What is eCommerce Automation and How it Works?

By Abhinav Girdhar | Last Updated on January 31st, 2023 2:50 pm | 5-min read

You keep your words and make your relationships better. The same is the case with eCommerce sellers. There is nothing worse for an online seller than screwing up an order. One bad experience can have you lose your customer forever. There could be any reason for an order not been delivered on time.

• Incorrect Data
• Unreliable Integration
• Slow Order Processing

Once it is messed up, the reason doesn’t make any difference. The thing that comes up here is you will spend more time fixing these issues than improving your customer service. We are here to explain how eCommerce automation can save you from having these issues arisen in the first place.

In this post, we will help you learn what eCommerce automation is, what are its benefits, and how you can automate your eCommerce business with the most effective automation processes.

What is eCommerce Automation?

eCommerce automation is a term used to describe the process of using software tools to help your eCommerce business complete various manual or repetitive tasks, rather than doing them all by yourself. Wondering what are these manual, repetitive tasks your employees can get tired of?

Although some business aspects would still need human input, however, most of these can be simplified when automated. Here are a few examples.

• Lead Generation
• Inventory Management
• Internal Communication
• Strategy and Decision Making
• Customer Service
• Scheduled Product Releases
• Marketing and Communication System

Automation is a great idea for these repetitive daily tasks that always need to be performed consistently. This process enables businesses to get rid of the intense workload and simplifies the complex and intricate processes involved in the business.

How eCommerce Automation Works

eCommerce automation is handled by smart platforms that adjust to the inputs, actions, or feedback of website users. Artificial intelligence is the core of these actions. It mimics human thought processes and actions. Basic types of automation actions, as mentioned above, are taken care of by a simple AI that includes managing certain tasks like sending pre-set emails after a customer’s action.

AI improves its own programming through machine learning. With Machine learning, AI becomes more efficient at delivering website visitors excellent user experience. For example, AI can enhance the search process in an online shopping platform. It can use the data entered by customers when they perform searches such as the product they click on and the keywords they enter. AI finds the products relevant to the keywords and moves them to the top search results.

Also, you can customize your website with machine learning. You can study user behavior, their interactions, and show the recommended products when they visit the website. These AI functions help businesses improve their website usability and streamline their interactions with the customers.

Key Benefits of eCommerce Automation

Here are a few top benefits of eCommerce automation.

Manual Data Entry Not Required

With automation, businesses no longer need to continue doing manual data entry. Automation reduces the requirement of manpower and there are no separate teams required to data entry. By automating, the data entry time will be cut down and your employees will be free to work on more important issues.

Keep Your Promises to Customers

With automation, you can keep the promises that you make with your customers. The promise that they will get the delivery on time, that they will get the notifications email, that they will get the discount offer, etc. With eCommerce automation, you process accurate data between systems. With everything right at its place, you can keep your word of one-day shipping or delivery on time.

Enhance the Product Information

Other than the inventory and order data, automation helps you enhance your product information. It makes sure that the online shoppers who rely on your listings get the right product information. With automation, you can accurately describe your products and assure users that they are buying the product they want.

Work on More Complex Issues

Automation helps you reduce manual efforts and save time. It helps businesses consider intricate business processes like multi-location fulfillment, manage returns, display on-hand inventory, and much more. It enables you to extend your capabilities of improving customer service and function better as a business.

Consistency and Accuracy

As automation is done through computers so you can make sure that it will be handled consistently and appropriately. With automation, you just need to schedule the tasks, and software takes care of the rest.

Now that you know what is eCommerce automation, how it works, and what are the benefits that you get once you implement it into your business, let us check out how you can automate and boost your eCommerce business with the help of this automation.

How You Can Automate Your Ecommerce Business?

Here are a few eCommerce-automation processes that can make your business simple and run smoothly. Check out what all work for you.

Sending Email Notifications

You can automate the process of sending email notifications to the users at certain stages of their orders or for the product updates. For example, you can send them emails for-

• New product launch
• Birthday Wishes
• Order Confirmation
• Orders Packed or Shipped
• Order Delivery Dates
• Requested Item back in Stock

Watch the video to check how you set up email automation with Mailchimp.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

Explore email automation with Appy Pie Connect

Updating Inventory in Real-time

You must keep your inventory up to date. You can automate the inventory check process to avoid over-stocking or deficiencies. Here is what you can do with the automation.

• Tag the inventory if you are low or out of stock on a certain product.
• Remove the product from the list if you are out of stock.
• Notify customers if you are low on any product and ask them to actively express if they are interested in purchasing the one when restocks.
Explore notifications integration with Appy Pie Connect

Detecting Frauds

Automation can also help you stay safe from fraudulent orders. Just tag the red flags that differentiate the fraudulent order from a legitimate one. You can create a tagging system to monitor high-risk orders. You can mark the orders for review and then cancel them if required.

Personalizing the Customer Experience

With automation, you can keep a check on what customer is clicking on, what they are buying, and understand their needs. Create a few customer-base segments like purchase history, buying behavior, etc. Tag your customers and their details to these groups.

Explore CRM automation with Appy Pie Connect

Offering Targeted Incentives

With targeted incentives, you can let your customers know that you care about them. Ask them to enter their birthday while creating their accounts on your website. Automate the process for the customers to get discount offers or tokens on their birthdays.

Explore marketing automation with Appy Pie Connect

Processing Customer Reviews

You must consider customer feedback. You can minimize the impact of customers’ unhappiness by dealing with the low rating review smartly. With automation, try creating a rating system trigger for negative feedback or low rating. Anything below 3 out of 5 could be a matter of concern. When the rating is low, create a ticket automatically and get the customer’s issue reviewed.

Watch the video to know how you can improve and manage the reviews on your product page listing.

(Above video is a part of a more elaborate course on Academy by Appy Pie. To access the complete course, please Click Here, or continue reading below.)

Providing Discount Offers

Various discount codes come up with certain conditions. You can apply your conditions in the system and automate the process. For example, buy two get one for free or giving shipping free when customers increase their purchase value.

Creating an online store is easy with the availability of many affordable tools but creating a successful one is a challenge. To make your online store successful, you need to do a lot of tasks as a routine process. This routine task requires a lot of time and effort which you devote to other important tasks. This is where automation comes into the picture.

Appy Pie Connect, an intelligent automation platform designed to automate work in businesses, enables you to automate your entire eCommerce operations. Considered as the key process for every eCommerce nowadays, Appy Pie Connect automation helps you improve overall productivity while helping you to save a lot of time and money every day. This automation platform lets you connect thousands of apps to the eCommerce platform, all without writing a single line of code.

With Appy Pie Connect, you can integrate your eCommerce store built on any platform, including eBay, WooCommerce and it’s extensions, Shopify, Flipkart, Amazon, Etsy, Facebook Shops, BigCommerce, Magento, and many others. This no-code platform allows you to connect your eCommerce stores to popular apps like PayPal, Stripe, MailChimp, MailerLite, HubSpot CRM, and many other apps that you use in your eCommerce business.

Final Thoughts

That was all about eCommerce automation. I hope the process is clear to you now. If you want to automate your eCommerce store Appy Pie Connect can help you. Appy Pie Connect aims at helping businesses of all sizes, from SMBs to big multi-national corporations to automate their tedious day-to-day tasks in just a few minutes.

Try Appy Pie Connect today to smoothen up your app integration and eCommerce automation processes!

Before we end, if you are planning to start an eCommerce business, visit Appy Pie Academy and go through the course – How To Start An Ecommerce Business: Amazon, Ads & SEO for Free.

Citations

eCommerce Automation Processes – Tallyfy
Benefits – Impresee, 3d Cart