How to automate your ecommerce management

We don’t want to discourage anyone, but according to a Doofinder study published some time ago, out of 10 online stores, 8 don’t reach three years of life. And is because, when opening an online store, you have to be very clear about the strategy, but also the resources available to you.

Among those resources, we speak not only of money, but also time. Time is gold, and for you to devote your online store strategy all the time it needs, it is best to save it in other tasks: shipping, paperwork, managing suppliers .. This is where automation comes in.

What is automation?

Can you imagine washing clothes by hand? Unthinkable. Can you imagine calling all your customers, one by one, to tell them the latest news in your store? When it’s so easy to send an email to everyone. That’s what automation is: optimizing and replacing all the procedures that are essential for the proper functioning of companies and that are done manually, by automated systems.

In automation, human intervention should be minimal, but it should also be “flexible”, to be able to adapt to possible changes that may occur in the future, whether they are specific or permanent.

Why automate the processes of your ecommerce?

The advantages of automation in the management of your ecommerce are going to be noticed mainly in three factors:

1. Costs – since you don’t need one person (or more than one) to carry out the required actions, you reduce production costs.
2. Avoiding errors – which streamlines the flow of operations and improves efficiency.
3. Time – not only to dedicate to your shop, but the time you save in the speed of task execution.

All this leads to outperform and differentiate your store from your competition, in case they aren’t automating their ecommerce management. But also, it will provide a better user experience, which in turn leads to higher conversion.

What processes should you automate in your online store?

Within your business, you must identify which processes are automatable and which ones aren’t. Identify the laborious processes and certain repetitive actions, which also don’t require any added value or special action, and these are the best candidates to automation:

• Stock
• Invoices
• Catalogue management
• Price monitoring
• (Create profiles) Customer management
• Order management
• Sales funnel
• Marketing Automation
• Logistics, payroll, human resources..

Stock

You can use a massive updater of product prices, which automatically updates all the prices of the store, to raise or lower them, filter them by category, supplier, etc..

Invoices

In PrestaShop you can install a module that breaks down the VAT and the equivalence surcharge on orders or invoices, applied to both, products and transport.

Catalog management

If you have a CSV file, you can import all the category configuration data, and thus massively update your category trees, if you have a large online store. The CSV file will be a list of documentation + product ID, and the linking with the documentation to the product file is automated.

Price monitoring

Automatically, your customers will receive alerts when there are price drops in the products they’ve activated the alert on. And incidentally, it’s a way to increase conversion, because out of all those interested customers, it’s very likely that several of them will buy.

Create customer profiles

For example, to segment, you need to create lists and follow-up campaigns, which you can do in an automated way depending on the interaction of each visitor: whether they’re a lead or a buyer.

Or if you want to apply discounts to retain and build loyalty, for example on the first purchase, when the customer exceeds a certain amount. Once the purchase has been made, the customer is automatically passed to the group of customers that you determine.

Order management

Without having to exchange endless phone calls, you have the option for the customer to request a quote from the shopping cart itself: a ticket is created with all the information about the products, and you can make a personalized offer.

It’s also interesting to automate the process of applying automatic discounts by brands, according to the list of products in each category, etc.

Sales funnel

Combined with email marketing. If your potential customer has visited a specific product, or has read a blog post about a problem to which you have the solution… You can send them an automatic email, but personalized (based on templates) that deals specifically with the topic that has interested them, and help them to move forward in the sales funnel.

Marketing automation

Continuing with the theme of email marketing, customers who sign up for the newsletter of your ecommerce will become part of your mailing lists, with an automatic synchronization of subscribers.

Automatically offer gifts to customers according to their spending volume, which not only increases the average basket value, but also the number of conversions.

Or the customer can directly convert their loyalty points (if you have a loyalty program) from the basket, and the amount of points they’re accumulating for that order can be displayed on screen for other purchases.

Logistics

If you have free shipping over a certain amount, you can automatically show the customer what part of the amount they still need to cover to get free shipping. This way, the customer is encouraged to increase the order.

How to automate your ecommerce management

In the case of PrestaShop, it’s quite simple: you have to install the module corresponding to the task you want to automate and optimize, choosing for instance from the many that we’ve given you as an example in the previous point.

Because as we said before, especially if you’re just starting out, you don’t need to invest heavily (mostly because you probably can’t) in a mega-platform that automates everything. You can improve with small tasks that will make your ecommerce more profitable.

Clearly, it will depend on whether you’re a small, medium or large online store, and whether you need to automate more or less processes. But we assure you that there’ll always be something that you can automate, no matter how small you are.

Conclusion

The possibilities for automation are endless. If you’re just starting out and you don’t have the money, you don’t need to automate everything right now. We know that you can do yourself many things that cost you money to automate. But that’s the point: they’re, in fact, “many things”, and when you add them up… So chose wisely and start for the more urgent or needed ones.

Well, you realize that even if you have to make an investment of 20-50 euros every 1 or 2 months, in the long run it will be worth it. Because if you calculate the time it takes to do everything in an ecommerce by hand and without automation, it’s almost certain that you’re losing more money than the investment itself requires.

So don’t stop automating what you can afford. As your business progresses, you’ll notice the difference and appreciate it. And if you need help with any of our modules to automate your PrestaShop online store, contact us without hesitation!