Online business owners are typically sole proprietors and due to that, efficiency needs to be part of everything you do.
Your business can be lean and mean, and run almost on autopilot for most things that you do which don’t require your input – provided you set it up that way.
- Get Help
There are numerous people that you can outsource part of the work to in order to take it off your plate. Consider getting help for customer service, online marketing, project management and more. Even getting help around the house in your personal life can help create more time in your day that will enable you to be more efficient with your business.
- Surround Yourself with Smart People
The more smart people you can network with who are doing what you want to do and are experiencing the type of success you want to experience, the more efficient you’ll become because you’ll learn about the new things coming out that others don’t know about.
- Automate When Possible and Practical
Technology allows for a lot of automation that can help streamline your business. You will want to automate email marketing and some social media sharing, but be careful about trying to automate personal interaction which cannot be replaced.
- Improve Your Website Navigation
Sometimes navigation is set up on a website more for the owner than for customers. Use heat map technology available with Google Analytics and others that will help you improve your navigation exponentially.
- Make Your Website Work on All Types of Devices
If your website isn’t working perfectly on all devices, you need to fix that as soon as possible. Google is already, and has been for some time, penalizing sites that don’t work on all devices.
- Use Professional Tools
So many online business owners want to try to take the ìcheapî way out with technology. While there are some awesome free platforms, like self-hosted WordPress for example, you’ll still do better if you use a premium theme with it. Also, paid tools offer a lot more security and support and will help you avoid problems with your business, in turn making you more efficient.
- Set Up Systems
Hardly anything will make your life better and more efficient than setting up systems for everything. If you know that when you get an order you do specific tasks, and you create a checklist or a list of things to do that you check off as you do them each time, you’re going to be more efficient.
- Set Up a Schedule
People who work from home online often work too much. If you want to be truly efficient, limit the time you work. Set up a work schedule and stick to it. A great way for people who work from home with an online business is to put everything they do (including fun things) in the calendar, then put work around those things as much as possible.
- Do Money-Making Tasks First
When you set up your schedule, remember to schedule money-making tasks for work times first. Get those out of the way before you do anything else with your business that doesn’t directly earn money.
You’ll be more efficient and you’ll avoid busy work.
Being efficient will help you earn more money, and will also cut down on stress. If you can set up systems that help you get work done, and work with contractors who can do all those things that you don’t want to do – or that aren’t in your wheelhouse but nonetheless need to be done, you can run an amazing business online.