What is eCommerce automation?
eCommerce automation is the process of using technology to execute various tasks for a business, resulting in growing sales and increasing productivity. In another word, eCommerce automation is software that helps convert tasks, processes, and campaigns of the business into automation that intelligently executes when needed. Therefore, the businesses can do more with what they have.
There are three common components of automation:
- A trigger event that automation needs to be started
- A condition that defines what the automaton will do
- An action to perform a function without human intervention
Examples of eCommerce automation:
- Tagging customers for segmentation and marketing
- Standardizing visual merchandising, streamlining tracking and reporting, and halting high-risk orders
- Sending welcome emails to new customers who have just created an account on the store
- Sending ebooks to customers every month automatically
Benefits of automation in eCommerce
eCommerce automation helps simplify businesses’ tasks, leading to saving time and increasing productivity.
Increase productivity
By automating, business’ teams can concentrate on more essential tasks such as customer retention, building relationships with partners, researching and developing products, creativity, and more.
Improve operations
Businesses can automate processes to get better performance. It’s important when it comes to inventory and order management. Automation helps simplify these processes to make them more smoothly and quickly. Automation systems can help balance stock and fulfill orders, especially in the high shopping seasons.
Improve customer experience
Optimizing each process allows customers to make purchases much easier, as well as get information about products immediately.
Automation trends in 2023 for eCommerce
Voice search
Shoppers today prefer to search for what they want with the voice because it’s just easier and more time-saving. A report showed that by the year 2025, voice search automation’s value will reach approximately $1.25 billion.
AI-powered chatbots
Chatbots are becoming smarter day by day thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although they have existed for the last few years, they are improved and become more powerful. According to Statista, the chatbot market will value about $1.25 billion in 2025, a significant increase from the previous years ($190.8 million in 2016).
Automation for purchases and sales
Many businesses today have automated their purchases and sales procedures to make them more quickly and save time. In sales activities, automating customer experience and support is being invested significantly. Businesses track their engaged customers, sync them to an email list and gather feedback after each purchase automatically. Tagging and segmenting customers based on their characteristics or location is another way businesses are automating their eCommerce.
A tool like Atom8 can help to do all these smoothly if you have a BigCommerce, Shopify or Magento store. Discover more about the app here:
Marketing automation
This is familiar with every eCommerce business now. Businesses try out automated marketing to save both time and money. Some popular examples for what they are doing in automating their marketing activities in 2022 are as follows:
- Auto-scheduling social posts
- Welcome emails
- Birthday and anniversary emails
- Engagement emails
- Newsletters
- Back in order emails
- Out of stock emails
Automated warehouse processes
The trend is becoming more popular because of the great results it brings back for eCommerce businesses. Inventory management has never been an easy function in every business. That is the reason why automation has been happening in managing inventory these years. Automating warehouse processes helps businesses ensure their stock is updated in real-time and reduces inventory costs.
Omnichannel approach
eCommerce businesses are automatically expanding the omnichannel, from online marketplaces to social media and platforms. This isn’t what businesses can choose, but is a must-do thing. Customers today want a consistent omnichannel experience. And what businesses are doing is to build technological support to let their employees create immersive experiences on platforms.
Sum up
Automation for eCommerce is no longer a new issue with businesses, but it’s changing every minute. Therefore, they need to keep track of the latest trends in eCommerce automation to ensure their existence and growth.
