Best Workflow Automation for Ecommerce

Ecommerce has become an indispensable part of the world economy and has revolutionized shopping in more ways than we know. According to Statista, in 2020, over two billion people shopped online for goods and services. In the same year, eCommerce sales surpassed 4.2 trillion dollars worldwide.

The pandemic took it up a notch and eCommerce saw a 25% growth in that year alone. Ecommerce websites operate 24/7, orders can come at any time of the day and night. For an eCommerce business to work effectively, a lot of moving parts are involved.

Huge eCommerce businesses have staff working at all hours of the day and night. For other eCommerce companies without this level of manpower, they make up for it with eCommerce workflow automation.

In this article, we’re going to discuss eCommerce workflow automation from different angles to better explain how eCommerce workflow automation can do a world of good for your brand.

What is eCommerce Workflow Automation?

eCommerce workflow automation is a way for eCommerce businesses to efficiently handle their work processes.

Ecommerce workflow automation is a way for eCommerce businesses to handle tasks that are often manually repeated to improve efficiency. Workflow automation means using software and apps to automatically handle those processes. This way, you and your staff can focus on more important things.

Workflow automation in eCommerce covers almost all aspects of an eCommerce business. From digital marketing, inventory management, email marketing, etc.  In this article, we’re going to discuss how automation can help your eCommerce workflow.

Why Should You Use Ecommerce Workflow Automation?

Before delving into the sectors of your eCommerce business that can benefit from workflow automation, here are some reasons you want to consider automating your workflow.

1. Task and Data Accuracy

When running an eCommerce store, you get to handle a lot of data across various mediums, such as order data, customer data, stock data, and a myriad of others.

Before eCommerce workflow automation became a norm, all of these data had to be handled by either you or your staff. And as humans, we’re prone to errors, these errors could be insignificant or could severely mar your business.

With automation, when it comes to the collection and storage of data, you can rest assured that you have the right values whenever you need them. Ecommerce workflow automation for data efficiency means you don’t have to vet and crosscheck all data to make sure they’re accurate.

2. Increased efficiency

As said earlier, most essential eCommerce tasks are repetitive and time-consuming. Workflow automation can handle most of these repetitive tasks and do it with better efficiency than most humans would.

Ecommerce workflow automation makes your eCommerce business more efficient by handling these tasks quicker and creating time for more important tasks.

3. Increased Productivity

As explained before, without eCommerce workflow automation your staff would be in an endless loop doing the same repetitive tasks. Workflow automation handles this and in turn makes your staff more productive.

That may sound confusing. How does an eCommerce workflow automation make your staff more productive when it’s basically doing their jobs.

Without your staff having to do the boring and repetitive tasks, they can focus more on parts of the business that cannot be automated but are just as or even more important than the automated tasks. Examples of these tasks include audience and customer research, souring for goods online, etc.

Another way eCommerce workflow automation increases productivity is by giving you a better chance at scaling. Ecommerce workflow automation can handle twice as much work for a fraction of the time. With this, your company can focus on other aspects of the business.

Without continuously handling repetitive tasks, you can focus more on scaling and growing the business. And with the help of workflow automation, you don’t have to bother about an influx of new customers as your automation can handle it.

4. Improved customer experience

The goal of any business Is to ensure its customers are satisfied. With eCommerce workflow automation, your customers can have a smoother purchase experience without needing any help.

Ecommerce automation introduces self-service and empowers the customers to better handle their purchases, manage their orders, and go through a shopping experience without any outside help.

Ecommerce Tasks that Can Benefit from Workflow Automation

There’s an unlimited number of things workflow automation can do for your eCommerce business. In this section of the article, we’re going to discuss parts of your eCommerce business that can benefit most from workflow automation.

Ecommerce Workflow Automation and Marketing

Customer acquisition and management are two ways to grow your eCommerce business. This is the most important goal of eCommerce marketing and marketing in general. We’re going to discuss how automation workflow can improve customer acquisition and retention.

1. Continuous Lead Marketing

When it comes to marketing, customers do not take action immediately they see your product. In some cases, they have to come back several times considering the product before they eventually make a purchase.

If you have their contact details, you can automate your lead nurturing till they make the purchase. Ecommerce marketing automation can be done with email marketing. With this workflow automation, you can set up a continuous email sequence to keep sending them emails to nurture them.

Create a slew of the right content mixed with the right products and leave the rest for automation. To make this strategy more effective, you should make sure you include discount codes or free shipping as both of these can serve as major incentives.

Take a look at the current data you have to decide which tactic already works best and employ the same tactic to nurture leads.

2. Automate your social media marketing

When it comes to customer retention, social media marketing is one of the most important tools. This is because social media also doubles as a customer service tool to handle inquiries and complaints.

To reap the rewards of social media, you have to continuously post engaging content to inform and entertain your audience. With the help of workflow automation tools, you can schedule posts days and even weeks ahead.

This way you can focus on other parts of social media marketing that does not involve you having to post regularly.

Ecommerce Workflow Automation for Supplier and Vendor onboarding

When it comes to eCommerce and suppliers, they’re ever-changing. You could have 100s of suppliers and more coming in every day. It is time-consuming to get each of them up to speed on your company policies and guidelines.

There is vendor automation software that takes this off your hand by handling all of the onboarding processes based on the command they already run by. This way, you can onboard more suppliers faster without the stress that is often associated with it.

Ecommerce Workflow Automation for Order and Stock Assessment

As an eCommerce business, your store can house hundreds or thousands of products. Keeping track of all of them can be a tedious task. This is why they benefit from eCommerce workflow automation.

With order management automation, you can easily alert your suppliers immediately your stock passes a predetermined stage. There’s no need to do this manually as the automation handles keeping track of the current stock and requesting more.

Ecommerce Workflow Automation for Order Management

Order management in eCommerce covers a lot of areas. This is an incredibly important part of your business that needs the least errors. By automating the workflow of order management, you avoid the risk of making silly mistakes that can be costly.

1. Ensure correct shipping tags

As an eCommerce company, you cannot afford to continuously have failed deliveries due to human error. Human error could be something as minor as mistyping the address. Sending orders to the wrong address, and can be a huge expense if not nipped.

With automating the shipping workflow, you rest assured that your entire shipping process is rid of human errors.

2. Automating abandoned cart emails

Cart abandonment is a major concern associated with eCommerce. A staggering 70% of carts get abandoned. If ignored, that’s a lot of potential customers being left on the table.

Several software can handle cart abandonment by sending continuous emails to said customers reminding them of their abandoned carts.

Ecommerce Workflow Automation for Customer Experience

Customer experience is a major part of any B2C business. This is one of the best ways to increase customer retention. Customer service workflow can be automated in several ways. Such as:

• Gain feedback after a purchase

Instead of sending emails after every purchase, you can automate it. Gaining customer insight into your products is an amazing way to increase customer experience. This is the surest way to identify and handle any weakness in your brand.

• Respond to negative reviews

You can automate this workflow by setting up detectors for particular keywords. This way if any customer is unsatisfied with your service, you can reach out to them immediately and find out what is wrong and how you can solve the complaint.

• Provide an incentive to your most loyal customers

Making customers feel special is a guaranteed way to increase customer retention in eCommerce.

With this, you can give your customers coupons or other packages as a way of thanks. In marketing, the probability of selling to an existing customer is higher than selling to an old customer. By appreciating your most loyal customers, you bank on this factor and increase customer loyalty.

Conclusion

To grow your eCommerce business, you cannot do everything manually. It simply isn’t a realistic tactic. Email workflow automation is a system guaranteed to provide the best result, increase efficiency, and overall ROI.

Almost all aspects of your eCommerce business can be automated. Figure out which part of your business has the most mind-numbing repetitive tasks and automate them.

The post Best Workflow Automation for Ecommerce appeared first on Woculus.

Ayo Oyedotun is a professional blogger and freelance writer. He reads, writes and talks about business. You can follow him on Twitter @Ayo_Oyedotun[http://twitter.com/#!/Ayo_Oyedotun] or read Business Owners’ Bible[http://woculus.com/].