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Running a Shopify store can be a profitable business if done right. With e-commerce becoming such a huge industry today, it’s not surprising how so many people have decided to go into online entrepreneurship.
Shopify has become one of the most popular e-commerce platforms. It provides you with a unified, yet easy to use platform that you can build even if you do not have any website-building or design experience.
Though setting up a Shopify store is easy, running the store and turning it into a money-making machine isn’t. It requires a ton of work once the site is up.
If you’re thinking of running it on your own, you’re headed for disaster.
With the amount of work that needs to be done, hiring a Shopify virtual assistant is one of the best decisions you can make. The question now is, which tasks do you need to hire a Shopify virtual assistant for?
Will you be needing someone to handle customer service? Someone to take care of your social media presence? Or maybe someone who can help with product fulfillment? The answer could be all of the above, and more.
Don’t worry. We’re going to make things easier for you by listing down 25 of the most important Shopify tasks you need to hire a virtual assistant for.
To kick things off, you’ll be needing someone to create a craftily-designed logo that will represent your brand. You need a logo that will attract people to your site especially when you’re starting out.
If you want your products to sell, your listing should have stunning images that not only fit Shopify’s requirements, but that also capture the buyer’s attention. You’ll be needing a good photographer who can capture your products’ cool features with the right angles and lighting.
You need someone who has great image-editing skills that you can depend upon to create good-looking infographics as well as graphics for your website and ebook covers. You need someone who knows how to grab people’s attention using various graphics and images.
You can hire one Shopify virtual assistant to be both your graphic and web designer, but you need be able to identify the difference. Graphic designers take care of your featured images and site headers. A web designer’s primary task is to make the site look good so it can attract attention.
It would be great to hire a person who can perform both web designer and web developer duties. If that’s not possible, it’s worth it to hire a dedicated web developer. While a web designer takes care of how the website looks, a web developer is responsible for making the site work.
You wouldn’t want broken links and buttons leading somewhere else if you really want to make it big with your Shopify store.
A clean, well-organized database ensures quick page loading and less downtime which is why a database manager is essential for an online business like a Shopify store.
If you’re going to earn money from selling stuff, you’ll need someone who has expertise in product research to help you out. He or she needs to have the eye and knowledge for in-demand products and be able to buy them on wholesale.
He or she also needs to have good negotiation skills and help you secure the best deals that will maximize your profit. You need someone who has years of experience finding great products that you can sell.
With the website properly designed and managed on the backend, the next thing to focus on is content. You’ll be needing a content writer to provide valuable content about the services you offer and the products you sell.
This position requires someone who has rich writing experience and has basic knowledge of SEO. The person should not only be able to write good content, he or she needs to also know the right keyword to use for your product to rank high and make them visible on the search engines.
One of the ways to bring people to your Shopify store is to offer them some free content as a teaser to what you can actually offer. It can be in the form of an ebook or online courses.
Another way of showcasing your products and services is through infographics. Having a good infographics creator can help attract interest in your Shopify store.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to get your products and services out in front of the public eye. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as drafting an email and sending it out.
You need someone who has the ability to create thought-provoking subject lines that will increase click-through rates and valuable content that urges people to take action.
Your products and services will amount to nothing if they’re not visible to potential buyers. This is where you need the services of a good SEO specialist.
You need someone who understands how to find keywords that will rank you on Google. An SEO specialist’s main function is to drive traffic to your website This is a Shopify virtual assistant worth investing your money in.
Link building is another way of increasing a website’s search engine ranking. If you’ve got a lot of other websites linking to your page, it makes your website appear trust-worthy and thus, rank high among search engines.
If you’ve got the budget to spare, try hiring a professional to do this for you. Google can penalize your site if link building isn’t done properly. It’s a worthy investment if you really want your site to get recognized immediately, and not dropped off the face of Google entirely for spamming.
Apart from your social media channels, there are also social bookmarking sites like Reddit or Digg that are also considered to be quality backlinks.
Having someone take care of this for you should help increase your search engine rankings and the probability of people finding out about your site.
Another key Shopify virtual assistant you need to have with you would have to be a social media manager. There’s no denying how powerful social media has become and it would be a pity if you’re not going to be able to leverage this power.
You need someone who will update your social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram among others. You need a VA who will share updates about new products and showcase some of your best-sellers through these channels for more visibility.
Along with promoting to social media, you will also be needing a Shopify virtual assistant who has a good understanding of sponsored ads.
You’ll be needing someone who knows how to set up campaigns and understand how to take advantage of them. He or she needs to ensure that it is going to the right people and be able to monitor how effective the campaign is based on the sales it has generated versus the amount you spent.
With everything in place, you’ll now be needing someone to actually take care of each of your customer’s purchases. This Shopify virtual assistant will be in charge of sending the products to your customers.
You don’t want to run out of stock or overstock on a product that doesn’t sell. Hiring a virtual assistant for this tedious process is essential if you want customers to always keep coming back and avoid huge losses on storing duds.
It’s important to have someone track your shipments and ensure that they are getting delivered. It would be worth investing in a VA to take care of this.
You need VAs who can help talk to customers either via chat or email. You need someone who can provide both pre- and post- sales support for your customers so they can clarify any questions promptly.
When you have a growing brand, comments about the different products and services you offer can become overwhelming.
It will be good to have a VA who will be able to take care of replying to these comments so your customers know that you care.
Part of running a Shopify store is getting a few refund requests every now and then. It’ll come in handy to have someone take care of these because such tasks can be tedious and take some time to complete.
If you want to increase your reach, having someone to personally reply to positive customer feedback and getting them posted is one way of doing it.
We all know that we can’t please everybody, but we can appease them by getting to the root of their disappointment. It’s crucial to have a Shopify virtual assistant who can personally reach out, apologize, and offer alternative solutions.
Though this may rarely happen, locating past orders from a customer can not only be challenging but also time-consuming. Having someone to look after such requests will be a big time-saver.
There are obviously more tasks that need to be handled by a Shopify virtual assistant. The list above should give you a head start since these areas are crucial to a successful Shopify store. And now that you have a better understanding of which virtual assistants you need in your business, we encourage you to reassess your current situation as a Shopify store owner.
Take a quick look at which areas in your business you’re sorely needing help on. Make a list and start prioritizing so you can find help fast.
The different Shopify tasks require different sets of expertise that you won’t likely find in a single person. Though it may cost you money hiring virtual assistants for these tasks, they are worthy investments whose benefits you will reap in the future.
If you are a Shopify store owner who’s looking to add talented individuals to help you sell more products, we can help fill those needs by becoming one of our clients.
You could also check out our FreeUp Facebook page and while you’re at it, hit like!
Noel Rosos is a personal development writer, motivational speaker, entrepreneur and founder of Life’s How You Live It, a personal development blog dedicated to helping people live the life they’ve always dreamed of. He is also a writer/contributor for Arianna Huffington’s wellness site, Thrive Global. He is an affiliate marketer, a full-time husband and father, and a self-proclaimed FAILUROLOGIST.
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I need 17 to 25 can’t I just have one person for this?
Hi Phou, good question. You can find a VA who has experience in all of these areas, but depending on the size of your store and volume of orders, you might want to hire a second VA who specializes in customer service and feedback.
Hi, i need a virtual assistant for my shopify store online.
Thank you
Hi Lani, we can introduce you to one! Please sign up for a FreeeUp client account and submit a worker request so we can select the right one for your needs.
This is awesome, I needed this head start!
A lot of these tasks require superior language ability (not to mention specific skills like composition and public relations). Can they be professionally done by workers outside the US?
Hey Ian, absolutely, yes. There are different levels that you can hire, like English fluency and customer service skills isn’t really important for requesting feedback removal versus replying to reviews. And on FreeeUp, you are introduced to a freelancer based on the specific requirements that you submit for each task.
Can I hire a VA to help me from the start such as to build my Shopify store from the templates, then help product source, listing optimization and managing marketing of the products? In other words, I am about to start a Shopify Drop Shipping Business and want an experienced VA to assist me from the beginning to save me time of start up.
Hey Barbara, you may not be able to hire a single VA for all those tasks, but we can introduce you to a few who can help you with Shopify development, drop ship sourcing, listing optimization, and marketing. Please sign up for an account (takes only a few minutes) and you can submit the worker requests – we usually introduce a freelancer within 24 hours.