9 Tips for Ecommerce Store Owners to Stay Organized

Like anything else, being organized is one of the keys to success.

​As your online business grows, it’s important to take inventory of your company’s organizing habits. 

So, ask yourself some basic questions:

• How can I declutter my digital and physical spaces?

• What are some roadblocks that I consistently come up against?

• What are some of the tasks that just take up too much of my time?

• Which tasks do I consistently avoid completing?

When you first start out in ecommerce, you’ll be wearing a lot of different hats. But, as your store grows and matures, your goal should be to relieve yourself of as many tasks as possible so that your primary focus can be running your business. In order to do this, you’ll first need to get organized.

Here are 10 tips from ecommerce experts for doing just that:

1. Automate as much as you can

If there’s a way to automate it, then do it.

As a small business owner, you don’t have time to stay on top of repetitive tasks and manual updates – that’s what technology is for.

Think about some tasks that are taking up too much of your time. For many, things like calendar upkeep and answering customer support calls might come to mind. These are the types of tasks you’ll want to automate, if possible.

Services like Calendly take the annoyance of calendar coordination off of your plate. And live in-app chat plugins can answer customer inquiries so you don’t need to be a 24/7 customer service agent.

You can even automate your marketing and advertising with Kliken. We set up your Google Merchant Center and from there we automate your Google Ads. We sync your products so you don’t have to and can focus on scaling your business.

Making small investments to automate tasks you don’t have time for is worth the money. Remember: time is money. So use it wisely.

2. Fine-tune your ecommerce inventory management systems

Your ecommerce inventory management systems should evolve as your business grows.

Let’s say you’re the owner of an online clothing boutique. When you’re first starting out, your inventory management plan may be as simple as some stacks of t-shirts in a spare bedroom.

But as you scale your ecommerce business, you’ll need to make a long-term plan for organizing your inventory. To do this, consider the different types of ecommerce inventory management strategies available to you.

Whether you decide to set custom par levels, use demand forecasting, or employ the just-in-time method (in which case you’ll avoid holding inventory altogether), is up to you. But each will affect your overall ecommerce organization in its own way.

3. Optimize your workspace

Is your workspace conducive to optimal productivity?

To help you answer this question, here are some points to consider:

• Does every item that’s in your office or working space need to be there? In other words, are you using the functional items in your space every day or are they just collecting dust?

• Do you work from a stand-up desk? Research shows that stand-up desks boost your productivity and overall health.

• Consider bringing ample light into your workspace and perhaps even a desk plant.

Optimized workspaces lead to better organization, which will have an overall positive impact on your business.

4. Regularly update your products images and descriptions (make a schedule)

This one’s for ecommerce store owners who are using Google Shopping (hopefully that’s all of you): update your product images and descriptions routinely.

How do you do this? By making a schedule.

Whether it’s bi-weekly, monthly, or several times per year, it’s important to keep your Google Shopping product images and descriptions up-to-date. Doing so will ensure that your products and store perform better over time.

And making a routine out of this action will lead to improved organization overall in your ecommerce business.

5. Use product tags for enhanced ecommerce organization

This one is crucial. Without product tags, your ecommerce store is going to be pandemonium for both you and your customers.

Product tags are used to make the items in your digital store easily searchable and identifiable. Using them simplifies your inventory tracking and makes your store navigable.

Properly tagging your products is one of the easiest ways to ensure your store stays organized.

6. Use apps that increase efficiency

Have an issue? There’s an app for that.

Think about some of the “housekeeping” items that are taking up precious hours in your day and find an app that will take them off your plate.

It might be HR-related tasks, answering live customer service queries, or something else entirely.

Whatever may be taking your time away from running your business is an impediment to the organization of your ecommerce business.

So do a quick audit of how you’re spending the hours in your day. And find apps that can give you the bulk of those hours back.

7. Make lists

Lists are a timeless solution for establishing your daily priorities.

People have been using them as long as humans have been literate. And they still do so today. Whether written on paper or digitized, lists are simple and effective.

Defining your ecommerce store’s daily goals and responsibilities by making lists is a great way to stay organized. It can also focus your business on specific and immediate goals rather than allowing yourself to get lost in the lofty, long-term ones.

8. Delegate to your team; clearly define roles

In order to keep your ecommerce business organized, you’ll need to focus on running your business. Good managers and owners know how to delegate, which is the consistent theme we’re getting at here.

Rising to the occasion as a business owner means knowing which roles to take on and which to delegate. All the tasks that are not essential for you to complete should be delegated to members of your staff, relevant apps, or contractors.

Hint: the repetitive, automatable, and overly time-consuming tasks should be delegated.

9. Consistency

Be consistent with your organizational efforts for your ecommerce business.

Establish best practices and stick to them. Organizing a small business is no easy feat – so kudos to you for even trying.
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But your organizational efforts are only as valuable as your consistency of them. Getting your business’s house in order, so to speak, shouldn’t be a one-off. It should be a habit you don’t want to break.

Focus on running your business

We cannot stress this enough, focus on running your business. 

Successful ecommerce store owners have tunnel vision: all or most of their focus goes to running their businesses. They figure out solutions for putting ecommerce organizational structures in place and they delegate tasks that they don’t have time for.

In this spirit, getting and staying organized is one of the best things you can do for your ecommerce business.

Partner with Kliken for your best ecommerce outcomes

Now that you’ve got a handle on the basics of ecommerce organization, flood your website with the internet’s best high-intent shoppers by partnering with Kliken.

Whether you’re just starting out or you want to take your existing ecommerce business to the next level, Kliken makes the process of syncing your store with the Google Shopping & Ads platforms seamless. So you can start running Google Smart Shopping campaigns almost immediately — we'll deal with the onboarding headaches.

As the world’s #1 Shopping and Ads marketing platform, Kliken has helped over 1,000,000 small businesses worldwide grow their sales on Google and get a return of up to 7x their original ad spend. Its proven marketing solutions can help you to unleash the potential of your ecommerce business.

Learn more about how customers use Kliken to grow their businesses online here.

Author: Michael Arnold

Michael is a freelancer from New York City. When he isn’t writing about how Kliken unleashes the marketing, you can find him reading, writing for pleasure, or traveling the globe.