What You Need To Automate In Your Ecommerce Business

To get a head start in today’s competitive market, business owners turn to eCommerce automation in their day-to-day. With automation software, they can streamline their business from beginning to end.

eCommerce automation is so valuable that many businesses are willing to pay thousands of dollars a month for different features.

In this article, I will walk you through the applications that can help you grow your eCommerce business, to help you decide if they are the right fit for growing your business.

First, let’s get everybody on the same page with a brief dive into ecommerce automation. Ecommerce automation uses one or multiple tools to complete several usually mundane, repetitive, and tedious tasks.

The purpose of ecommerce automation is to streamline your workflows and ensure business processes get completed consistently and accurately.

But another, just as the vital benefit is that it takes some of the pressure off of your team members, freeing them up to concentrate on other essential tasks.

Ecommerce automation becomes increasingly important as your business begins to scale up and the demands become too heavy for your human resources to handle. It’s either automating your processes or hiring new employees. We suggest going the automation route as it’s more effective and cheaper, allowing you to grow your business faster.

These are the manual tasks that could be automated when it comes to your eCommerce business success:

The email marketing automation system

Of course, you need to regularly broadcast email marketing messages to your email list so that your target audience can find what they’re looking for and make the purchase.

However, if you had to do it all manually, this repetitive task would take forever – this is not a good idea for running an online business.
That is where automation comes in.

The critical selection criteria for email marketing automation too are as follows:

Scalability – it is necessary for the application to expand with the business in terms of storage space and a number of subscribers.

Stability – if the system goes down, orders will not be delivered, which can lead to a drop in sales. Choosing one that historically has a very low downtime is critical.

Security – correct storage of sensitive information will save you money from potential lawsuits and protect you from breaches. E.g, ransomware attacks.

Up-to-date technology – since there are dozens of new applications on the market, it is necessary for your eCommerce automation system to be updated regularly.

Integrations with other platforms and accounting software (Shopify/Stripe) Your email service provider should integrate with your popular eCommerce platform (for example, Shopify) and allow copying of order information to send mailings via API

The ability to schedule messages ahead of time so that you can send them at just the right time for maximum effectiveness;

The ability to create customized, segmented messages: This helps you send personalized emails with a unique discount to active clients, for example. In the first step, you need to segment customers.

Shipping automation When shipping goods, you need to have a warehouse management system that allows you to keep track of inbound and outbound shipments. In addition to the tracking function, the application should show how many items are available in stock at any time.

The best thing about automation email campaign software for eCommerce sales is that it can automatically send follow-up emails with updates regarding shipment delays or even inform customers of changes in estimated delivery times because of various conditions.

This helps customers avoid stressful phone calls about missing packages or late arrivals.

Additional features you may want to include are integrations with a database for contacts, maintaining customer data, and creating sales reports.

If you are delivering customer orders to be fulfilled by another company, then having an automated system that integrates with theirs is crucial for long-term success.

Automated inventory management systems

The main feature you need when choosing an inventory management solution is the ability to plan. What does that mean?

Let’s say that, by mistake, you placed an order with a supplier for many products that take two weeks to deliver, in addition to your usual inventory order.

If all goes as you requested, you will have too many items in stock at the end of the month. In situations like this, it is necessary that the eCommerce platform has an option for setting reorder points and how much stock should be kept on hand.

It would also help if there were alerts when running low on supplies so that you can place orders early enough to meet higher demands later in the month. This proves especially useful for seasonal goods.

Also, to help you use your inventory effectively, an eCommerce automation tool must automatically move products from one group to another. For example, you can use this powerful tool when selling out of a product. This is imperative for successful sales since insufficient inventory leads to negative reviews and irregular sales.

Thanks to inventory management automation tools, you will move the remaining goods to a separate product category where they can be sold as a replacement while not disrupting sales for other products.

Not every platform offers such functionality, so it is best to check before deciding which system to use.

Shopping cart abandonment sequence

It is possible to attract customers on the verge of leaving without buying anything. When customers are on your checkout page and have already entered their credit card details, they are ready to order. However, sometimes, they get a last-minute change of heart and require one last push.

With this business automation tool, it becomes possible to set follow-up messages at just the right time, so they don’t lose interest or abandon their cart altogether. These customer acquisition messages can be in the form of abandoned cart emails or even a pop-up message on the screen.

With this information, some ecommerce automation tools can offer special discounts if they determine that a customer is likely to leave without making any purchases.

In addition to having access to basic analytics, these platforms provide customer segments such as the time of day when they are most active online.\

Whether you are dropshipping high-ticket items or delivering your own products, having the right cart recovery messages or cart reminders sent out for your abandonment sequence is crucial to seeing long-term success.

Shopping cart abandonment automation is one of eCommerce software’s most vital selling points. When all the pieces come together, sales increase while improving your reputation among potential clients.

Automated product recommendations based on buying patterns and behavior

This automated product recommendations solution is a little different. It does not emit sparks of inspiration for customers to buy but instead helps them decide what to purchase more quickly.

If they are having trouble in this area and can’t find the right products, users will get frustrated and leave before purchasing anything.

Automatically generated product suggestions help convert potential clients who have trouble finding what they want on your website. These suggestions will cover basic and advanced features depending on the product you are selling and increase the ease with which customers can find what they need on your eCommerce site.

Such a tool also provides links to detailed information about specific products so potential clients can make informed decisions. If the suggestions made by this software are not relevant enough or lack exciting content ideas, visitors will turn away from them and stop coming back.

This means that automation is only as effective as its implementation on a deeper level throughout your website. It’s essential to keep an eye out for how customizable the software you choose is.

Smart order fulfillment with smart price/quantity adjustment

You can set this up according to demand trends, seasonality, and competitor pricing.

Fulfillment automation is simple enough to understand, but it requires a well-developed infrastructure to make it work.

This tool uses data collected from customer requests and orders over time to determine what stock levels should be and which items should be taken off or added to each shopping cart as they get added.

The primary purpose of this solution is to prevent customers from running into checkout errors that occur when there is not enough stock for all purchases or if the price has changed during the purchase process (such as with coupons).

Since manually adjusting prices can only go so far, automated pricing allows you to fine-tune your merchandise selection by season without human intervention.

Also, fulfillment automation can help clear your slow-moving inventory and make room for new products. You could also use this feature when you want to set limits on something. For example, limiting how many units will be offered or at what percentage of the original price.

Customer service automation

This tool helps customer service representatives keep up with all inquiries by automatically creating a ticket for each new conversation.

Today, eCommerce businesses face a problem that is by no means easy to deal with: how do you manage so many customer requests at once? Email takes up too much time when people need answers immediately, leading to a poor customer experience.

Poor user experience means low customer loyalty. Happy customers are the main priority.

Unfortunately, this is the only viable option if your business does not have live chat software or any other team collaboration tool. While some companies have customer support staff, others outsource it to a third-party service provider.

Of course, this means more money for them in the long run, but it also increases the number of issues they will have to handle as their client base grows and more customers start coming through the door daily. The larger your customer base is, the more problems will appear.

The obvious solution that most eCommerce owners go for is software automation – with live chatbots becoming the preferred method of customer support.

Visitor segmentation and tracking

This feature helps businesses understand the behavior of their customers and increase conversion rates.

The better you know your potential clients, the more likely you are to gain their trust, which many eCommerce businesses strive for – after all, it does mean more profit in the long run. That’s why it is important to track customer activity at all times.

The first step towards this goal would be tracking each visitor’s activity on your website using various parameters. It appears that not every one of them needs special attention or extra nurturing (meaning that it should focus on the customers that have historically proven to be the best spenders on your website).

This type of software can help you distinguish those you should prioritize from those who only receive basic customer service because they will likely never buy products from you again.

Doing so will save a great deal of money that could instead go towards further analysis and future attempts at turning the best leads into potential customers.

It also helps build up your personal brand as customers will start to feel that you know exactly which stage of their journey they are at by providing them with what they need at the right moment.

Whichever tasks you decide to automate, remember to continuously monitor your automations and ensure that they satisfy the task they got built for in the most efficient way possible. If not, then you need to make some adjustments!

Lead Scoring

Lead scoring is a sneaky tactic that you can use to increase your conversion rates. Lead scoring is exactly what it sounds like. You assign value to the leads which your website generates. The higher you score a lead, the more likely you believe they will convert due to their behavior once on the website.

But how does this help your ecommerce store?

If you have scored your leads, your sales team knows which ones to focus their efforts on and nurture their relationship with. You can then send out personalized content to leads depending on their status.

Luckily you don’t have to do this manually anymore. Many marketing automation tools or specific lead-scoring tools are available to help you automate this process. All you need to do is set up the predetermined factors on which you will score the leads.

For example, if a potential customer gets as far as checkout but disappears, they would be scored as a high-quality lead. The sales team may set up an automated email campaign that gently pushes them into completing their purchase.

Dynamic Content

Showing your customers personalized and customized content can be the difference between making a sale or not. Dynamic content refers to content on your website that changes based on the information you’ve gathered on the user, including geographical data, demographical data, characteristics, and website behavior.

For example, someone stumbled upon your ecommerce store by searching ‘dress’ on Google or any other search engine. It only makes sense that when they enter your website, they see a landing page filled with all the unique dresses you offer.

This automation ties in with the customer segmentation we mentioned above. You can build different landing pages targeting the customer segments you’ve outlined.

Immediately presenting the user with what they are looking for increases your conversion rate, decreases your website bounce rate, and allows for a better overall shopping experience for customers.

Our advice? Test your landing pages using A/B testing to ensure that the variants you’re using provide you with the best results possible. Test your copy, headlines, call-to-actions, and banner images.

Get your ecommerce processes automated today

After reading this article, you may see that there are many areas where your ecommerce business needs to automate specific tasks. Luckily, many ecommerce automation tools are available to do the heavy lifting for you.

Not all areas for automation should have special priority. Some eCommerce owners don’t have enough time or money to tackle every problem at once and ignore some issues altogether. However, no issue should get overlooked regarding customer service automation, visitor segmentation, and tracking if you want to keep up with the fast-paced world of online shopping and keep your customers happy.