Automation is a helping hand to your Shopify e-commerce business. Each business element that you automate saves your time and resources. That’s why every business is hoping to develop a fully automated Shopify store.
Think about it this way, if you have a task that takes up half an hour every day to finish, which means three and a half hours per week. Every year, you waste 182 hours on a single task. Complicated work might require more time. Meanwhile, it only takes you some hours to get used to an automation app and a couple of minutes to set up a workflow.
This article will discuss how you can set up a fully automated store on Shopify that will accelerate your business development.
1. Identify all tasks and processes
The first thing you need to do in order to automate your Shopify store is to list down every task that you want to complete faster. Specify the problems you have with doing it manually and how you want to solve them. Some examples are:
- Sending abandoned cart reminders
- Tagging customers and orders
- Running discount programs
- Sending inventory notifications
- Detecting high-risk orders
- Publishing price lists and ad banners, and many more.
2. Determine the ease of automation
The second step is to categorize your list based on how easy it is to automate the tasks. You might want to start with 4 major groups.
The first category contains tasks that can be easily automated. Data entry is an example. You can have all your information filled in by a simple program at a reasonable price. Email marketing automation apps to deliver promotion campaigns and abandonment cart emails are also rather affordable.
Category two are tasks that take a bit more effort to automate. In other words, you need to tell the computer how to do the job before depending on it for the result. For instance, in accounting, you need to enter the formula so that the app knows how to calculate a fee. It also includes processes that can only be partially done by technology.
Category three is tasks that are more difficult to automate. It might be something that you don’t know how to automate or requires a custom solution. You can consider things like chatbot builder, which you need to set up from scratch, and a large budget to get access.
The final category covers tasks that cannot be replaced by computers such as calling wholesalers to discuss a new deal or going to a meeting with a customer. It is noteworthy that you can outsource some processes within this group such as a telesales associate to make cold calls. However, automating requires highly intelligent technology which is out of the question for small and medium businesses.
3. Look for existing solutions
Once you are aware of the tasks you want to automate, start looking for the solutions out there. I would recommend going around the Shopify marketplace and reading the review to get an idea of the experience. You also realize that some tasks are easier or more difficult to automate than you expected. Don’t worry. This happens all the time. Recategorize them, skip processes at groups 3 and 4 and extend your search for the first two categories.
Shopify is a great platform to establish your online store because it comes with a bunch of useful native functionality. The platform also works particularly well with plug-ins. Some of the highly-rated third-party apps on Shopify are Atom8, Klaviyo, Omnisend, YOTPO, etc.
4. Develop custom automation solutions
Once you have found a suitable platform, it’s time to integrate it into your store. It takes time for people to get used to any change within the work process. Therefore, you might want to redefine the scope of work for your team. Remember to specify which task needs automation and which needs to be done manually. Then train your staff to work on and cooperate with the app. It might not go as smoothly as you expect at the beginning. It helps to be open to feedback from the team and critical in analyzing the result. This helps figure out the room for improvement and if the software meets your company’s demands.
5. Pursue further development
With all the time you have, you can expand your business and if needed, create your automated solution. You can take a look at bigger corporations to learn from their automation solutions. You can slowly build up a network, starting with a niche, and hopefully, it would spread to the whole business process.
Now you can set up an automated store on Shopify on your own. With the profit generated from automation, you can invest in hiring people for more important activities. If you play your cards right, you can run your business almost virtually without much human interference. Now go on Shopify and start your search right away!
