Before you hire your next Ecommerce Assistant, ask yourself this.

Are you hiring someone to do a role that could be automated significantly?

What would the job role look like if you didn't have to do this admin?

Assistant is abused as a Synonym for Administrator.

It's unintentional; most Operators default to 'busy mode' not automation.

We want to believe they'll get to do meaningful and higher-value work.

Instead, Ecommerce Assistant job roles read like this:

Creating new products in Shopify with each new launch
Updating metafields with new product information/updates
Changing assigned products to Outlet/Sale/Archive collection
Tagging all assigned Shopify products with correct tags and filters
Uploading assigned product videos/imagery for PDPs (product detail pages!)

The buzz kicks in when they realise that on Boxing Day, when the sale drops, they must do all of this across all five of your Shopify stores.

I've never seen that in a job description...

What if Ecommerce Assistants had more time?

They could be doing things like:

Could they work on an additional language store? 🇨🇭 🇸🇪 🇫🇷 🇪🇸
Collaborate with your agency on the task backlog. 💬
Configure your product reviews app so relevant reviews show on the PDP. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Analyse conversion rates on the product detail pages and optimise content. 💰

Basically, anything that makes you more money rather than keeps the lights on.😅

The same goes for Buying, Design, Merch, and Production. Pushing more resources into these teams to process more products and launches often negatively correlates with quality and consistency. The work being done needs to be optimised and workflow finessed before you try to increase output.

Savvy Operators are proud of how few people they need.

Busy teams end up with busy Managers.🥵