14 Tasks to Delegate to Internet Retail Freelancers and Agencies

Hiring retail freelancers can be a beneficial move if you own an e-commerce business.  Whether you own a store on the Amazon marketplace, engage in drop shipping, or you provide subscription services, outsourcing to remote professionals will allow you to manage your business more efficiently. If you’re seriously considering hiring retail freelancers, then the following guide is for you.

When to Hire Freelancers and Agencies for Your Internet Retail Business

Given the nature of e-commerce, hiring retail freelancers and agencies can become inevitable for some business owners down the line. If you’re unsure whether or not you need the help of a freelancer, you might want to see if you’re in any of these situations:

1. Your daily tasks are hindering you from actually growing. If you find yourself glued to your desk every day trying to accomplish menial tasks, then you might want to enlist the help of retail freelancers. They can take over the daily grind while you focus on building a winning business strategy.
2. You’re thinking of expanding your business but hiring full-timers is not currently feasible. Putting in more man hours into your business is inevitable if you want to scale it up. And the truth is, it takes more than one person to accomplish this. If your current budget does not allow you to hire full-time people just yet, then you can always turn to freelancers or agencies to help you out. This way, you can have the benefit of an extra pair of hands on deck without spending an arm and a leg on additional costs.
3. Your business is growing exponentially. If you play your cards right and given the right circumstances, your online store can and will grow rapidly. This is exciting stuff for any business owner, but there’s a caveat to hyper-growth—you need to be able to keep up with the demand that comes with it. Retail freelancers are the perfect starting point if you want to bring in more people to help you run your business. They can support the various aspects of running your company so you can transform it into a mecca for online shoppers.
4. There are tasks on your plate that require a specialized skill set. As a business owner, it can be tempting to take matters into your own hands. But the truth is, you can’t always be a jack of all trades. The good news is there are many freelancers in various parts of the globe with the skills you need. This includes designing product labels, email marketing, and content production.

14 Tasks to Delegate to Retail Freelancers

Retail freelancers can help you manage your e-commerce business through their skills and experience in the industry. Here are twelve tasks you can easily outsource to them to improve the scalability of your online store:

1. Order Fulfillment and Processing

When you’re starting out in your e-commerce business, chances are you’d still have time to work on order processing tasks. But fulfilling orders can eat up so much of your time that you could be spending on planning. An order fulfillment specialist can take this task off your plate with ease and confidence.

If your company is already on the verge of growth, then you definitely need the help of a retail freelancer who can take charge of this time-consuming task for you. He or she can process orders throughout the day and ensure that they are shipped out to the right customer as quickly as possible. They can also take care of sharing tracking information with your customers. What’s more, you can assign to them the task of dealing with order issues.

An order processing specialist can help you design and implement a clear and simple order processing system that consumers will appreciate. In addition, they can also help with ensuring that all orders are complete, acknowledging customer orders through email, updating the order status, and asking for customer feedback.

2. Social Media Management

These days, online retailers rely heavily on social media to get mileage in terms of exposure to potential customers. However, not all business owners have the time to focus on this crucial yet time-consuming aspect of running an e-commerce business.

A social media management specialist can help you come up with strategies for all the platforms you are on. They can also suggest adding more platforms should you lack presence on any channels.

What’s more, retail freelancers with a background in social media management can help you create engaging tweets and interact with your customers on various platforms. They can also use insights data to maximize the reach of your social media campaigns and posts. In addition, they help create excellent social media marketing strategies that are best suited for your business.

3. Inventory Management

As your business grows, you’ll likely find your inventory growing in size as well. Given enough time, an inventory management spreadsheet will not be enough to cover the demands of your business. An inventory management specialist can help you in creating a strategy to help you manage it all.

If you’re a drop shipping company, then retail freelancers specializing in inventory management can help you stay on top of all the small details so you never run out of stock ever again. Meanwhile, if you’re on Amazon, they can help you manage your inventory on the FBA program.

4. Web Design, Development, and Management

As an e-commerce business owner, your focus should be on developing strategies to grow your company and not on developing a website for your business. Therefore you should leave the task of web design, development, and management to the professionals.

A freelance web designer can help you create a new website or redesign your existing one to make it more engaging and easy to navigate for your customers. Just be sure to find someone who is able to work with different website platforms including WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, and BigCommerce.

5. Product Data Entry

Product data entry is one of the most time-consuming aspects of an online store. However, this task can also be seasonal so hiring a full-timer isn’t always practical. A freelancer, on the other hand, can help you in accomplishing this task efficiently and with a minimal margin of error.

Freelancers can take care of adding new products, deleting products from the inventory, tagging products that are out of stock, uploading product photos, or migrating products to a new platform whenever you need it.

6. Market Research

As a business owner, you’re likely of the belief that you understand your market by now. However, there is no telling how your customers will react to changes in your products or to new releases you may be planning. That is, unless you study them thoroughly. This is where market research specialists come into the picture.

They can help you with a number of tasks including:

• Investigating market activity
• Assessing future trends in your niche
• Commissioning surveys, if necessary
• Evaluating the performance of your products
• Analyzing data and statistics
• Developing reports

7. Writing Product Descriptions

Just like product data entry, writing product descriptions is a seasonal task. It comes up when there are new additions to your inventory. However, there is a lot that goes into writing effective product descriptions. They should be written in such a way that they easily catch the attention of your customers and increase the chances of conversion down the line.

Retail freelancers can help you create unique product titles and descriptions that are optimized either for the web or for Amazon. They can easily churn out product copy that engages, persuades, and sells.

8. Blogging

If you’re not leveraging blogs to grow your online store then you could be missing out on a lot of potential conversions. A blog is an excellent tool for sharing your expertise to your target audience. It is also great for establishing yourself as an industry expert and building your brand online.

If you’re not confident with your writing skills or if you simply have no time to sit down and write weekly, then a retail freelancer with a knack for the written word is your best option. Apart from writing new blog articles for you every week, a freelance blogger can help you create a blog and develop and implement strategies that will work well for you. They can also develop a content calendar based on your niche and target keywords. This way you can convert readers and subscribers into paying customers down the line.

9. IT Support

E-commerce businesses rely heavily on technology to keep running smoothly, However, there are times when the unthinkable happens. Your website or server could crash, there could be malware attacks, or your data could be corrupted.

The problem is that hiring an in-house IT guy can be quite expensive. The good news is there are freelance IT support specialists who can look after your needs. They can be in charge of troubleshooting issues that might pop up from time to time. They can also provide site plugin enhancement and website support. The best part about all of this is that IT support doesn’t drill a hole in your pocket. You can pay freelance IT specialists by the hour or per project.

10. Customer Service

Good customer service is always at the crux of every retail business. What’s more, according to Linkdex, 79 percent of American consumers expect online businesses to pay close attention to their needs. What’s more, they also expect personalized engagement from start to finish. What’s more, Zendesk reported in 2015 that 82 percent of consumers stop doing business with a company because of bad customer service.

With this in mind, it’s important to have experts on deck to provide high-quality customer service. By outsourcing this task to retail freelancers, you can be sure that matters like product inquiries, order issues, and return and exchange requests are handled expertly at all times.

11. PPC Marketing

Pay-Per-Click marketing or paid search advertising is a specialized trade. This means it can be overwhelming for someone without the proper background. It takes a skilled professional to set up a whole campaign and perform tasks such as writing crafty headlines and finding the keywords that work.

A PPC marketing specialist can help you with a wide range of tasks such as:

• Researching competitors
• Whitelisting high-performing sources
• Keyword research
• Ad review and testing
• Monitoring campaign performance
• Creating reports

12. Graphic Design

Graphic design plays a crucial role in branding your business. And unless your business is hinged on digital art and design then you’re better off hiring a freelance graphic designer for things like your company logo and banner, promotional materials, and catalogs.

A graphic designer can also help you tweak product images and create compelling images to increase sales from your online store and other channels. They can also create infographics that explain a certain process related to your product. In addition, they can also create creative content and banners for ad campaigns you may be running on social media or other ad channels.

13. Email Marketing

Email is one of the main marketing channels that online businesses use today. With the help of a retail freelancer with email marketing experience, you can:

• Create an email marketing plan
• Manage email marketing software you might already be using
• Create custom sign-up forms you can place on your website and social media to build your email list
• Automate campaigns for new subscribers
• Send out weekly email newsletters that increase your brand’s community engagement
• Write content for drip campaigns you want to run for your business

14. SEO

E-Commerce is a highly competitive sphere. This means that in order to drive sales, you need to drive organic traffic to your online store. To achieve this, your website has to rank high enough on search engines.

Retail freelancers with expertise in search engine optimization (SEO) can help develop a strategy that works best for your business and budget. What’s more, they can help you with tasks like optimizing your website, creating SEO-focused blog content, researching SEO keywords, and building backlinks.

Find Reliable Retail Freelancers and Agencies on FreeeUp

If you don’t want to spend a lot of time looking for reliable retail freelancers and agencies for your business, FreeUp can help you out.

FreeUp is a marketplace that offers a solution to the common problems of hiring freelancers online. We offer over 85 skillsets so you can be sure to find the right person for the task you need help with. This includes customer service, product sourcing, inventory management, product listing, order fulfillment dropshipping, wholesale, conversion rate optimization, and more.

To know more about FreeeUp, simply schedule a call with one of our founders to discuss your business and hiring needs.