Managing an e-shop involves numerous tasks that require time and diverse expertise. Marketing of the e-shop, adding fresh posts to social media accounts and communication, managing orders, monitoring and updating inventory, accounting, etc. All require attention.
If it were possible to automate even a part of the aforementioned activities, time could be saved, money and working days would go more smoothly.
Which of the following automation options have already been implemented in your e-shop?
1. Automation of inventory
About half of small and medium-sized companies still manually monitor inventory using spreadsheets, which increases the risk of errors, leading to excessive inventory or shortages. Business software saves time and always delivers the right data (e.g. Erply, Buum).
2. E-store customer service automation
Customer service automation helps to speed up the response to customer inquiries and save labor costs. Add automatic customer support to your e-shop (e.g. live chat or chatbot).
3. Automation of e-store accounting
For a small e-store, perhaps an Excel table is sufficient for accounting, but a larger e-store needs separate software for data exchange of orders and invoices.
4. Recall of e-store cart abandoners
Cart abandonment is a big problem for e-stores. Users abandon the shopping cart for various reasons: it is too difficult to complete the purchase process, it is required to register as a regular customer, the coupon code cannot be found, etc. Start sending cart abandoners encouraging messages via email, and try to help them complete the purchase. Email marketing software Mailchimp or GetResponse can be used to recall e-store cart abandoners. For the Magento e-store, software such as Klaviyo can be used.
5. Making additional sales through social media
Social media can be used to bring traffic to the e-store, communicate with e-store fans, build a brand and increase sales. Managing a social media account is time-consuming. Use an automation tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to speed up news posting and fan engagement.
6. After-sales personalization
The prerequisite for after-sales is that the products in the e-shop also have related products and compatible products. For example, in the purchase history data, if the user bought a hat last month, a scarf or some other compatible product from the same product line could be offered as after-sales.
7. Product return management
Make product returns easy and stress-free. A helpful solution is to allow customers to fill out a return form (returnable product, new product or refund of the purchase amount) on their account, ensuring the whole return process works smoothly and quickly. A good returns process increases both customer loyalty and profits (increase in purchases).
Use e-shop automation tools if you want:
- increase customer satisfaction;
- bring more visitors to the e-shop;
- enhance email marketing;
- improve sales results;
- increase the profit of the e-shop.
Automation tools help to deal with the e-shop more efficiently.
