virtual assistant services

Ten Reasons For Small Businesses To Outsource

The year 2009, for entrepreneur Chris Ducker, was fraught with commitments above and beyond necessary. He had a doting family to go back home to, but being an entrepreneur meant that he had to forego his personal time and suffer many sleepless nights because it was more about being ‘in’ the business rather than being ‘on top of things’. Luckily for him, he made some smart choices and was well on his way to gain that much-needed respite through outsourcing. Now, he works an average of 6 hours a day, can look into personal commitments, focus on building new business goals and advocates Virtual Assistance services, all the time! If you’re managing a start-up and you’ve blown that amazing business opportunity because you missed a follow-up deadline or were too tied up with routine administrative operations for your business, then hiring a Virtual Assistant is something you might want to consider. However, the thought of hiring a Virtual Assistant for a first-time outsourcer can immediately trigger a feeling like the world is about to zap all the cash from your bank account. But it is not always so. In one of the earlier blogs in the series, we stressed on how to decide ‘when the right time is to outsource. In this blog post, we’ll give you plenty reasons as to ‘why’ you should outsource- especially if you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur. Read on! 1. Reduced Costs As much as small businessmen would like to believe, hiring a virtual assistant can in fact save you money instead of stretching your budget. Since a virtual assistant is not a full time employee, you won’t need to worry about payroll taxes, sick leave, vacation pay, health insurance etc. In the case of virtual assistants, they only get paid for the hours they work and in turn, add more value to your investment. For example: You might end up paying an in-house employee for 40 hours of work per week, despite the employee taking coffee breaks, going out to use the restroom and making ceaseless phone calls. However, if you hire a Virtual Assistant and you have purchased only 20 hours worth of work per month, you will end up paying the Virtual Assistant for only 5 hours of work per week! That’s a difference of almost 8 times! Ergo, it is safe to say that the costs of hiring a VA are a lot lesser as compared to hiring a full-time employee. 2. You Don’t Need To Provide Office Space The best part about outsourcing is that you don’t need to worry about providing an office space for your Virtual Assistant. Global Virtual Assistants use their personal computers and their own internet connections to execute the tasks you send them. If you are a small business and you think that hiring a group of in-house employees and providing for large offices right away could cost your business, outsourcing could come across as a boon for you. 3. Training For VA’s Is Not Required Every year, businesses spend thousands of dollars on training employees to update their knowledge on new software, tools and the latest technology. By outsourcing your work to a Virtual Assistant, you can easily save on all this money because Virtual Assistants are already trained and are quite well-versed with the latest online tools and software because their jobs demand it. Depending on the nature of tasks you want to outsource, you can either choose general Virtual Assistants, who are jacks-of-all and are all-rounders, or you could choose to hire specialist Virtual Assistants who are proficient at one particular job. 4. A Pool of Resources To Choose From If you choose to partner with an outsourcing company, you’ll be working with a melting pot of specialists and gain access to a large pool of online resources. You won’t have to go looking to hire specialists, sifting through countless applications and interviewing hundreds of people. If you are a small business and you don’t want to waste your company’s resources and time searching for the right specialists for your job, partnering with an outsourcing company is easily be one of your best bets. Once you SignUp, you will be able to outsource tasks of multiple natures to your Personal Virtual Assistant and then relax, knowing that your tasks are in safe and experienced hands. 5. You Can Quit Anytime Firing an in-house employee can be a long and tedious process and there may even be instances, wherein you will need to abide by employee agreements if you want to avoid lawsuits. With a Global Virtual Assistant however, you don’t need to worry about any of it. You have the flexibility to fire your virtual assistant instantly and easily if deadlines are missed or the assistant repeatedly makes mistakes despite feedback. 6. Get Your Tasks Completed On Time & Efficiently As a small business owner, you’ll realize that you have a ton of work to complete, no matter how important, tedious or repetitive. Who said that being an entrepreneur was easy? The trick to finding the right balance, is to work on tasks that have greater value (monetary or otherwise) and outsource the rest to your personal virtual assistant. This way you’ll find that your other tasks (which you don’t like to do or find too boring or time-consuming to complete) are being handled a lot more efficiently and are completed within the stipulated deadlines. 7. Boost Productivity If you are a hard working entrepreneur or a small business owner and want to get more done in less time, you can boost your productivity with outsourcing. Having virtual assistants take care of all the tasks that you don’t like to do yourself means that you will gain that extra hour or two to focus on other important jobs and tasks at hand, thereby maximizing productivity and making more time for yourself in the day. 8. Re-Location & Travel Becomes A Lot Easier If you are traveling, have

Ten Reasons For Small Businesses To Outsource Read More »

The year 2009, for entrepreneur Chris Ducker, was fraught with commitments above and beyond necessary. He had a doting family to go back home to, but being an entrepreneur meant that he had to forego his personal time and suffer many sleepless nights because it was more about being ‘in’ the business rather than being ‘on top of things’. Luckily for him, he made some smart choices and was well on his way to gain that much-needed respite through outsourcing. Now, he works an average of 6 hours a day, can look into personal commitments, focus on building new business goals and advocates Virtual Assistance services, all the time! If you’re managing a start-up and you’ve blown that amazing business opportunity because you missed a follow-up deadline or were too tied up with routine administrative operations for your business, then hiring a Virtual Assistant is something you might want to consider. However, the thought of hiring a Virtual Assistant for a first-time outsourcer can immediately trigger a feeling like the world is about to zap all the cash from your bank account. But it is not always so. In one of the earlier blogs in the series, we stressed on how to decide ‘when the right time is to outsource. In this blog post, we’ll give you plenty reasons as to ‘why’ you should outsource- especially if you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur. Read on! 1. Reduced Costs As much as small businessmen would like to believe, hiring a virtual assistant can in fact save you money instead of stretching your budget. Since a virtual assistant is not a full time employee, you won’t need to worry about payroll taxes, sick leave, vacation pay, health insurance etc. In the case of virtual assistants, they only get paid for the hours they work and in turn, add more value to your investment. For example: You might end up paying an in-house employee for 40 hours of work per week, despite the employee taking coffee breaks, going out to use the restroom and making ceaseless phone calls. However, if you hire a Virtual Assistant and you have purchased only 20 hours worth of work per month, you will end up paying the Virtual Assistant for only 5 hours of work per week! That’s a difference of almost 8 times! Ergo, it is safe to say that the costs of hiring a VA are a lot lesser as compared to hiring a full-time employee. 2. You Don’t Need To Provide Office Space The best part about outsourcing is that you don’t need to worry about providing an office space for your Virtual Assistant. Global Virtual Assistants use their personal computers and their own internet connections to execute the tasks you send them. If you are a small business and you think that hiring a group of in-house employees and providing for large offices right away could cost your business, outsourcing could come across as a boon for you. 3. Training For VA’s Is Not Required Every year, businesses spend thousands of dollars on training employees to update their knowledge on new software, tools and the latest technology. By outsourcing your work to a Virtual Assistant, you can easily save on all this money because Virtual Assistants are already trained and are quite well-versed with the latest online tools and software because their jobs demand it. Depending on the nature of tasks you want to outsource, you can either choose general Virtual Assistants, who are jacks-of-all and are all-rounders, or you could choose to hire specialist Virtual Assistants who are proficient at one particular job. 4. A Pool of Resources To Choose From If you choose to partner with an outsourcing company, you’ll be working with a melting pot of specialists and gain access to a large pool of online resources. You won’t have to go looking to hire specialists, sifting through countless applications and interviewing hundreds of people. If you are a small business and you don’t want to waste your company’s resources and time searching for the right specialists for your job, partnering with an outsourcing company is easily be one of your best bets. Once you SignUp, you will be able to outsource tasks of multiple natures to your Personal Virtual Assistant and then relax, knowing that your tasks are in safe and experienced hands. 5. You Can Quit Anytime Firing an in-house employee can be a long and tedious process and there may even be instances, wherein you will need to abide by employee agreements if you want to avoid lawsuits. With a Global Virtual Assistant however, you don’t need to worry about any of it. You have the flexibility to fire your virtual assistant instantly and easily if deadlines are missed or the assistant repeatedly makes mistakes despite feedback. 6. Get Your Tasks Completed On Time & Efficiently As a small business owner, you’ll realize that you have a ton of work to complete, no matter how important, tedious or repetitive. Who said that being an entrepreneur was easy? The trick to finding the right balance, is to work on tasks that have greater value (monetary or otherwise) and outsource the rest to your personal virtual assistant. This way you’ll find that your other tasks (which you don’t like to do or find too boring or time-consuming to complete) are being handled a lot more efficiently and are completed within the stipulated deadlines. 7. Boost Productivity If you are a hard working entrepreneur or a small business owner and want to get more done in less time, you can boost your productivity with outsourcing. Having virtual assistants take care of all the tasks that you don’t like to do yourself means that you will gain that extra hour or two to focus on other important jobs and tasks at hand, thereby maximizing productivity and making more time for yourself in the day. 8. Re-Location & Travel Becomes A Lot Easier If you are traveling, have

Six Activities To Grow Your Business

It is no secret that business owners and SME’s outsource, because it gives them more time to grow and streamline their practices. Entrepreneurs have long believed that outsourcing is a practice that only big companies can afford. However, more small businesses and entrepreneurs are outsourcing today because they can’t meet the expenses of in-house support services that larger companies maintain and because handling a number of onerous procedures and processes could slow down the process of growth. By outsourcing, businesspersons can get close to 5-6 hours of renewed time for themselves and profitably utilize their time to build better businesses with a few of these post-outsourcing activities. Following are the 6 activities small business owners fulfill post-outsourcing:   1. They Attend Business Meetings Outsourcing gives a businessman more time to think and dream for the business without limitations and ideate on the overall strategy and vision. Smaller businesses know that they have to make their businesses more competitive in order to survive and meetings are a powerful business weapon that encourage personal interactions and provide a great avenue for the quick pooling of ideas whilst giving a business owner a good reality check on the progress. Once a business’ lengthy processes have been outsourced, business owners have the opportunity to conduct and attend business meetings frequently and utilize these hours to discuss progress and work towards actuating plans. 2. They Streamline Their Business According to the founder of iTech Developers, Kevin McElligott, entrepreneurs ‘don’t realize that they can make things easie‘ and often undertake the burdens of shouldering all levels of business activity when they can outsource it instead. Through outsourcing, businesses can utilize the free time they get, to focus on the activities and strategies that really matter. Whether it is reorganizing the hierarchy, updating new technology or simplifying processes, small business owners have more time to focus on the important matters at hand, post-outsourcing. 3. They Travel for Business needs For dynamic businesses and entrepreneurs, travelling is most often a recurrent activity, is challenging and can take up a good bit of time. Whether it is travelling to close a deal in a new city, travelling to tap new markets or to acquire new projects; a small business owner cannot forego the opportunity to network or build partnerships through travelling, because of onerous business functions holding them back. Thanks to more small business owners taking to outsourcing in recent times, travel for business needs is an activity that entrepreneurs and small business owners undertake in their newly-gained time. 4. They Generate Fresh Ideas for Products & Implement Them With laborious or specialist functions outsourced, business professionals and small business owners have more time to pool ideas for new products and implement them. Time is one of the most important resources for a new business and to utilize this time to discuss fresh, untapped or niche ideas could generate more revenue for the business. Once a business has subcontracted work to a life outsourcing company like “GetFriday”, the business owner has cut off, what can safely be termed as “noise” and has effectively gained back time to discuss the makings of a new product and how it can help push the business to achieve its overall goals and vision. 5. They Acquire Other Businesses Once a business has delegated certain business functions to professionals or companies, they scour acquisition targets or at least plan for acquisitions if they have just started out. With renewed time, business owners focus on maximizing future synergies, realize cost-efficiencies for potential takeovers and significantly speed up their core processes to capitalize on future mergers and integrations. 6. They Spend Time With Friends & Family In the past, small business owners and first-time entrepreneurs undervalued the worth of their time. For example: When working out if a new venture would be financially viable they would have merely calculated the cost of materials and office space, but would have forgotten to add the cost of their time. This would have ultimately resulted in owners toiling away at odd hours for their business and losing out on important family time. In more recent times, business owners outsource mundane work and utilize the time they gain with their families. Delegating repetitive processes will give a good 3-5 hours of free time for business owners to spend with their parents, spouse, make it for their child’s graduation night, go on short joy rides/trips with friends, make it back home for anniversaries and occasions, and attend events and so much more! If you are a small business owner, outsourcing onerous processes early can help you with building a better future for the business and will also give you ample opportunities to plough back your new time to focus on other core activities, while managing your personal life. Sometimes, you really need to take a step back and strategize for your business and your life, while you let experts handle commonplace processes and functions for you.

Six Activities To Grow Your Business Read More »

It is no secret that business owners and SME’s outsource, because it gives them more time to grow and streamline their practices. Entrepreneurs have long believed that outsourcing is a practice that only big companies can afford. However, more small businesses and entrepreneurs are outsourcing today because they can’t meet the expenses of in-house support services that larger companies maintain and because handling a number of onerous procedures and processes could slow down the process of growth. By outsourcing, businesspersons can get close to 5-6 hours of renewed time for themselves and profitably utilize their time to build better businesses with a few of these post-outsourcing activities. Following are the 6 activities small business owners fulfill post-outsourcing:   1. They Attend Business Meetings Outsourcing gives a businessman more time to think and dream for the business without limitations and ideate on the overall strategy and vision. Smaller businesses know that they have to make their businesses more competitive in order to survive and meetings are a powerful business weapon that encourage personal interactions and provide a great avenue for the quick pooling of ideas whilst giving a business owner a good reality check on the progress. Once a business’ lengthy processes have been outsourced, business owners have the opportunity to conduct and attend business meetings frequently and utilize these hours to discuss progress and work towards actuating plans. 2. They Streamline Their Business According to the founder of iTech Developers, Kevin McElligott, entrepreneurs ‘don’t realize that they can make things easie‘ and often undertake the burdens of shouldering all levels of business activity when they can outsource it instead. Through outsourcing, businesses can utilize the free time they get, to focus on the activities and strategies that really matter. Whether it is reorganizing the hierarchy, updating new technology or simplifying processes, small business owners have more time to focus on the important matters at hand, post-outsourcing. 3. They Travel for Business needs For dynamic businesses and entrepreneurs, travelling is most often a recurrent activity, is challenging and can take up a good bit of time. Whether it is travelling to close a deal in a new city, travelling to tap new markets or to acquire new projects; a small business owner cannot forego the opportunity to network or build partnerships through travelling, because of onerous business functions holding them back. Thanks to more small business owners taking to outsourcing in recent times, travel for business needs is an activity that entrepreneurs and small business owners undertake in their newly-gained time. 4. They Generate Fresh Ideas for Products & Implement Them With laborious or specialist functions outsourced, business professionals and small business owners have more time to pool ideas for new products and implement them. Time is one of the most important resources for a new business and to utilize this time to discuss fresh, untapped or niche ideas could generate more revenue for the business. Once a business has subcontracted work to a life outsourcing company like “GetFriday”, the business owner has cut off, what can safely be termed as “noise” and has effectively gained back time to discuss the makings of a new product and how it can help push the business to achieve its overall goals and vision. 5. They Acquire Other Businesses Once a business has delegated certain business functions to professionals or companies, they scour acquisition targets or at least plan for acquisitions if they have just started out. With renewed time, business owners focus on maximizing future synergies, realize cost-efficiencies for potential takeovers and significantly speed up their core processes to capitalize on future mergers and integrations. 6. They Spend Time With Friends & Family In the past, small business owners and first-time entrepreneurs undervalued the worth of their time. For example: When working out if a new venture would be financially viable they would have merely calculated the cost of materials and office space, but would have forgotten to add the cost of their time. This would have ultimately resulted in owners toiling away at odd hours for their business and losing out on important family time. In more recent times, business owners outsource mundane work and utilize the time they gain with their families. Delegating repetitive processes will give a good 3-5 hours of free time for business owners to spend with their parents, spouse, make it for their child’s graduation night, go on short joy rides/trips with friends, make it back home for anniversaries and occasions, and attend events and so much more! If you are a small business owner, outsourcing onerous processes early can help you with building a better future for the business and will also give you ample opportunities to plough back your new time to focus on other core activities, while managing your personal life. Sometimes, you really need to take a step back and strategize for your business and your life, while you let experts handle commonplace processes and functions for you.

Nine Step Guide For Creating Effective Landing Pages

You create landing pages either for products that are tangible such as electronic items, tyres or cars OR a service, that is intangible in nature such as home maintenance, a teaching course OR a combination of both products and services. But few things remain the same when it comes to creating an excellent and effective landing page. We,at GetFriday, have years of experience in creating landing pages through personal experimentation, creativity and, data-based analysis. We have put together important pointers for you to work with and follow whenever you are creating a landing page. Given below is the step-by-step guide to create an effective landing page. Step 1: Optimize Your Landing Page For The Keywords There are 3 main ways through which a company can try to reach out to their target audience – Search Ads (on Google or any other search media) Display Ads (on Google, social media sites or print media), and Mailers (direct mails to list of prospect clients) Keyword optimization on a landing page is particularly important when you are spending on search ads. Every search ad is targeted toward a particular set of keywords that are relevant to the product or service you are offering. Search ad descriptions should contain that particular keyword for high quality score of the ads (so that you would pay less per click). Also, the keywords targeted for the ads must be present on the landing page to increase the relevancy and churn out a high quality score. Descriptions of the product or services should contain the keywords targeted for the search ads. This will help decrease the cost of running such search ads and also, increase the rank of your ads when compared to the ads of competitors. You should always keep searching for new keywords and eliminate those keywords (that are not necessary) on a regular basis for better results. The new, targeted keywords should also be mentioned in the landing page for better relevancy. Suppose you are running an e-store for footwear and you want to target the keyword “Puma running shoes”. The landing page created for the this particular keyword, where the visitor is directed to after clicking on the ad should ideally have ‘Puma running shoes’ listings and should include the keyword, “running shoes” in the description as well. Step 2: Invest Time In Design Of Your Landing Page Display ads and mailers that are used to reach out to your target audience include visuals and graphics. You can select a theme with different color combinations, images, and dabble with the appearance of your landing page, depending on the concept. Just make sure that your landing page has a similar theme to the ones used in you display ads and mailers. This will help visitors in connecting with the brand as they would have already seen the display of your landing page on the ad or the mailer. If the visuals on the landing page are not appropriate or don’t go with the theme, visitors could get confused and might find website navigation cumbersome. Step 3: Educate Your Audience About Your Offering Don’t just start selling your product or service from the first sentence on your landing page. On the first slider or home screen, educate your audience about your product or service. Use images and visuals to illustrate your offerings. Explain in detail about how your offerings can help the visitors in their businesses or personal lives. If you are selling a product, reserve a section on the page to explain how your product works and what it entails. Provide a description with clear images and videos. Let the visitors understand your product before investing in it. Keep the language simple, so that your content can be understood even by a layman. If you are a service provider, explain to your visitors what they are going to get out of this relationship. Let them get a feel of your services on the landing page itself. If there is a video tutorial about how your product or service works, include the video or the display description in the “How It Works”section. Step 4: Give Importance To Testimonials You can try convincing just about everyone who visits your e-store to buy your product or try out your services, but in the end, word of mouth promotions always play the final and the most important role in a consumer’s decision making process. The stronger the word of mouth, the higher the chances of getting more customers. Therefore, it is important that you give client testimonials the attention that they truly deserve. If you don’t have good testimonials to show to your prospects on the landing page, you are losing out on credibility. Invest some time on collecting good and convincing testimonials from your happy and loyal customers. Display your testimonials in a manner that is both, readable and understandable. Step 5: Attract With Call Of Action Buttons Your ‘call of action’ buttons will differ according to your offerings. If you are an e-commerce website, your call of action button would be “Buy Now” or “Move to Cart”. If you are a service provider like SAS or Cloud services that needs to be subscribed to every month, your call of action button would be “Apply Now” or “Sign Up“. These ‘call of action’ buttons should be placed prominently on your page to attract your target audience. Taking these steps will only ensure that you close the deal faster by converting your prospects into ‘clients’. Pay special attention to this. You are spending huge sums of money to draw prospects onto your landing page. Treat your landing page like a store wherein you have to convince every visitor to buy your product and wield your power to convince the visitor to press the ‘call of action’ button. This concept was very appropriately explained by Alec Baldwin in his famous speech “Always Be Closing”, in the movie, “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Of course, the speech was focused on product sales

Nine Step Guide For Creating Effective Landing Pages Read More »

You create landing pages either for products that are tangible such as electronic items, tyres or cars OR a service, that is intangible in nature such as home maintenance, a teaching course OR a combination of both products and services. But few things remain the same when it comes to creating an excellent and effective landing page. We,at GetFriday, have years of experience in creating landing pages through personal experimentation, creativity and, data-based analysis. We have put together important pointers for you to work with and follow whenever you are creating a landing page. Given below is the step-by-step guide to create an effective landing page. Step 1: Optimize Your Landing Page For The Keywords There are 3 main ways through which a company can try to reach out to their target audience – Search Ads (on Google or any other search media) Display Ads (on Google, social media sites or print media), and Mailers (direct mails to list of prospect clients) Keyword optimization on a landing page is particularly important when you are spending on search ads. Every search ad is targeted toward a particular set of keywords that are relevant to the product or service you are offering. Search ad descriptions should contain that particular keyword for high quality score of the ads (so that you would pay less per click). Also, the keywords targeted for the ads must be present on the landing page to increase the relevancy and churn out a high quality score. Descriptions of the product or services should contain the keywords targeted for the search ads. This will help decrease the cost of running such search ads and also, increase the rank of your ads when compared to the ads of competitors. You should always keep searching for new keywords and eliminate those keywords (that are not necessary) on a regular basis for better results. The new, targeted keywords should also be mentioned in the landing page for better relevancy. Suppose you are running an e-store for footwear and you want to target the keyword “Puma running shoes”. The landing page created for the this particular keyword, where the visitor is directed to after clicking on the ad should ideally have ‘Puma running shoes’ listings and should include the keyword, “running shoes” in the description as well. Step 2: Invest Time In Design Of Your Landing Page Display ads and mailers that are used to reach out to your target audience include visuals and graphics. You can select a theme with different color combinations, images, and dabble with the appearance of your landing page, depending on the concept. Just make sure that your landing page has a similar theme to the ones used in you display ads and mailers. This will help visitors in connecting with the brand as they would have already seen the display of your landing page on the ad or the mailer. If the visuals on the landing page are not appropriate or don’t go with the theme, visitors could get confused and might find website navigation cumbersome. Step 3: Educate Your Audience About Your Offering Don’t just start selling your product or service from the first sentence on your landing page. On the first slider or home screen, educate your audience about your product or service. Use images and visuals to illustrate your offerings. Explain in detail about how your offerings can help the visitors in their businesses or personal lives. If you are selling a product, reserve a section on the page to explain how your product works and what it entails. Provide a description with clear images and videos. Let the visitors understand your product before investing in it. Keep the language simple, so that your content can be understood even by a layman. If you are a service provider, explain to your visitors what they are going to get out of this relationship. Let them get a feel of your services on the landing page itself. If there is a video tutorial about how your product or service works, include the video or the display description in the “How It Works”section. Step 4: Give Importance To Testimonials You can try convincing just about everyone who visits your e-store to buy your product or try out your services, but in the end, word of mouth promotions always play the final and the most important role in a consumer’s decision making process. The stronger the word of mouth, the higher the chances of getting more customers. Therefore, it is important that you give client testimonials the attention that they truly deserve. If you don’t have good testimonials to show to your prospects on the landing page, you are losing out on credibility. Invest some time on collecting good and convincing testimonials from your happy and loyal customers. Display your testimonials in a manner that is both, readable and understandable. Step 5: Attract With Call Of Action Buttons Your ‘call of action’ buttons will differ according to your offerings. If you are an e-commerce website, your call of action button would be “Buy Now” or “Move to Cart”. If you are a service provider like SAS or Cloud services that needs to be subscribed to every month, your call of action button would be “Apply Now” or “Sign Up“. These ‘call of action’ buttons should be placed prominently on your page to attract your target audience. Taking these steps will only ensure that you close the deal faster by converting your prospects into ‘clients’. Pay special attention to this. You are spending huge sums of money to draw prospects onto your landing page. Treat your landing page like a store wherein you have to convince every visitor to buy your product and wield your power to convince the visitor to press the ‘call of action’ button. This concept was very appropriately explained by Alec Baldwin in his famous speech “Always Be Closing”, in the movie, “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Of course, the speech was focused on product sales

‘Kaizen’ – How It Is Helping Us… And You!

In the 10 successful years of virtual assistance operations, GetFriday’s client base has been growing at an exponential rate and benchmarks itself on efficiency. With 14 dedicated virtual assistant teams handling clients from across 60+ countries, GetFriday’s VA’s are working round the clock to make sure that all tasks outsourced by clients are executed with unfailing precision and deadlines are strictly adhered to. Being the longest running VA company in the world, comes with its share of perils. Operational effectiveness is paramount to maintain the satisfaction levels of clients. And with competition looming, it has become even more important to become effective operationally and turn it into a competitive advantage, which cannot not be replicated easily. With this in mind, the term “continuous improvement” started to resonate within teams at GetFriday. This is the story of two such teams, GMT (UK) virtual assistance team and FE (Australia) small business team. Both these teams managed to bring and implement a globally recognized quality tool at GetFriday. What Is Kaizen? For the benefit of those of you who are unaware about Kaizen, here is a brief explanation of the philosophy – It is a Japanese philosophy that aims at ‘eliminating waste’ in the organization, without large capital investments. The word literally translates to ‘change’ (kai) ‘good’ (zen).” Any activity that does not add value to customer is a waste and needs to be eliminated. The overall objective being continuous small improvements. Identification of Non Value Added Activities: Every Wednesday, the teams meet to identify the Non-value added activities that stops them from delivering quality results on time to clients. Some example of Non value added activities identified and eliminated are listed below. This added to small continuous improvements within the teams and results began to show. The pending emails were identified as waiting inventory. It was decided to generate a daily report on the number of emails to be responded to. These emails usually are customer interactions. Elimination of this waste had immediate positive effect on the satisfaction level and responsiveness within the team. The tasks were taken up as per queue by associates irrespective of time required for each task. Therefore adding to waiting time for small tasks, which could easily be completed in less than an hour. It was decided to complete any task taking less than an hour before closing hours of the day and any task taking more than 1 hour to be completed in a single business day. This significantly reduced wait time for small tasks. It was found that clients need to be reached through right communication channels, otherwise any clarification with regard to work would have to wait till the next business day. Therefore associates were encouraged to explore Skype, phone calls and Gtalk as additional mediums of communication. Kaizen practice at GetFriday Document the current situation Visualize the ideal situation Define measurement targets Brainstorm solutions to the problem Develop Kaizen Plan Implement plan Measure, record and compare results to targets Prepare summary documents Define the problem Standardization To elucidate further, here are two small case studies of the problems and the solutions that the GMT and the FE teams came up with:- Case Study 1   Define the Problem: When a Virtual Assistant has completed a task for the client, the QC tracker has to be updated by the team-in-charge, after which the task will undergo quality checks by the Quality Team. There could be instances wherein the Team Lead is not at the desk or is in a meeting and if in that case, the QC tracker is not updated on time, there could be delays in getting the task approved by the QC and the VA could ultimately miss the deadline for the task. Document the current situation: The problem as mentioned above is documented on a board and also in an excel sheet. Visualize the Ideal Solution: The ideal solution for the problem is the situation where TL is always present to update the tracker. Define Measurement Targets: The numbers of tasks which are being delayed due to this tracker update problem are noted down, and targets were set to bring them down to zero. Brainstorm solutions to the problem: Once every week, all the team members gather in a meeting room to discuss all the problems and brainstorm on the ideas and feasibilities of the room for improvement. For this particular problem also, all the team members gathered together and brainstormed ideas for a feasible solution. Develop Kaizen Plan: The solution that was decided was that now, the QC tracker will be shared with two senior VA’s in the team and if in case, the Team Leader is not available, the tracker can be updated by either of the VA’s immediately. Implement plan: The decided solution was then implemented in the next week, and improvements were noted. Measure, record and compare results to targets: Results (delays/ missing deadlines due to the QC tracker issue after implementing solution) were noted and compared with the targets set (zero delay) in the earlier Kaizen meeting. Prepare summary documents: Results and improvements were noted for the complete Kaizen activity for this particular problem. Standardization: The solution was regularly implemented, and results were noted every week to bring in standardization. Following these simple methods, GetFriday’s GMT team was able to find the solution to many other similar problems. The following case study summarizes the solution found and implemented using above mentioned 10 simple steps.   Case Study 2   Problem: There is an urgent task that needs to go by the end of the day and there are no resources available in the team to handle the task because the VA’s already have a lot of tasks to do for themselves. In such a situation, there is a resource crunch. Solution: The Virtual Assistant who has received the task request should check with the shift in-charge who is present on the floor and find out if any Virtual Assistant is free in his/her team

‘Kaizen’ – How It Is Helping Us… And You! Read More »

In the 10 successful years of virtual assistance operations, GetFriday’s client base has been growing at an exponential rate and benchmarks itself on efficiency. With 14 dedicated virtual assistant teams handling clients from across 60+ countries, GetFriday’s VA’s are working round the clock to make sure that all tasks outsourced by clients are executed with unfailing precision and deadlines are strictly adhered to. Being the longest running VA company in the world, comes with its share of perils. Operational effectiveness is paramount to maintain the satisfaction levels of clients. And with competition looming, it has become even more important to become effective operationally and turn it into a competitive advantage, which cannot not be replicated easily. With this in mind, the term “continuous improvement” started to resonate within teams at GetFriday. This is the story of two such teams, GMT (UK) virtual assistance team and FE (Australia) small business team. Both these teams managed to bring and implement a globally recognized quality tool at GetFriday. What Is Kaizen? For the benefit of those of you who are unaware about Kaizen, here is a brief explanation of the philosophy – It is a Japanese philosophy that aims at ‘eliminating waste’ in the organization, without large capital investments. The word literally translates to ‘change’ (kai) ‘good’ (zen).” Any activity that does not add value to customer is a waste and needs to be eliminated. The overall objective being continuous small improvements. Identification of Non Value Added Activities: Every Wednesday, the teams meet to identify the Non-value added activities that stops them from delivering quality results on time to clients. Some example of Non value added activities identified and eliminated are listed below. This added to small continuous improvements within the teams and results began to show. The pending emails were identified as waiting inventory. It was decided to generate a daily report on the number of emails to be responded to. These emails usually are customer interactions. Elimination of this waste had immediate positive effect on the satisfaction level and responsiveness within the team. The tasks were taken up as per queue by associates irrespective of time required for each task. Therefore adding to waiting time for small tasks, which could easily be completed in less than an hour. It was decided to complete any task taking less than an hour before closing hours of the day and any task taking more than 1 hour to be completed in a single business day. This significantly reduced wait time for small tasks. It was found that clients need to be reached through right communication channels, otherwise any clarification with regard to work would have to wait till the next business day. Therefore associates were encouraged to explore Skype, phone calls and Gtalk as additional mediums of communication. Kaizen practice at GetFriday Document the current situation Visualize the ideal situation Define measurement targets Brainstorm solutions to the problem Develop Kaizen Plan Implement plan Measure, record and compare results to targets Prepare summary documents Define the problem Standardization To elucidate further, here are two small case studies of the problems and the solutions that the GMT and the FE teams came up with:- Case Study 1   Define the Problem: When a Virtual Assistant has completed a task for the client, the QC tracker has to be updated by the team-in-charge, after which the task will undergo quality checks by the Quality Team. There could be instances wherein the Team Lead is not at the desk or is in a meeting and if in that case, the QC tracker is not updated on time, there could be delays in getting the task approved by the QC and the VA could ultimately miss the deadline for the task. Document the current situation: The problem as mentioned above is documented on a board and also in an excel sheet. Visualize the Ideal Solution: The ideal solution for the problem is the situation where TL is always present to update the tracker. Define Measurement Targets: The numbers of tasks which are being delayed due to this tracker update problem are noted down, and targets were set to bring them down to zero. Brainstorm solutions to the problem: Once every week, all the team members gather in a meeting room to discuss all the problems and brainstorm on the ideas and feasibilities of the room for improvement. For this particular problem also, all the team members gathered together and brainstormed ideas for a feasible solution. Develop Kaizen Plan: The solution that was decided was that now, the QC tracker will be shared with two senior VA’s in the team and if in case, the Team Leader is not available, the tracker can be updated by either of the VA’s immediately. Implement plan: The decided solution was then implemented in the next week, and improvements were noted. Measure, record and compare results to targets: Results (delays/ missing deadlines due to the QC tracker issue after implementing solution) were noted and compared with the targets set (zero delay) in the earlier Kaizen meeting. Prepare summary documents: Results and improvements were noted for the complete Kaizen activity for this particular problem. Standardization: The solution was regularly implemented, and results were noted every week to bring in standardization. Following these simple methods, GetFriday’s GMT team was able to find the solution to many other similar problems. The following case study summarizes the solution found and implemented using above mentioned 10 simple steps.   Case Study 2   Problem: There is an urgent task that needs to go by the end of the day and there are no resources available in the team to handle the task because the VA’s already have a lot of tasks to do for themselves. In such a situation, there is a resource crunch. Solution: The Virtual Assistant who has received the task request should check with the shift in-charge who is present on the floor and find out if any Virtual Assistant is free in his/her team

E-Commerce Store – Holiday Season Check List For Increasing Sales

Holiday season is near and this is the time online stores see a surge in sales. But like all things in life you need to be prepared. GetFriday has been around for 10 years now and we have come to understand and learn from our ecommerce clients, the essentials that are required to increase sales during the holiday season. Click on the picture below to see this blog in a slideshare format. Here is a checklist for your quick consumption:   1. This is the best time to launch new products This is the time of the year GetFriday associates get busy with remodeling e-commerce stores, resizing and editing the product images, proof reading the content, uploading products on amazon and rearranging the website display. Most e-commerce firms would consider this as the best time to launch a new product. The chances of succeeding now are far higher than any time later. The known factor about customers is that they are willing to spend more during this season. US retail sales for December 2014 was $442.9 billion – this was an increase of 3.2% over December 2013.   2. Start early with promotions and campaigns A recent study conducted by Oracle Marketing Cloud and Edison Research shows that consumers are doing their holiday shopping early, spending as much as $900 more in the month of October than in December. Start early with planning holiday promotions and campaigns. Our data shows that e-commerce stores start preparing for the holiday season as early as September – October and are ready to launch their campaigns. This give enough time for e-commerce stores to conduct experimental marketing and figure out ways to succeed with customers. With consumers, too willing to take advantage of early shopping discounts and promotions, the timing of promotions and campaigns has gained relevance in recent times. Remember you are competing for the customer wallet. If you are not ready for launching promotions for all your visitors in October, it is advisable to start campaigns with your existing database of clients. Give them the opportunity to take advantage of promotions before your new visitors. It is a known fact that cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than retaining an existing customer. 3. Increase your advertisement budget Let us simplify advertising for you – As you reach more customers with relevant offers, chances of sales increases proportionally. Holiday season is the best time to increase your spending on marketing, as you know for sure customers are looking for your products. If not yours they will land on a competitor’s website. Research shows that social media has a major impact on purchasing choices made by holiday shoppers. “More than half of users (52 percent) say they learned about a product they later purchased because of Twitter, and it’s so convenient to find gift ideas on Twitter that 39 percent say Twitter serves as their new holiday shopping list,” a 2014 Twitter study found. 4. Is your operations ready for holiday season? Make sure operational capabilities are ready for the holiday season. This is the time new customers would be experiencing your product and service, and chances of making them your loyal customer rests with the experience they will gain. It is a common practice with large retailers to hire employees during holiday season to manage customer operations. Learning from this industry practice, you could hire virtual assistants to help manage operations during the holiday season. 5. Is your website spreading the joy – with analytics? Your website needs to reflect the holiday season spirit and create the festive effect. Happy customers tend to buy more. You probably already know that the website is your store front. Look at data generated from your campaigns to optimize your pages. Let the best sellers be visible to your customers. 6. Be ready for customers purchasing from their phones UPS compass in its recent article How America will shop in 2015 quoted IBM data to reveal that mobiles accounted for 45 percent of all 2014 online holiday traffic and for 22.6 percent of online sales, a 27.2 percent gain over the 2013 total More than 50 percent of online shopping traffic came from mobiles during the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. These numbers drive home the point of need to be prepared with providing customers options of shopping through their mobiles and making their experiences pleasant and user-friendly.

E-Commerce Store – Holiday Season Check List For Increasing Sales Read More »

Holiday season is near and this is the time online stores see a surge in sales. But like all things in life you need to be prepared. GetFriday has been around for 10 years now and we have come to understand and learn from our ecommerce clients, the essentials that are required to increase sales during the holiday season. Click on the picture below to see this blog in a slideshare format. Here is a checklist for your quick consumption:   1. This is the best time to launch new products This is the time of the year GetFriday associates get busy with remodeling e-commerce stores, resizing and editing the product images, proof reading the content, uploading products on amazon and rearranging the website display. Most e-commerce firms would consider this as the best time to launch a new product. The chances of succeeding now are far higher than any time later. The known factor about customers is that they are willing to spend more during this season. US retail sales for December 2014 was $442.9 billion – this was an increase of 3.2% over December 2013.   2. Start early with promotions and campaigns A recent study conducted by Oracle Marketing Cloud and Edison Research shows that consumers are doing their holiday shopping early, spending as much as $900 more in the month of October than in December. Start early with planning holiday promotions and campaigns. Our data shows that e-commerce stores start preparing for the holiday season as early as September – October and are ready to launch their campaigns. This give enough time for e-commerce stores to conduct experimental marketing and figure out ways to succeed with customers. With consumers, too willing to take advantage of early shopping discounts and promotions, the timing of promotions and campaigns has gained relevance in recent times. Remember you are competing for the customer wallet. If you are not ready for launching promotions for all your visitors in October, it is advisable to start campaigns with your existing database of clients. Give them the opportunity to take advantage of promotions before your new visitors. It is a known fact that cost of acquiring a new customer is higher than retaining an existing customer. 3. Increase your advertisement budget Let us simplify advertising for you – As you reach more customers with relevant offers, chances of sales increases proportionally. Holiday season is the best time to increase your spending on marketing, as you know for sure customers are looking for your products. If not yours they will land on a competitor’s website. Research shows that social media has a major impact on purchasing choices made by holiday shoppers. “More than half of users (52 percent) say they learned about a product they later purchased because of Twitter, and it’s so convenient to find gift ideas on Twitter that 39 percent say Twitter serves as their new holiday shopping list,” a 2014 Twitter study found. 4. Is your operations ready for holiday season? Make sure operational capabilities are ready for the holiday season. This is the time new customers would be experiencing your product and service, and chances of making them your loyal customer rests with the experience they will gain. It is a common practice with large retailers to hire employees during holiday season to manage customer operations. Learning from this industry practice, you could hire virtual assistants to help manage operations during the holiday season. 5. Is your website spreading the joy – with analytics? Your website needs to reflect the holiday season spirit and create the festive effect. Happy customers tend to buy more. You probably already know that the website is your store front. Look at data generated from your campaigns to optimize your pages. Let the best sellers be visible to your customers. 6. Be ready for customers purchasing from their phones UPS compass in its recent article How America will shop in 2015 quoted IBM data to reveal that mobiles accounted for 45 percent of all 2014 online holiday traffic and for 22.6 percent of online sales, a 27.2 percent gain over the 2013 total More than 50 percent of online shopping traffic came from mobiles during the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday. These numbers drive home the point of need to be prepared with providing customers options of shopping through their mobiles and making their experiences pleasant and user-friendly.

CRM Investments Failure

Five Reasons Why CRM Investments Fail In E-Commerce Space

In 10 years of GetFriday’s existence, we have handled a lot of CRMs! Our insights for this blog are derived from this experience. Our clients have been at times, early adopters of these tools. We also happen to have a huge client base of entrepreneurs and small businesses. This has enabled us to have a 360 degree view of CRM usage or its lack of usage. Without doubt CRMS are useful tools for e-commerce It is true that CRM software can help e-commerce businesses provide excellent customer support by managing and storing all data related to customers and transactions. Though all this can be achieved through other online tools, the beauty of buying CRM software is to be able to utilize it in such a manner that it can take care of your business needs automatically while allowing you to focus on improving your sales conversion rates considerably. Nevertheless, majority of companies fail to benefit from CRMs and end up losing huge amounts of money. We have identified 5 reasons for the failure of CRMs in the e-commerce industry through our longstanding experience of serving e-commerce clients. This blog is also summarized in the form of Slideshare presentation. Please click on the below image for the presentation. 5 Reasons for CRM Investments Failure   1. Not utilizing full capacity of CRMs Imagine you hired an employee for your small e-commerce business, and are unable to use 40% of this person’s skill. A smart business owner should ideally be worried. But somehow, business professionals do not worry about the unused capacities of assets. Our internal data shows many entrepreneurs do not utilize as much as 40 % of CRMs capability. This is not because there is a problem with the CRM software, but because e-commerce businesses often miss out on critically analyzing the requirements of the CRM within the business at the outset. These CRMs generally have limited or no use in the business and are dead resources. This renders the CRM a misfit within the e-commerce business if not employed correctly. 2. Buying a CRM too early Define the CRM requirements first before jumping into which CRM to buy. If you are just starting out as an e-commerce company, your focus ideally be targeted towards expanding your client base, attracting as many customers as possible and achieving breakeven sales with your products online. Managing customer relations and records in an organized database is also, extremely important. But Google drives and other free tools do an equally good job. Therefore, if you are starting out, it would be wise to analyze if using a CRM at this stage can prove to be fruitful. We suggest you to start lean. 3. Not setting objectives, goals and targets for CRM One way to derive maximum from your CRM is to set a clear objective, goal and target. Treat your CRM as an asset that needs to justify its costs. With CRMs being implemented in businesses across industries in today’s world, SMEs and upcoming e-commerce companies may find it necessary to implement CRMs in their own businesses, without understanding how the features can be fully utilized to boost business efficiency. The requirement for a CRM is the result of much deliberation over difficult business truths such as dwindling sales, strained customer relations, service woes or escalating marketing issues. The mistake takes place with the first step when businesses implement CRMs without understanding its features, the metrics it has to offer and how in turn a CRM can help your e-commerce business grow. 4. Owning a CRM only as a social norm Over these years, we have seen entrepreneurs rushing to buy a CRM as a part of their initial start up infrastructure. They utilize it to supplement their daily meetings with prospects and networks and end up buying CRMs only because others in the industry have implemented them and because they assume it is necessary. Though the assumption may not be entirely wrong, we strongly suggest you ask yourself these 4 simple questions before you buy a CRM – Can it solve the problems in my business? Does it suit by budget? Can it integrate seamlessly with my existing software and systems? Is it necessary at this point of my company’s operations? CRMs should not be implemented just for the heck of it and just because every other company in the block is using a Salesforce or a Zoho. It should only be employed if an e-commerce business has the resources for it, has the ability to answer these questions and be able to present solutions for it. 5. Inefficiency in uploading the data in CRM The data you capture from your customers need to be updated in a timely manner into your CRMs. This requires your time and devotion. Typically our study shows, that the lack of time to enter data into CRMs remains the single most problem for entrepreneurs and e-commerce store owners alike. We suggest you hire a virtual assistant to handle this work seamlessly. If you want to avoid the possibility of failures, your first step should be to take care of these 5 reasons. Since investing in a CRM is a big deal, make sure you have your goals defined and its needs/requirements for the business sorted before you take the plunge. After all, CRMs are assets and like any other asset, need to be justified for its costs and employed properly for maximum benefits.

Five Reasons Why CRM Investments Fail In E-Commerce Space Read More »

In 10 years of GetFriday’s existence, we have handled a lot of CRMs! Our insights for this blog are derived from this experience. Our clients have been at times, early adopters of these tools. We also happen to have a huge client base of entrepreneurs and small businesses. This has enabled us to have a 360 degree view of CRM usage or its lack of usage. Without doubt CRMS are useful tools for e-commerce It is true that CRM software can help e-commerce businesses provide excellent customer support by managing and storing all data related to customers and transactions. Though all this can be achieved through other online tools, the beauty of buying CRM software is to be able to utilize it in such a manner that it can take care of your business needs automatically while allowing you to focus on improving your sales conversion rates considerably. Nevertheless, majority of companies fail to benefit from CRMs and end up losing huge amounts of money. We have identified 5 reasons for the failure of CRMs in the e-commerce industry through our longstanding experience of serving e-commerce clients. This blog is also summarized in the form of Slideshare presentation. Please click on the below image for the presentation. 5 Reasons for CRM Investments Failure   1. Not utilizing full capacity of CRMs Imagine you hired an employee for your small e-commerce business, and are unable to use 40% of this person’s skill. A smart business owner should ideally be worried. But somehow, business professionals do not worry about the unused capacities of assets. Our internal data shows many entrepreneurs do not utilize as much as 40 % of CRMs capability. This is not because there is a problem with the CRM software, but because e-commerce businesses often miss out on critically analyzing the requirements of the CRM within the business at the outset. These CRMs generally have limited or no use in the business and are dead resources. This renders the CRM a misfit within the e-commerce business if not employed correctly. 2. Buying a CRM too early Define the CRM requirements first before jumping into which CRM to buy. If you are just starting out as an e-commerce company, your focus ideally be targeted towards expanding your client base, attracting as many customers as possible and achieving breakeven sales with your products online. Managing customer relations and records in an organized database is also, extremely important. But Google drives and other free tools do an equally good job. Therefore, if you are starting out, it would be wise to analyze if using a CRM at this stage can prove to be fruitful. We suggest you to start lean. 3. Not setting objectives, goals and targets for CRM One way to derive maximum from your CRM is to set a clear objective, goal and target. Treat your CRM as an asset that needs to justify its costs. With CRMs being implemented in businesses across industries in today’s world, SMEs and upcoming e-commerce companies may find it necessary to implement CRMs in their own businesses, without understanding how the features can be fully utilized to boost business efficiency. The requirement for a CRM is the result of much deliberation over difficult business truths such as dwindling sales, strained customer relations, service woes or escalating marketing issues. The mistake takes place with the first step when businesses implement CRMs without understanding its features, the metrics it has to offer and how in turn a CRM can help your e-commerce business grow. 4. Owning a CRM only as a social norm Over these years, we have seen entrepreneurs rushing to buy a CRM as a part of their initial start up infrastructure. They utilize it to supplement their daily meetings with prospects and networks and end up buying CRMs only because others in the industry have implemented them and because they assume it is necessary. Though the assumption may not be entirely wrong, we strongly suggest you ask yourself these 4 simple questions before you buy a CRM – Can it solve the problems in my business? Does it suit by budget? Can it integrate seamlessly with my existing software and systems? Is it necessary at this point of my company’s operations? CRMs should not be implemented just for the heck of it and just because every other company in the block is using a Salesforce or a Zoho. It should only be employed if an e-commerce business has the resources for it, has the ability to answer these questions and be able to present solutions for it. 5. Inefficiency in uploading the data in CRM The data you capture from your customers need to be updated in a timely manner into your CRMs. This requires your time and devotion. Typically our study shows, that the lack of time to enter data into CRMs remains the single most problem for entrepreneurs and e-commerce store owners alike. We suggest you hire a virtual assistant to handle this work seamlessly. If you want to avoid the possibility of failures, your first step should be to take care of these 5 reasons. Since investing in a CRM is a big deal, make sure you have your goals defined and its needs/requirements for the business sorted before you take the plunge. After all, CRMs are assets and like any other asset, need to be justified for its costs and employed properly for maximum benefits.

GetFriday Newsletter – E-Commerce Insights

Industry News: E-Commerce Insights GetFriday has begun its monthly endeavors of providing you with information that could be of use to you. We aim to impart important insights to our clients to help them promote and help e-commerce stores grow. At GetFriday, we have had diverse experiences with our clients, most of them largely E-Commerce clients. The year 2015 is packed with a number of changes and prevalent trends in the E-commerce industry. Industry players need to now understand and adopt these changes in order to be able procure revenue and attract traffic. Some of the top trends for the E-Commerce industry for this year are highlighted below and are as follows:- Sales are now being effectively carried out over mobile phones. A recent survey shows that mobile now “account for 50.3% of all E-Commerce Traffic”. Also, the new Google algorithm change that requires websites to be mobile-friendly should be well in place for E-commerce websites by now in order for a better ranking on search engine sites in order to attract traffic. Social media sites are now turning into lucrative platforms for driving sales to e-commerce websites. A lot of consumers are now turning to Pinterest, Polyvore, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to ‘discover’ new, prevalent e-commerce products and to Twitter for specialty/niche industries. Setting up Facebook stores are also becoming a popular trend, helping E-commerce websites directly on the platform through a trusted and secure payment gateway. Social commerce has been viewed as one of the most important e-commerce trends for the year and funnels a large part of website viewership and traffic. But if generating traffic was not enough, Facebook tops the list as the social media site that brings in the highest conversion rate for e-commerce traffic at 1.85%. People shop whenever it is convenient for them during the day or night and don’t necessarily use the desktop or the laptop to surf e-commerce websites. People shop or go through e-commerce websites on the move, during the day, before they go to bed at night and even between the periods 12-2PM at the work place and on Sunday Evenings. This is a proven statistic. E-commerce websites should take a note of this and if you are PPC advertiser, this could work as a model for you to be able to place your ad campaigns effectively. These have been some of the top trends for 2015. There will be more updates and more newsletters on what’s fresh and what’s doing the rounds in the e-commerce industry. Stay tuned for the latest postings, tips, offerings and blogs specific to the e-commerce industry in the next issue and follows us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn as well.

GetFriday Newsletter – E-Commerce Insights Read More »

Industry News: E-Commerce Insights GetFriday has begun its monthly endeavors of providing you with information that could be of use to you. We aim to impart important insights to our clients to help them promote and help e-commerce stores grow. At GetFriday, we have had diverse experiences with our clients, most of them largely E-Commerce clients. The year 2015 is packed with a number of changes and prevalent trends in the E-commerce industry. Industry players need to now understand and adopt these changes in order to be able procure revenue and attract traffic. Some of the top trends for the E-Commerce industry for this year are highlighted below and are as follows:- Sales are now being effectively carried out over mobile phones. A recent survey shows that mobile now “account for 50.3% of all E-Commerce Traffic”. Also, the new Google algorithm change that requires websites to be mobile-friendly should be well in place for E-commerce websites by now in order for a better ranking on search engine sites in order to attract traffic. Social media sites are now turning into lucrative platforms for driving sales to e-commerce websites. A lot of consumers are now turning to Pinterest, Polyvore, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to ‘discover’ new, prevalent e-commerce products and to Twitter for specialty/niche industries. Setting up Facebook stores are also becoming a popular trend, helping E-commerce websites directly on the platform through a trusted and secure payment gateway. Social commerce has been viewed as one of the most important e-commerce trends for the year and funnels a large part of website viewership and traffic. But if generating traffic was not enough, Facebook tops the list as the social media site that brings in the highest conversion rate for e-commerce traffic at 1.85%. People shop whenever it is convenient for them during the day or night and don’t necessarily use the desktop or the laptop to surf e-commerce websites. People shop or go through e-commerce websites on the move, during the day, before they go to bed at night and even between the periods 12-2PM at the work place and on Sunday Evenings. This is a proven statistic. E-commerce websites should take a note of this and if you are PPC advertiser, this could work as a model for you to be able to place your ad campaigns effectively. These have been some of the top trends for 2015. There will be more updates and more newsletters on what’s fresh and what’s doing the rounds in the e-commerce industry. Stay tuned for the latest postings, tips, offerings and blogs specific to the e-commerce industry in the next issue and follows us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn as well.

GetFriday Newsletter – Get Friday and Social Media

With GetFriday stepping into its 10th year of operations, we would like to take the opportunity to firstly, offer our sincerest thanks and gratitude to every client who has supported us in our endeavors along the way. Without your conviction and belief, it would have been impossible for GetFriday to achieve the kind of success it has. We have spread our wings through social media marketing and have built our presence on a number of popular social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. Through this, we aim to help clients discover our latest postings whilst also providing exciting opportunities to avail the best of GetFriday’s virtual assistance services. A series of social media campaigns will be launched on a monthly basis for this special year and clients, both old and new, will be chosen as the recipients of tremendous benefits. A recent ‘Friendship Day’ campaign was launched on the official GetFriday social media pages on July 27th, 2015. The campaign was primarily targeted at clients who had availed GetFriday’s services and to help clients’ friends avail the same, by gifting them GetFriday hours, along with submitting a special tweet, a shout-out or a personalized message for Friendship Day. The result of the campaign was nothing short of a grand success, wit the existing clients also receiving exciting, referral benefits. Similarly, GetFriday ran an exciting “World Entrepreneurs Day” campaign from the 17th-21st August. The prime motive behind launching such an exclusive campaign was to celebrate entrepreneurs and their contributions around the world. As many of our clients are businesspersons themselves, we offered them $25 as cash prizes and also a complementary offer wherein the clients referrals earned 25% off on the first month’s bill if they signed up during the offer period. The campaign proved to be fruitful and gave the golden opportunity to clients to earn exciting prizes and benefits and also gave GetFriday a chance to welcome new clients into the GetFriday family. More such campaigns will be launched across GetFriday’s official pages. Stay tuned and follow us on our social media sites for latest offerings, blogs and news. Not only will you be able to view the latest internal news, but you will also be able to benefit from the fresh, quality content posted for professionals and entrepreneurs across various domains and industries on a weekly basis. We love to hear from you and we bet you would love to hear from us too! Let’s stay connected.

GetFriday Newsletter – Get Friday and Social Media Read More »

With GetFriday stepping into its 10th year of operations, we would like to take the opportunity to firstly, offer our sincerest thanks and gratitude to every client who has supported us in our endeavors along the way. Without your conviction and belief, it would have been impossible for GetFriday to achieve the kind of success it has. We have spread our wings through social media marketing and have built our presence on a number of popular social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+. Through this, we aim to help clients discover our latest postings whilst also providing exciting opportunities to avail the best of GetFriday’s virtual assistance services. A series of social media campaigns will be launched on a monthly basis for this special year and clients, both old and new, will be chosen as the recipients of tremendous benefits. A recent ‘Friendship Day’ campaign was launched on the official GetFriday social media pages on July 27th, 2015. The campaign was primarily targeted at clients who had availed GetFriday’s services and to help clients’ friends avail the same, by gifting them GetFriday hours, along with submitting a special tweet, a shout-out or a personalized message for Friendship Day. The result of the campaign was nothing short of a grand success, wit the existing clients also receiving exciting, referral benefits. Similarly, GetFriday ran an exciting “World Entrepreneurs Day” campaign from the 17th-21st August. The prime motive behind launching such an exclusive campaign was to celebrate entrepreneurs and their contributions around the world. As many of our clients are businesspersons themselves, we offered them $25 as cash prizes and also a complementary offer wherein the clients referrals earned 25% off on the first month’s bill if they signed up during the offer period. The campaign proved to be fruitful and gave the golden opportunity to clients to earn exciting prizes and benefits and also gave GetFriday a chance to welcome new clients into the GetFriday family. More such campaigns will be launched across GetFriday’s official pages. Stay tuned and follow us on our social media sites for latest offerings, blogs and news. Not only will you be able to view the latest internal news, but you will also be able to benefit from the fresh, quality content posted for professionals and entrepreneurs across various domains and industries on a weekly basis. We love to hear from you and we bet you would love to hear from us too! Let’s stay connected.

GetFriday Newsletter – GetFriday Turns 10!

GetFriday completed it 10 years of existence in the Virtual Assistance Industry in August 2015. This is a huge milestone to achieve for us and on this joyful occasion of turning 10; Team Get Friday would like to thank you all. You are the clients believing in our abilities and supporting us for very long time; we owe it all to our clients and the strong bonds we have fostered through time. Through the course of these 10 years, GetFriday has seen its share of ups and downs, but thankfully, we have had more ups than downs. For 10 years, GetFriday has helped offload tasks for more than 13,000 clients around 60 countries with its personal virtual assistance services. A lot has changed and we are now slowly evolving to be a business support service from virtual assistance support. The competition has been tough. Many of our competitors have disappeared and others are stuck in middle age blues. Our steadfast focus on learning from our customers has enabled us to survive and flourish for a decade now. We believe, GetFriday has gone on to bring about a positive change in the lives of all its clients, no matter how small or big the task outsourced. During a time when personal virtual assistance services were literally unheard of, GetFriday sprang up in 2005 as the sister concern of YMII (Your Man In India) and began offering personal, administrative, secretarial and specialized services to clients, virtually. The success of our venture, which began way back in 2005, was featured and documented in the best-selling book, “4 Hour Work Week” authored by Tim Ferris, in 2007. Within just a span of 2 years, GetFriday achieved so success and acclaim and carved its place as an indomitable player in the market of virtual assistance services. As a celebration of our successful 10-year run and for having been associated with us during our incredible journey, we are going to run a year-long campaign with oodles of benefits and exciting offers for our wide client-base.

GetFriday Newsletter – GetFriday Turns 10! Read More »

GetFriday completed it 10 years of existence in the Virtual Assistance Industry in August 2015. This is a huge milestone to achieve for us and on this joyful occasion of turning 10; Team Get Friday would like to thank you all. You are the clients believing in our abilities and supporting us for very long time; we owe it all to our clients and the strong bonds we have fostered through time. Through the course of these 10 years, GetFriday has seen its share of ups and downs, but thankfully, we have had more ups than downs. For 10 years, GetFriday has helped offload tasks for more than 13,000 clients around 60 countries with its personal virtual assistance services. A lot has changed and we are now slowly evolving to be a business support service from virtual assistance support. The competition has been tough. Many of our competitors have disappeared and others are stuck in middle age blues. Our steadfast focus on learning from our customers has enabled us to survive and flourish for a decade now. We believe, GetFriday has gone on to bring about a positive change in the lives of all its clients, no matter how small or big the task outsourced. During a time when personal virtual assistance services were literally unheard of, GetFriday sprang up in 2005 as the sister concern of YMII (Your Man In India) and began offering personal, administrative, secretarial and specialized services to clients, virtually. The success of our venture, which began way back in 2005, was featured and documented in the best-selling book, “4 Hour Work Week” authored by Tim Ferris, in 2007. Within just a span of 2 years, GetFriday achieved so success and acclaim and carved its place as an indomitable player in the market of virtual assistance services. As a celebration of our successful 10-year run and for having been associated with us during our incredible journey, we are going to run a year-long campaign with oodles of benefits and exciting offers for our wide client-base.

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