What is eCommerce Automation: 3 Tricks of the Trade

Originally published on the Orkiv Blog

There’s a good chance your life is about to get easier with eCommerce automation

What if that online storefront you were operating took up only half the time? Probably would make your life a whole lot easier, while making your business a whole lot more profit, am I right? Well, this post is going to explore the right tactics you should take to help automate your entire eCommerce shop. Now, it is true that before you can really automate things, you should be connected in with a commerce platform that will enable you to do just this. So, let’s talk very quickly about what we might be able to do here.

• Be sure you have some sort of automated tools within your commerce system (like email automation, text and email communications, shipping label automation, product recommendations etc.)
• Be sure you can set up workflows to determine what will happen with various visitors and what brings them back (ie. how does a $250 purchase change from a $25 purchase?)
• Do you have the ability to run referral campaigns, automatic up-sells and cross-sells and more? If not, it’s time

So, those are a few of the things you are looking for in a commerce platform. This will enable you to begin with your own automation undertaking, but it won’t get you all the way there, yet. That being said, what is it that we might need to help out with in order to get you fully automated. As we already talked about, having a commerce system that either has these sorts of functions built into it or enables you to connect apps in that will enable you to do that, will make your life a whole lot easier. There are plenty of platforms out there to do this, but ensure you are taking the right approach and getting a platform that will help you scale beyond where. Something like Shopify might be a great first step, but it is unlikely you will be satisfied running 10 different apps to accomplish the same tasks performed natively in something like Epic Commerce. Also, be sure your eCommerce platform fits the bill when it comes to scaling. If you will need to handle omnichannel, EPR integrations, and multi-channel sales, you might as well go for something a bit more robust out of the gate. Without further adieu, here are 5 ways to help understand “what is eCommerce automation?”

One — eCommerce Automation communicates effortlessly

You know those emails that come in right after you’ve purchased something online? Well, even this is a form of automation. Those emails, the text message once monthly, and the product recommendations that show up in your notifications are all examples of eCommerce automation. A good platform will have all the bases covered here. You will be sending out automated transaction based emails in addition to product recommendation emails, event-driven emails (ie. “you’re 1.2 miles away from the store, and the items in your cart are available for purchase right now in store). With a platform like Epic Commerce, these are all pre-selected to go out to only as specific of a audience you want to send it out to, so the segmentation can help become more relevant.

Two — eCommerce Automation knows what product to show

Product recommendation systems, like the one in Amazon, is another great example of automation. This type of system understands what customers want based on things like past purchase history, location, average order value, similar products, social network data, email opens, referral information, etc. Based on a nearly limitless amount of data coming in from customers no matter what they do online, it’s becoming easier and easier to understand what this person might want to purchase on your own website. Using a platform like Epic Commerce or Demandware, you will have the option to control which pieces of data you want to use, to target with what types of products. The cool thing here is that product automatically adjust on your website according to that person browsing. This has been stated to influence nearly 30% of Amazon’s sales. So, if this isn’t something on your radar, probably time to look a little closer. Since this is such a big one, feel free to reach out to a specialist@orkiv.com to give you a hand.

Three — eCommerce Automation makes buying easy

Customers should feel natural buying on your website, and automation helps with things like this. The key to automation is that it is simply setting up a recurring event, that you do not have to worry about at a future time. So, anything which you would normally expect as a consumer like an event and transaction-based messages, birthday or holiday reminders, push notification based deals etc. can all be set up to trigger automatically, saving you the time of having to do this yourself. When buying, a customer needs to have a seamless process. While some may not call it automation, I am going to do it anyway, and that is the process of saving the customers information for a seamless 1-click checkout experience when they come back. This simple automation practice may be able to drive significant improvement in your conversion rate. Keep it simple stupid (KISS)!

Three quick tips, that’s it for now. Look for an extension of this article coming out soon with details, more key points of automation, and how to leverage it on an advanced scale. For more help, dive into the tutorials for Epic Commerce or reach out to a specialist@orkiv.com to get detailed information on your business.

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