SwimOutlet Achieves Remarkable Revenue Growth with FenixCommerce... Learn More
May, 9 2022
“Work on it, not just in it.” - Michael Gerber
As a player in eCommerce, you already envision what kind of results you want to create in your business. And Michael Gerber’s words epitomize the structural shift required to build an eCommerce business that works for you, not the other way around.
The secret to achieving that goal somehow lies in your ability to integrate eCommerce automation software in various areas of your business, so you reduce how much time you spend working “in the business.”
By employing an eCommerce automation solution to perform manual, repetitive tasks, you can save time and channel it to the more important aspects of your business. Automating your eComm workflows using a digital ecosystem of interconnected software will help improve your productivity, eliminate avoidable errors, harness actionable data for decision making, and enhance the customer experience.
If you’d like to discover some elite automation tools, then check out our review of top eCommerce Automation Tools in 2022.
From the point where a shopper places an order to when it gets delivered, a series of processes come into play. You first have to retrieve and process the order before packing the inventory, and then go on to perform logistics. Automating this process heavily can help your eCommerce store boost order accuracy, create a more productive staff, and improve conversions.
We’ll shed light on 6 key areas of your business to implement an eCommerce automation software so you can scale faster and increase your topline. The areas are:
Customer acquisition and retention are important aspects of running an online store. You need a large volume of shoppers buying from you and that's why you must market in order to create awareness for your brand. Thankfully, workflow automation can help to improve your marketing process. How so? Consider two ways:
eCommerce businesses recognize the vast opportunities that social media brings. Around 54% of social media users carry out product research on different social channels before buying. That's why you must be intentional about creating an effective, continuous process to engage your audience on social media.
But who says you have to spend endless hours of staff time managing social media when you can use an eCommerce automation solution like web apps to keep your social platforms on autopilot? 85% of businesses employ 3rd-party tools to manage social media marketing.
A lot of different tools are available to schedule and distribute posts at a time that you choose. Simply create the posts in advance. Software like Sprout Social or HootSuite allows you to schedule weeks ahead of time.
Consider automating your email marketing because it's a great way to nurture leads, especially customers who might visit your website several times due to doubts or indecision before deciding to buy eventually. Create an automated system that allows you to extract their contact details and use eCommerce automation software like MailChimp or Klaviyo to automate their entire journey. To get it right, specify a range of email triggers and their conditions such as:
Automating your email marketing is about sending out useful and persuasive content at different points in the customer journey. When done right, it can reward loyal customers, get you more reviews, encourage repeat buys, or convert wavering leads into paying customers.
Every online store has inventory management at the core of its operations, and getting it done right is an important ingredient for faster growth. That means you must properly track and manage stock to avoid situations where you’re either understocked or overstocked. Employing an eCommerce automation solution to manage inventory makes the fulfillment process a lot smoother.
When using eCommerce automation software to power this aspect of your retail operations, the inventory management tool will allocate stock whenever an order comes in from your sales system. What’s intriguing is that you can use a SaaS-AI tool to set specific rules concerning what store or warehouse the stock comes from.
Then, your system tags the stock as ready to be dispatched, and your warehouse management team receives shipping labels, order details, and other necessary information necessary to get the stock picked, packed, and sent out. Once that stock leaves the warehouse, it is automatically logged so the inventory volume can get updated for accuracy.
eCommerce automation software can also allow you to set rules that trigger a purchase order to your supplier automatically whenever you’re running low on a particular stock. Taking advantage of the power of workflow automation will help you avoid problems like human mistakes or being overstocked/understocked.
Order management encompasses every process involved in monitoring and following up a customer’s order, from checkout until delivery. Just like inventory management, order management is an important aspect of retail operations and is yet another key area to introduce an eCommerce automation software. Consider 3 ways to automate order management:
Baymard estimates that 69.82% of shoppers abandon their carts on average, which is quite a lot of potential revenue your online store shouldn’t be letting off just like that. Now you’ve got eCommerce automation software tools that can help you encourage such shoppers to return and complete their purchases using automated emails. The best part is that you can personalize the emails by including valuable information about the products found in their carts to compel them to finalize their purchase.
Who says your relationship with customers has to end after fulfilling their orders? Consider creating a post-sale structure that allows you to continue marketing to first-time buyers. This is especially important if your eCommerce store sells particular products that customers will always need whenever they run out of supply. With this knowledge, set up a workflow using an eCommerce automation solution that sends out email notifications to remind them to buy from you again. Incentivize the entire process by adding discount codes to encourage them to keep purchasing from your online store.
Dispatching and delivering packages to customers has to be executed right because failing to do so will cost your business over time. Failed deliveries are usually the result of little but avoidable mistakes in the order management process. It could happen due to your system having inaccurate records or the shipping label having a wrong address. With eCommerce automation software, you can turn this entire process into a one-click activity where you print shipping labels, mark dispatched orders, and create tracking numbers in a fast and efficient manner.
From payments, invoices, and transactions to discount codes, returns, and refunds, your eCommerce store has a lot of numbers to deal with. But spending so many valuable hours going over these numbers repeatedly is enough to drive you insane. Consider automating things by using an eCommerce automation software that offers cloud-based accounting. Doing so gives you the convenience of accessing your books whenever you want from any location and sharing them with your team or relevant parties.
An accounting automation software can also be integrated with your eCommerce store to handle accounting processes and save time. Find a software that can synchronize data from payments and sales into an invoice and map all transactions into various categories. Using automation software to run the accounting side of things makes bank reconciliation pretty smooth.
Here’s where you want to take things a notch further, especially if you’re starting to see huge demand. Customer support can make all the difference for you, so you can’t risk getting it wrong. With the help of eCommerce automation software like Freshdesk or Zendesk, you can set up chatbots to handle queries. These bots can ask questions, provide fitting answers, and from social media regarding things like shipping and return policy, prices, etc. so you can spend time handling more serious customer issues.
The eCommerce industry is worth billions of dollars and lots of newer brands are springing up. So you must find a way to stand out and stay competitive. One of the biggest secrets employed by forward-thinking retailers like Amazon is to invest in the customer experience. The big brands are constantly looking for ways to improve the shopping and delivery experience and make the customer journey seamless.
Whether you’re building your online store from scratch or hosting it on an eCommerce platform like Shopify, there is a vast range of automation software that you can plug in to enhance the customer journey.
FenixCommerce is an eCommerce automation solution built specifically for this purpose. By integrating Fenix with your online store, your shoppers will start to see more accurate & real-time delivery dates across their entire shopping journey. Fenix displays the EDDs on the product, cart, and checkout pages, thereby eliminating the ever-present uncertainties around shipping and delivery. Priority Bikes saw a 17% increase in conversion rate while California Baby increased its shipping revenue by 51% after integrating with Fenix.
Don’t hesitate to automate your key business processes using the right eCommerce automation software. That way, you can save time and keep your team focused on the bigger aspects of your operations so you can grow faster.
Got an eCommerce automation solution that streamlined your workflow, saved you time, and improved your business? Don’t hesitate to share them with us. And if you’d like to see how Fenix can improve your eCommerce conversions, visit our website or check us out on Shopify!
What kinds of eCommerce automation tools are there?
There are a plethora of tools to automate your eCommerce workflows and you’ll find many that can handle virtually any part of your business. There is an eCommerce automation software for accounting, marketing, inventory management, order processing, customer support, shipping and delivery, and much more.
What problems does marketing automation solve?
Using automated tools to power your marketing helps you stay consistent in building, managing, and maintaining your brand identity.
How does eCommerce use marketing automation?
Marketing automation can be applied in different sections of the eCommerce business, ranging from social media to email marketing. You can create posts and messages and then have automation tools forward or post them once certain triggers are activated.
Why is eCommerce automation important?
eCommerce automation software simplifies the process of streamlining your business workflows. Doing so exposes you to even more areas of the business workflows that could benefit from automation to boost efficiency and productivity.
Author: Akhilesh Srivastava
Founder and CEO of FenixCommerce
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