eCommerce businesses are scaling at an unprecedented rate.
They’re targeting new customers, and new markets, and expanding their product offerings.
As of 2020, the number of eCommerce users exceeded 3.4 billion and the number is expected to reach 4.9 billion by 2025.
It’s not an easy feat to achieve operational efficiencies and maintain customer satisfaction as your customer base grows.
But yet, online stores are managing all these aspects — with eCommerce automation.
What is eCommerce Automation?
eCommerce automation means using software tools that complete various tasks in eCommerce for you. You create manual tasks into automated flows and rely on tools to take over trivial tasks for you.
eCommerce automation can range from triggering emails, automating customer support, sending notification messages, etc. Some aspects of these processes will require human input, you can simply set things in motion and eCommerce tasks can successfully be automated.
If done correctly, eCommerce automation can work wonders for small businesses since it eliminates manual tasks and reduces operational costs.
Let’s take at some of the top benefits of having an automated eCommerce business:
- Saves Significant Time: As you have more customer onboarding, you need to do more in less time like order deliveries, eCommerce order fulfilment, and customer service. While you can always hire more people, consider the time and money that you save if you put your tasks on auto-pilot. Your team can rather help you build a scaling strategy as your regular tasks get automated.
- Reduces Errors: Your business cannot afford errors. Not when customer satisfaction is the need of the hour and the competition is intense in the marketplace. No matter how much you train and aim for zero human errors in data entry and computer programming, it is practically impossible. To secure your bottom line, you need accurate data and information management which is only possible with eCommerce automation.
- Increases Operational Efficiency: Ecommerce automation can help you streamline multiple processes such as marketing, sales, and order fulfilment. For example, you can use automation to segment your customers and provide personalised experiences, assure timely responses with automated replies in emails and messages, develop end-to-end email marketing campaigns, etc.
8 Ways to Automate your eCommerce Business
Now that you have an overview of what is an automated eCommerce business, let’s check out the ways you can execute your strategy.
1. Inventory Management Automation
Having just the right amount of inventory can help you in many ways: You can always fulfil customer demands, save on storage space, and know exactly when to restock. But imagine doing this for every warehouse across all the regions.
Inventory management automation helps you regulate your stock levels by notifying you whenever the inventory levels are running low. This way, you can inform your suppliers in advance to place new orders and ensure the customers get the products delivered on time.
Advanced inventory management automation also helps you forecast demand based on historical data. It helps you predict what the customers would prefer in the coming months and stock your warehouses accordingly. You don’t have to worry about manually checking the inventory levels at all times and ensuring timely order fulfilment.
2. Marketing Automation
Today’s eCommerce business relies heavily on marketing automation. From lead generation to promotional activities like pop-ups, you have a tool for everything. Some of the primary ways you can automate your marketing activities in eCommerce are:
Email Marketing Automation: Drip email campaigns have become an integral marketing strategy for eCommerce businesses. Tools like Active Campaign and Mailchimp allow you to automate drip campaigns. Have a high cart abandonment rate? Send an automated reminder email. Have a new customer? Send an onboarding email. They allow you to send offers, discounts, and delivery updates, and all you have to do is just set the scheduling times.
Social Media Automation: Every eCommerce business understands the value of omnichannel marketing. You have to be active on your Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. But let’s face it. It’s all very time-consuming. How can you stay active without actually manually posting content every day?
With social media automation tools. They help you streamline your posting schedules. You can create the posts in advance and post them on social media automation tools like Buffer, set a scheduling time and you can go on with other tasks.
3. Sales Automation
As an online store, you need to be up to date about the seasonal fluctuations in demand. It can get challenging even in the best circumstances. Using sales automation tools, you can access data and predict the demand so as to make it easier for your store to address supply chain disruptions.
Sales automation tools aim to manage and reduce the mundane and administrative tasks of sales representatives. With pre-built workflows, you can reduce human error and improve the productivity of your team. You can reduce the number of hours invested in repetitive sales queries and encourage your team to focus on more creative and strategic activities.
4. Order Management Automation
An eCommerce business is nothing without its effective order fulfilment and order management process. A fully automated order management system can integrate with your online store or even multiple sales channels. It takes care of the complete backend operations once you receive the order.
Order management systems enable you to execute dropshipping where online stores accept orders without keeping any inventory in hand. It lowers your risk and only involves buying products that your customers need.
Automated order management reduces your shipping and overhead costs. It increases the data quality and packing and labelling in the most efficient way. You can also integrate order management systems that streamline product returns and credit card processing.
5. Order Fulfilment Automation
Similar to order management, you can also automate your order fulfilment process to truly become an automated eCommerce business. How can you do that?
A typical eCommerce business has a defined process of order processing in an order fulfilment system.
- The company receives the order.
- The order is entered into the order fulfilment system
- The customer is notified about the company receiving the order
- The fulfilment team is routed to the nearest warehouse or fulfilment centre
- The team picks the order and prepares it for shipping and prints shipping labels.
- The company ships the order to the customer
- The customer is notified of the same
- The final order is delivered at the doorstep.
If you’re still operating from a single warehouse and have limited customers, maybe you undertake all these processes manually. But as you scale, you have to integrate an order fulfilment system that seamlessly delivers every single order on time.
6. Customer Support Automation
Customer support is one of the most cost-consuming departments in eCommerce. With a rising customer base, there’s a rising number of customer queries as well. Most of the customer queries are repetitive and trivial. For questions like “Where’s my order?” or “Can I return my order?” you don’t need a 24*7 service representatives behind the phone.
You can simply have an automated service desk that takes over the first-level support for you. Tools like Zendesk and eDesk make it easier for you to manage incoming customer complaints. The tools raise tickets, suggest automated responses, and even prioritise them based on urgency so that there can be efficient human handover whenever needed.
7. Operations/Workflow Automation
To become an automated eCommerce business, you cannot just automate your external workflows. You also need to onboard tools that help you automate internal operations and workflows.
Project management and communication tools like Trello and Slack allow you to keep your teams in the loop and connect with each other regarding specific orders and customer complaints. They help you streamline everyday tasks, allotting them to the teams and coordinating multiple systems at once.
8. Accounting Automation
There are multiple tools available in the market that help you automate your accounting, invoicing, and reconciliation. Humans are prone to errors and their minds are more creative than merely keeping track of the expenses. Tools like Quickbooks Online and Zero help you record every accounting entry. If you integrate these tools with your inventory or shipping software, you can automatically track and analyse your expenses.
Start Building Your Automated eCommerce Business
An automated eCommerce business is built by creating a digital ecosystem that automates not just one but multiple processes. Right from product sourcing to delivery and after-sales service, there are tools for every step of the supply chain and fulfilment activity.
Every eCommerce business relies on 3PL (third-party logistics) providers to handle the logistics process of order fulfilment to ensure timely deliveries and expert services.
At PACK & SEND, we take care of all your minute eCommerce delivery requirements. Contact us to know how we can boost your logistics processes and ensure consistent customer satisfaction.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs
How does automation help in ecommerce?
Automation helps eCommerce businesses scale. With a limited team, you can still maintain consistency in order fulfilment, customer service, marketing campaigns, and inventory management. Automation helps you save costs and time that you’d otherwise invest in mundane tasks.
What is an example of ecommerce automation?
Consider an exit-intent popup that appears right as the customer is about to leave the page. Or a chatbot answering customer queries on the website. An email offering special holiday discounts or an inventory management tool forecasting demand.
Which are the best tools for ecommerce automation?
Some of the top tools you can use for eCommerce automation are Shopify, Zapier, Zendesk, Mailchimp, Pipedrive, Shippo, Act-On, Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.
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