Online businesses handle lots of data; this is done manually in many cases. Manual data input is highly time-consuming and let’s face it, the larger a business is, the more time you need to put in it.
In fact, did you know that e-commerce automation has increased from 22% to 29% in only one year?
Well, let’s not waste any more time because in this article, we will learn more about how automation is increasing productivity for your e-commerce business.
What is ecommerce automation?
Online businesses are always scrolling through large amounts of data and in many of these cases, it’s done manually. Manually having to input your data isn’t only time-consuming, but it requires you to spend more time on specific things.
These days, many companies are opting for ecommerce automation as a way of saving time and money. The more time and money you save, the higher your productivity levels will increase since technology is always improving.
Types of ecommerce automation software
Multiple processes can be automated with the right software, here are the most common types of ecommerce automation software:
- Front-end automation tools: Schedule promotions, website changes and campaigns ahead of time.
- Social media schedule management: Schedule social media posts and automatically post them. Buffer is a popular choice many marketers use.
- Customer relationship management: Store customer information, track engagement, streamline reporting and automate repetitive sales actions.
- Email marketing automation: Automate your email marketing and send out scheduled emails according to their schedules.
- Customer service automation: Will automatically set answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), reward customers on the type of actions they take, create tickets and more.
- Review collection tools: Showcases and collects customer reviews and testimonials on product pages.
- Warehouse automation software: Automatically manages all the ins and outs of your warehouse until your customer's door with the least amount of human input.
11 Ways smart automation is increasing productivity in your ecommerce business
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Reduces time consumption
One thing we can guarantee about smart automation is the fact that it saves lots of time for you and your customers. When it comes to online purchasing, getting your orders processed quickly is what increases customer retention. The faster you process an order, the more you differentiate from your competitors.
Moreover, you can provide automated order tracking notifications so your customers can keep an eye out for their orders. This saves you time on repetitive tasks and allows people to get their orders much faster, improving customer satisfaction levels.
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Inventory costing methods
Common automation that is used for retailers is inventory costing methods. Managing inventory is one of the largest costs you have to face when running an online business. Therefore, you need to know your gross profit margin because it’s a key advantage for the growth of your business.
The most common type of inventory automation is the inventory accounting method. The benefit of using this method is because of how easy it’s to make calculations when your inventory cost tracking isn’t so good.
How is the calculation provided? The cost of goods available is divided by the retail amount of goods available. In order to get the ending inventory at cost, you multiply it by the estimated ending inventory at retail and the cost ratio.
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Brings you high-quality marketing leads
Generating leads is important for digital commerce. Automation helps your business become more efficient because it generates more high-quality marketing leads. Lead quality will impact your close rates. 37% of marketers claim that their lead quality was the reason that they might have had better close rates.
Poor leads are one of the biggest reasons for low close rates and not only does it waste money, but it wastes your resources as well. Automation not only helps you reach a much wider audience, but it provides you with high-quality data. This data helps you go through ideal leads that you can turn into sales later on.
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Grants you automatic tagging
Automatic product tagging provides your store with richer catalogs and uses visual AI for recognising fashion items on images and helping you group items into your catalog. Automatic tagging not only improves your efficiency and allows you to stay consistent with your data, but it also grants you powerful analytics that helps you understand your customers and personalise the buyer journey for them.
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Workload reduction
Depending on the size of your business, e-commerce automation allows you to reduce employee workload. In short, this allows you to work more efficiently and be happier. Automation relieves you from manual data entry, which is a huge relief for employees because they’ll be able to focus on more important things in the business.
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Reduces the margin of error
Manually inputting data gives you more chances of making errors. This is because humans don’t like to do repetitive tasks and over time, this increases the chances of error. Automation, on the other hand, will reduce the chances of human error if it’s set up correctly. Repetitive tasks are easily automated because the software doesn’t ever get tired of it.
Let’s face it, if you run an ecommerce business, you need to conduct as few errors as possible because it can cost the company resources and time in the long term. Simply put, you need to approve the process from the start and the system will take care of the rest.
With workflow automation, much more can be done and it reduces the workload burden of employees in the business.
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Reduces cart abandonment
Cart abandonment is when users will have items in their shopping cart, but not purchase them either because they don’t know how to proceed further or send them a reminder either by text or email. Doing this brings your visitors back after they complete a product purchase.
Roughly 70% of transactions are completed when you follow up with your customers either by email or text. It will usually take up to two or three emails to convince a visitor not to abandon their cart, but the most important part is that they’ll still come back.
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Manages low and out-of-stock products
Showing out-of-stock items results in a frustrating customer experience. When this becomes a habit on your website, many customers might just leave your site. If you use e-commerce tools, they’ll always inform you whenever a product’s stock is low, so you can remove it and add a new supply.
Additionally, you can make your e-commerce tool automatically hide out-of-stock items from your online store page. Popular online e-commerce tools you can use are Shopify, Woocommerce , BigCommerce, Mailchimp, Semrush, Buffer and more
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Faster delivery times
A massive benefit that customers receive from online shopping is how fast they can receive their orders. The faster a customer receives their product, the happier they’ll be.
Automation tools can quickly handle label printing, inventory management and reduce the amount of manual workload required. During the customer-buyer journey, this increases productivity levels and directly connects to customer retention.
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Personalising recommendations
Everybody loves to feel special and personalisation is a key to doing so. Most customers nowadays expect their services to be personalised. In fact, 70% of customers expect companies to give them a personalised experience.
Some automation software can use visual AI to deeply understand what a customer wants and likes, so they can deliver a personalised experience to them, based on their buying behaviour and intent.
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Automatic customer feedback
Customer feedback is highly important and something you don’t want to disregard. Online buyers will trust social proof more than they can trust product descriptions and images. If a customer is happy, the automation software can show them 5-star reviews from satisfied customers and the type of comments they left.
Why smart automation is the new trend in ecommerce
Manual data entry is no longer the trend in the ecommerce world and smart automation is not only reducing the workload for users, but it’s giving workers an easier time to focus on more important things that matter.
Automation is the only way to go with ecommerce and something you want to reduce in your online business is to have fewer cart abandonments and to reduce the bounce rate. Once you achieve this, everything else only becomes easier.
