You want to take a vacation just like everybody else, but you are also running an ecommerce business that requires your attention 24/7 to function.
For small business owners, taking a vacation can be tough. A 2014 study by OnDeck found that only 57 percent of small-business owners plan to take a vacation, and only 61% of those vacationers plan to take as long as a week.
If business owners get away at all, it is typically for a short time. The demands of e-commerce often compound this problem. Web sites are up and selling 24 hours a day, seven days a week and merchandise have to be delivered to customers on time. They don’t know that you’re on vacation, and nor do they care.
Planning a vacation requires some work and formulation, but your preparations won’t just benefit your sanity, it will also make your business stronger in the long run.
So let’s have a look at what you can do differently that will help you enjoy your vacation and at the same time keep running an ecommerce business –
1. Start Planning Early
Normally you can let the client know that you won’t be available for a period, and if clients need any work done, they have to inform you beforehand. Though, it is a backdated way it can actually help you to clear your work schedule so that you can walk out of the door confidently knowing that you didn’t leave any activities undone.
Running an ecommerce business is entirely different than running a physical shop. Because you are running your business through a virtual portal and your customer doesn’t need to interact with you face to face. But they regularly visit your platform, and if suddenly they see you have no presence or your website is down, they will think you are not an active business anymore. That will be hazardous for your brand reputation.
Thus you have to divide your works in such a way so that you can keep your website tip top at all times, even though you are not there to manage your site.
2. Inform Your Business Associates
I am talking about your suppliers, storage management facility and delivery system. If any of those entities make any mistakes while you are gone, you won’t be there to solve them. So let them know as early as possible so that they can ensure you that everything will run properly in your absence.
If there are any loose ends you have to figure that out before you leave for your destination. It is always a good idea to keep someone in your speed dial, for those rare moments when problem only occurs when you are not around. Some entrepreneurs like to get daily reports, and some don’t either way, your friend back at home can do the job of reporting whenever you need him to.
3. List Your Daily Business Task
Some entrepreneurs do take their daily rituals very seriously and make a routine out of it. If you haven’t done that already, before you head out for your trip, you need to lay out a map of your daily essential tasks. Why the essentials? During your vacation, your business will be in hibernation mode.
You can also make some changes from your routine, just to make it more manageable while you are away from home.
4. Schedule Your Social Media
What I love about marketing tools these days is how quickly you can schedule your social media updates and blog posts in advance. Tools like HootSuite, Buffer, CoSchedule, Agorapulse can be helpful for maintaining your social media updates.
But there is one drawback to this process if you have an active fan base and they are very engaging with your brand. They will communicate or will reach out to you through comments and messages. In that case, tools mentioned above won’t be able to reply back to them. As a result, they will feel unwelcomed, and it can reduce your engagement rate drastically.
To solve this sort of problem you can hire people who will reply back to those fans. This type of hiring doesn’t necessarily have to be from your local area because it can over complicate the entire process. You can outsource your social media engagement task, and they will maintain the discussion on your social media platform without any drawbacks.
5. Manage Your E-mail
Still, these days’ business owners prefer email as their primary communication method. As a result, you will get a ton of daily mail during your vacation time; some of them will be crucial for running an ecommerce business.
To overcome this dilemma you have three options in hand –
- Personally replying to all those emails, depending on your location; this arrangement can be problematic. It also seems pointless to take a vacation, if you still have to work.
- You can send out an automatic mail with a message like, “I am out of town; I will get back to you as soon as possible. But in case you get a time sensitive mail or a mail from a major client, you might lose a potential client or incur some loss.
- The third idea is, you hire an offshore team to manage your mail for you, they can give replies based on the nature of the mail, and they will be able to notify you. This arrangement is helpful if you are going out for a long time.
6. Support Your E-commerce Business
Due to the ever-changing nature of e-commerce business, for running an ecommerce business, you always have to change the price, description, update the catalog based on the supply-demand and provide chat support for your site at all times.
No automation can do that job. If you don’t have a big team or they’re also going on a vacation, you can manage your site through offshoring. Your hired team will provide the best updates that are currently available and will make changes based on the situation.
7. Relax And Have Some Fun
Despite all the tactics, it is hard for any business owner to presume that running an ecommerce business will be easy while they are gone. They believe that their sales will fall apart if they’re not there. But the truth is, your business can handle itself. Although, to make sure everything runs smoothly you have to develop a plan before your trip and make some considerable changes to support that plan so that you can relax and enjoy your time off.
Over To You
Are you planning on taking a vacation and don’t know how you will keep running an ecommerce business? There are some key points you have to remember – plan every little detail, keep some backup plan in case anything goes wrong, hire an offshore team that will certainly save you a lot of hassle.
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