Ecommerce virtual assistant for your online and marketplace store
An ecommerce virtual assistant runs the daily operations of your store: order questions, product listings, returns and the customer email that piles up after a busy weekend. It works the same whether you sell on your own online store or through marketplace stores. On Aides you search ID-verified people by skill and time zone, see their overlap with your order cutoff, test them on a paid task with real listings and pay them directly with no agency markup. You get more time for sourcing, marketing and growth.
- Every assistant passes an ID and liveness check. No AI personas.
- You pay your assistant directly. No markup.
Store tasks an ecommerce assistant handles
Store operations are a long list of small jobs that each take a few minutes and never stop. Your assistant handles them every day from your store admin, inbox and order sheets.
- 01 Answer order status, shipping and product questions in your store inbox and marketplace messages.
- 02 Create and update product listings with titles, descriptions, attributes, variants and images in the right sizes.
- 03 Process returns and exchanges by your policy, issue return labels and update stock when items come back.
- 04 Watch for orders that stall, such as missing addresses, failed payments or late shipments, and follow up.
- 05 Update prices, stock levels and promotions from your supplier sheets or your instructions.
- 06 Keep marketplace store health in check by replying within required response times and fixing listing errors.
- 07 Send review requests and post-purchase emails from your templates.
What you keep control of
Pricing strategy, supplier negotiations, ad budgets and refunds outside your policy stay with you. Give your assistant staff access with permissions limited to orders, products and customer messages, and keep payout settings to yourself.
Typical weekly hours and time zone overlap
A store with a steady flow of daily orders usually needs 10 to 20 hours a week. Seasonal peaks, a new catalog or several marketplace stores at once can push that to 30 or 40 hours for a while. The overlap that counts is with your order cutoff and shipping day. An assistant who works through your morning can clear overnight messages and flag problem orders before the warehouse picks. The Aides search shows the overlap with the hours you enter for every assistant, so you can match coverage to when orders and messages arrive.
How to hire a store assistant on Aides
The full sequence is in our guide to hire a virtual assistant. For a store, test on your own catalog.
- 01 Search for ecommerce, enter your order cutoff hours and how many hours a week you need.
- 02 Shortlist people with experience in store admin panels and marketplace seller tools.
- 03 In the conversation, ask how they would handle a customer who received the wrong size.
- 04 Pay for a trial task, such as writing five listings and answering a set of past messages in a test view.
- 05 Hire, add them as staff with limited permissions and share your return policy and saved replies.
How store work ramps up over four weeks
Start your assistant on customer messages and order checks, where mistakes are easy to spot. Once replies match your policy, usually in the second week, add listing updates and stock changes. By the fourth week most owners hand over returns as well, keeping only exceptions and payouts, and get a short weekly summary of open orders and recurring customer questions.
What an ecommerce virtual assistant costs
Typical rates for ecommerce support run from 9 to 26 USD per hour, higher for catalog work that needs copywriting or image editing. Example monthly cost for 20 hours a week at a typical 14 USD per hour is 20 x 14 x 4.33 = 1,212 USD per month, paid directly to your assistant. A store that splits listings and order support between two people, with an operations lead on a second seat, fits Growth. Seats, hires and conversation limits are listed on the virtual assistant cost page.
Why store access calls for a verified person
Your store admin holds customer addresses, order history and refund buttons. The person processing your returns is the same person whose identity Aides confirmed and whose own photo you saw before the interview. Read how a verified virtual assistant profile is approved.
Ecommerce virtual assistant questions
Does it matter which store platform I use?
Not much. Profiles list the store admins and marketplace seller tools each person has used, and you test your own setup in the trial task.
Can my assistant issue refunds?
Only if you allow it. Many owners let the assistant process returns inside policy and approve every exception themselves.
Can one assistant manage several stores?
Yes, if the volume fits their hours. Share one set of rules and saved replies across stores to keep answers consistent.
Will my assistant write product descriptions?
Many do. Check writing skills test results on the profile and include listings in the paid trial.
How do I handle seasonal peaks?
Agree extra hours in advance, or hire a second assistant for the season. Growth allows 3 active hires at once.
Find an ecommerce assistant who covers your order hours
Enter your order cutoff, pick ecommerce and see who overlaps.