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As a business owner your time is valuable. Running an ecommerce store, especially as a multichannel seller (and who isn’t these days?) takes a lot of time and energy. Adding to inventory, shipping orders, keeping customers happy, and implementing marking efforts barely leaves time to focus on growing your business. With all of that in mind, I’ve gathered up four, easy to use, time-saving apps.
RescueTime
First off, lets find out how you’re spending your time. RescueTime is a tool that monitors your online activity and then reports what sites you’ve been on and for how long. RescueTime helps you determine when you’re most productive and when you aren’t, using detailed reports and high quality charts. By knowing which sites are causing you the most problems you can set goals to limit your time spent there and RescueTime will report on how your meeting these goals. Alternatively, you can set goals for the work-related websites you need to spend more time on. By establishing what your daily habits online are, you can take the necessary steps to improve your productivity.
Readability
Personally, one of my biggest time-sucks online is reading. I often find myself on a blog reading a work-related post, when I see a link to another article that seems interesting. If I’m not careful, I can jump from article to article and end up reading articles completely unrelated to where I began. As a result, I’ve wasted a lot of time and I have not retained the information I’ve just read. That’s where Readability comes in. This simple to use app allows me to turn any webpage into an easy to read view, so I can read a blog post, article, news story, etc without ads, pop-ups, or confusing formatting. With readability you’ll be given the option to read “now” or “save or later”. When saving for later you’ll be able to tag the article anyway you’d like. I tag articles by their topics and whether it’s work-related or for fun. Readability enhances the reading experience and offers the handy ability to save and then easily search for articles later.
Buffer
Buffer is a social media management tool that allows users to easily share content, schedule posts, and analyze social media statistics. You can preset the times you want your posts to be published on major social networks. Buffer’s clean, easy to use interface, and fantastic customer service ensures a very short learning curve. Social media is a necessary aspect for your business but that doesn’t mean it has to take hours and hours everyday to manage. Buffer is exceptional in both business-related and personal use. I read a ton and I’m always coming across great articles I want to share. Instead of sharing 10 articles in the morning (when I do most of my research), I can schedule the posts to be published throughout the day. Buffer for Business allows you to do the same but provides more features and richer analytics.
Trello
Trello is a productivity tool that helps keep you organized. One of the biggest caveats with new websites and programs is that they can take a while to learn and get the hang of. If you are busy and looking for time-saving tools, spending 2 hours getting acquainted with a new program doesn’t seem worth it. Trello however is extremely simple to use and offers a fantastic tutorial. Trello is especially helpful for teams as you can see updates immediately. Each list is made up of tasks (cards) than be be moved from list to list. Clicking on a card will take you to the “back” of the card where you can upload documents, pictures, links, checklists, labels, and a due date. Trello is one of the most comprehensive productivity tools I’ve found and I use it to keep track of work related tasks as well as personal tasks.
Bonus! Appath
I couldn’t talk about time saving tools for ecommerce sellers without bringing up Appath! Appath is a complete solution to help multichannel sellers manager their orders, shipping, inventory, and customer service needs. Stop wasting time by logging into each marketplace and then trying to keep track of separate inventories, orders, and shipping methods. Keep everything organized in one centralized location. Customizable batch shipping options allow for quicker shipping so you can spend your time focusing on growing your business. Keep your customers happy by more efficiently keeping track of orders that require service. Appath offers a streamlined, cloud-based solution for multichannel ecommerce sellers who are looking to grow their business. A complete list of features can be found here.
What are your go-to productivity tools and hacks?