shipped as soon as possible, letting them know when their order will be processed stops them becoming frustrated by the lack of forward progress over the weekend.

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