ECommerce has been taking charge of the market more and more, especially during the pandemic. The best way to rapidly grow your company is to work on your eCommerce platform. With that in mind, we want to talk about ways to automate an eCommerce business.
Best ways to automate an eCommerce business
As we mentioned, businesses are investing in eCommerce because of the economic impact of COVID-19. ECommerce is a vast frontier, and it is a perfect opportunity to support your company. As always, automation is the way to go. Here are the areas that you should focus on:
- Customer reviews;
- Marketing;
- abandoned cart e-mails;
- Inventory management;
- Customer support;
- Payment options and invoicing;
In addition to that, you can acquire low cost help desk software. Efficient customer support is crucial for any eCommerce business. By incorporating reliable and affordable help desk software, you can streamline customer support operations while optimizing costs. This tool offers user-friendly features and robust functionality to enhance productivity and improve customer satisfaction.
Let's see how you can automate each of these sectors and really help your business grow.
Automating customer reviews
When it comes to eCommerce, customer reviews are one of the most important elements. People who shop online cannot speak with a salesperson; they cannot feel the energy. There is no one there to offer service and provide a pleasant experience. That's why they turn to reviews of previous customers.
However, the problem is that not all online shoppers leave reviews. It's not that they don't want to, but most often, they forget. If you use an automated service to collect reviews, you will make it easy for yourself. As soon as a customer finishes the purchase, they can get a popup to leave a review or an e-mail asking if they can rate the transaction. Furthermore, they can also get a review e-mail one month after the purchase. That way, they can rate the product after using it.
With almost no effort, you will have reviews upon reviews that will help advertise your products to the next customer!
Collecting customer reviews plays a vital role in building trust and credibility while also providing valuable insights into the quality of your products or services.
By automating the review collection process, you can ensure a consistent flow of feedback from your customers.
Customer feedback offers valuable information that allows you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your offerings, enabling you to make informed decisions and continuously improve your products or services.
Moreover, promptly reaching out to customers for reviews after their purchase and even following up later increases the likelihood of receiving valuable feedback from a broader range of customers.
The abundance of reviews generated through automation will help potential customers make informed purchasing decisions and serve as powerful social proof, promoting your products or services to the next customer with minimal effort required.
Marketing automation
While we are on the subject of advertising, marketing automation, although not directly tied to eCommerce, is crucial. A company that has marketing efforts completely automatized will not lose time on redundant research. Whenever you start working on a marketing campaign, there is an order of actions. You discuss the product, talk about the targeted group of customers, do customer research, and so on. All of that is a repetitive process, and there is no reason to waste time every time you start a new campaign.
Like you would use automation to collect customer reviews, you can do it to conduct customer research. You can also automate welcome e-mails for new clients, send various reminders regarding product offers, send a birthday gift on the anniversary or birthday of your customers as a nice gesture, re-engage with inactive customers, run a newsletter, etc. The list goes on.
Automation streamlines your marketing efforts and saves valuable time by eliminating repetitive tasks and enabling efficient campaign management. It also allows you to leverage pre-defined workflows and templates instead of starting from scratch with each marketing campaign.
Abandoned cart e-mails automation
Now that we covered the importance of marketing automation, let's get back to our eCommerce list. Abandoned carts are a common thing in online shopping. A customer adds one or a few items in the shopping cart, proceeds to checkout, but, for some reason, never completes it. Whether they changed their minds, don't have enough money, the connection was bad, or for any other reason, abandoned carts are a loss of profit for your business.
With automated services, you can send a reminder to the client that they have items waiting in the shopping cart. You can even send a link to the direct payment process, so they can immediately finalize the purchase. Abandoned cart automation can save you anywhere between 15%-20% of sales, based on customer research.
Inventory management automation
Another essential element of eCommerce is inventory management. The last thing you want to happen is that a potential customer visits your website, they find a product they like, but they cannot complete the purchase because it is out of stock. They will go somewhere else, and if this was their first visit to your website, they might never come back.
You can also automate various tasks through inventory management automation, like monitoring purchase orders or getting the real-time value of the total number of products in stock.
Customer support
When it comes to online shopping, customer support can make or break your business. Keep in mind that customers do not contact your employees when shopping. They cannot ask additional questions, make small talk, or complain if needed. If you have an unsatisfied customer, you must provide a way for them to contact the customer support department. Whether you add a ticketing system, live chat option, or a form on the website, make sure that you always provide an answer on time.
If you have a calling line, you can add automated messages to forward the clients to the correct department or inform them about the waiting time.
Payment options and invoicing
When it comes to online payments, you want to shorten the process as much as possible. The more time a customer spends in the shopping cart or finalizing their payment, the bigger the chances that they will change their mind. Add as many payment options as possible, like cards, PayPal, or even a way to pay with customer points if you have a loyalty program. Customers must be able to save their payment information and pay with a simple click of a button, so try to simplify the process as much as possible.
Another way to make it easy for yourself is to automate invoicing. Imagine having to create hundreds upon hundreds of invoices manually every day so that you can send them to your clients. That is a massive loss of time. With an automated invoice service, you can substantially shorten this process. Furthermore, it gives you the option to customize invoices.
Join the eCommerce revolution through automation
It takes time to automate an eCommerce business. However, the benefits are simply too good. All of these factors will shape the next stage of the eCommerce revolution, and affect marketing trends, future eCommerce technologies, change how supply chain and transport work, improve employment strategies, and reshape customer experience, bringing it to a whole new level. You cannot afford not to be a part of this revolution!
