- Ecommerce Idea: Check
- Market Research: Check
- Niche Decided: Check
- Smartphone Frenzy Audience: Double Check
Hmm, everything looks good, but something’s missing…
Oh yes, the website, marketing, customer service, operation streamlining, how are you going to do it all? You aren’t planning to do all this manually, are you?
In this age of automation, where things are getting done on their own, going manual will only be good if you are driving a stick. Cars and bikes with manual transmissions are powered on demand, but not eCommerce. Ecommerce must be automated, after all, it’s the electronic age.
To help you understand better why you need ecommerce automation, we are listing down the critical aspects of running an eCommerce business where automation really helps. We’ll get to why it is important later in the article. But first, the focus points while automating your website.
eCommerce Website Development
Yes, we agree, a website cannot be built by an automated system, but that doesn’t mean it HAS to be built from the ground up with all using sickle and spades. Instead of writing code from scratch, or hiring a team to do all the work, go for an eCommerce website builder.
The builder will prove even handier because they will not let you miss any important elements of the eCommerce website. Why? Well, because a sensibly eCommerce developer will take a step-by-step approach, ensuring you miss no crucial aspect of a fully functional eCommerce website.
Think about it, a fully optimized eCommerce store, just the way you want it, without writing a single line of code will lead to minimized manual work, and maximize ROI.
Top Pick
We suggest you go for Liquidblox, a Finland-based company that specializes in offering class-leading eCommerce builders at highly competitive prices. The company takes pride in its experienced team members who created a highly efficient eCommerce builder. The best part is that you can sign up with Liquidblox for free, or book a live demo to see how it fits your needs.
Virtual Assistance Management
Not exactly automation, but more of outsourcing, a virtual assistant plays a vital role in your business operations. A virtual assistant is used to:
- Send and respond to emails
- Update inventory and product pages
- Managing appointments through automated calendars
- Monitoring automated processes
Top Pick
The first name that comes to our mind while thinking of virtual assistant is Hubstaff. It’s remarkable how Hubstaff takes responsibility for the task(s) assigned and handles them so efficiently.
The best part is that you don’t have to worry about measuring the performance of people assigned to perform the outsourced task. Hubstaff gives you a tracking tool that you can use to see how much work each team member has done. The task management tool in itself is automated, giving you a report on a daily, weekly, or time window of your choice.
The Hubstaff task tracking tool is available for web, desktop(Windows and Mac), and mobile (iOS and Android).
Shipping
An eCommerce business without shipping is like a bus without wheels, won’t go anywhere. Shipping is one of the most important aspects of eCommerce, and it is more complex than one can imagine. Shipping, as eCommerce pundits joke, works on Murphy’s law. Ecommerce website owners leave no stone unturned to ensure they get eCommerce shipping right all the time, every time.
Moreover, given the massive number of orders the eCommerce website processes each day, managing everything manually is not just beyond imagination; it’s a nightmare! And that’s why shipping is automated, to ensure things run smooth, fast, and hassle-free.
Top Pick
Shipway, we suggest you bookmark this website in the browser and save their number on your phone. Reason? These guys are pros at what they do. They offer shipping automation services like never before that include:
- Bulk Shipping Label Printing
- GST Compliant Invoices and Accounting
- Automated eCommerce Tracking & Notification via SMS & WhatsApp
- Multiple Courier partners to provide an extensive delivery experience
Shipway makes order processing highly streamline across multiple sales channels, creates pickup requests automatically, and can handle multiple warehouses and inventories simultaneously. What’s more Shipway lets you use Shopify login and import orders from Shopify store.
Shipway is a comprehensive and fully automated shipping management software that is one of the most important tools in your arsenal.
Customer Support
If you do not automate your customer support, you will find yourself struggling to keep your customer satisfaction level average, let alone excellent. The only way to achieve the next level of customer support is to automate the way you handle customer queries. Ecommerce dwells on instant gratification, and that extends to providing timely customer support. You need to get to the key customer touchpoints before the time runs out, and competitors are waiting for you to miss the opportunity.
Top Pick
Zendesk, it is hands down one of the most efficient customer support software available in the market today. Zendesk has become the first choice of customer support through live chats and emails. The software also comes with tutorials and a demo to get a better idea of how to use it effectively.
And yes, it’s also insanely scalable, it grows as your business grows. The plans are carefully designed to suit your requirement.
Why You Need Automation
Just take a good look at your watch. It’s a quartz watch, in which you need to put a new battery once a year. Or, it may be an automatic watch that winds itself into motion through movement. Highly sophisticated watches also run on light. That said, do you fancy wearing a watch that you need to wind to keep running?
In the same way, automation in e-commerce makes things easy, fast, and more reliable. Manual operations are susceptible to human errors. At the same time, automation also lets you perform a multitude of functions at the same time. Performing the same operation manually will not only take you a lot of workforce, but it will also be time-consuming.
Automation in eCommerce is not an option anymore, it’s a need that also determines the speed of your growth. The four primary pillars of eCommerce that we mentioned above, when automated, give you better results at a much faster rate. Implement them and soar to greater heights. Good luck.
