eCommerce Automation Tools: Step-by-Step Guide

eCommerce Automation Tools: Step-by-Step Guide

Running your ecommerce store becomes much easier and more convenient when you have an automation tool. You can run your ecommerce business efficiently using ecommerce automation tools. 

These tools help you reduce mistakes and save time with less effort.

As a beginner, choosing the right automation tool for your business is the most troubling part for you. There are plenty of options out there to create confusion in your mind about which one works best for your business.

Here, we bring you some of the most capable automation tools for ecommerce businesses to ease that trouble. So, stick to the end to find the perfect automation tool that helps you lift your business. 

What is ecommerce automation?

Ecommerce automation is all about automating all the repetitive daily tasks and optimising different parts of an online store. It can be something as simple as inventory management or as complex as marketing a business and its products. 

You can apply ecommerce automation in your online store in several different aspects. Here’s a quick look at the key areas you can automate to stay ahead of the competition. 

This is how your automation for ecommerce works. It simply completes all the regular activities of an ecommerce business without any manual input or effort. 

Benefits of eCommerce Automation

Using an automated system for your ecommerce business has many benefits. And that’s why almost 75% of companies are integrating automation systems into their online businesses to stay in the running of a successful business. 

If you also want to gain a competitive edge in today’s eCommerce market, don’t avoid getting the following benefits with automation.

It saves up a lot of time. 

Time-saving is one of the most influential and helpful benefits of automating your online business. Since you won’t have time for daily tasks or regular activities, you will have much more time to do other stuff. You can save more than 49% of your time by automating all these daily activities. (Top Marketing Automation Statistics for 2022)

Increases business efficiency 

With the proper use of an automation system, you can achieve excellent efficiency in your business. You can reduce your operational costs by reducing manual tasks by up to 30% through automation, freeing up resources for strategic growth initiatives. With saved time and free resources, you can quickly achieve higher efficiency in your ecommerce business. 

Enhanced customer service experience 

Automation has almost revolutionised the whole custom service process for an ecommerce business. Using chatbots can help you save up to 30% on your customer service cost while providing a seamless customer service experience with 24/7 support. It can also improve customer engagement and experience by 34%. (The-State-of-Marketing-Automation-Survey-Summary-Report-210722)

Effective marketing and sales approach

ecommerce marketing automation is the most effective form for any online business. It ultimately elevates your marketing level and reduces marketing overhead by 12%. If you use marketing automation for your business, the lead quantity can rise by 80%. Marketing automation can also help increase the ROI on your marketing decisions by 45%. (Top Marketing Automation Statistics for 2022, n.d.-b)

Reduces manual errors 

Straight up, you will make fewer errors with an automated system. The software employed in these computerised systems usually provides accurate data you can use for your business and leverage from it. Even with high volumes of data, you won’t have any trouble or risk making mistakes using an automation tool. 

How to choose the right ecommerce automation tools for your business?

Here’s the thing: choosing an automation tool for your ecommerce business isn’t as easy as one would think. It’s essential to choose the right tool for the right kind of business. So, the tool that will be perfect for you depends on your business and preferences. 

When choosing such a tool, your decision-making can rely on the following steps. Let’s follow a step-by-step guide on selecting the perfect automation tool for your online business. 

Step 1: Assessing your business needs 

First, you must assess your needs and determine which business areas can be automated through the tools. Based on that, you have to learn about the tools, determine a budget to implement the tool in your business, and see whether it’s viable for your business or not. 

Step 2: Find the different tools 

After knowing where to use automation, you can look for tools that work in that specific area of your business. Look for reliable and popular choices to get the job done and give you the ROI you desire from such a tool. Once you find some options, you can compare them to determine which works best for your business.

Step 3: Evaluating the tools and their features

Through the comparison, you should get a good idea about the benefits and features of each tool. If you don’t have technical expertise in these things, you can opt for tools that are intuitive and easy to use. Also, seamless integration tools into a business are much better for smoother workflow.

Step 4: Compare the pricing 

In the next step, after evaluating the tools themselves, you have to move on to the pricing factor. Now, this is something where you have to think about your business. If you have a small-scale business, you should use cheaper tools as you won’t need many advanced features. But, an expensive tool with advanced features can be game-changing for a larger-scale business. 

Step 5: Implement, test, and optimise

Once you have found the tool according to your budget, try it out in your business. But don’t go all out at once. Start automating the minor and low-risk tasks to get acquainted with the tool first. After knowing the tool and its effectiveness, you can use it to its highest capabilities and optimise your online business activities. 

When you finish the testing and optimisation, you can decide whether this tool works for you. If it doesn’t work, repeat all these steps with a different tool to find the right one for your needs. 

The Best ecommerce Automation Tools

When you open yourself to using ecommerce automation software, you come across hundreds and thousands of tools. While all these tools promise to take your business to the next level, only a few can do it. 

Below, we have listed the ten best tools out of those few that can keep their promise of elevating your business. Let’s check them out one by one. 

Klaviyo

Improve your marketing game with Klaviyo as the perfect ecommerce marketing automation tool. Whether email marketing, SMS marketing, or push notifications, this tool covers you. You can easily connect with your customers whenever and wherever. It provides customisable automation features that help you send personalised experiences.

Use case 

• Advance retail integration with several different platforms
• Create and send personalised emails to targeted customers 
• Segment your audience with real-time data and reach them 
• Send one-time announcements to the targeted people 
• Automated flows use a mixture of email, push, and SMS marketing 
• Use templates to speed up the marketing automation process

Pricing:

• Free – $0
• Email – $45 (up to 1500 contacts)
• Email and SMS – $60 (up to 1500 contacts)

ChannelApe

Make your ecommerce store management journey a smooth and convenient one with ChannelApe. It’s a robust platform that helps you connect your operations data, partners, and teams under one platform to grow your business. With ChanelApe's strategic inventory operations, you can increase margins, cashflows, repeated orders, and NPS scores. 

Use case 

The services you can avail from ChannelApe are –

• Inventory management with product listing on multiple channels
• Unlocking real-time critical insights into your operations  
• Quickly identifying the flaws and bottlenecks of operations 
• Sync and manage orders from all channels 
• Get accurate data to make informed decisions 
• Native integration capabilities with assistance from the solution team
• Availability of open API integration 

Pricing: 

• Standard – $450/month,
• Gold – $750/month,
• Platinum – $1500/month.

Missinglettr & Buffer

In today's ecommerce landscape, social media platforms are the most powerful marketing channels. Missinglettr and Buffer are the perfect social media advertising automation tools for your ecommerce business. With both these tools, you can automate the scheduling process and get social media analytics afterwards. 

Use case

• Automate the process of creating social media posts with Missinglettr
• Scheduling and managing social media posts automatically. 
• Create social media drip campaigns for extensive inbound traffic and engagement. 
• Automatically curate social media posts to save a lot of time and effort. 
• A complete calendar for scheduling, automating, and organising social media campaigns. 
• Get all data related to social media post activities with the social media analytics features. 

Pricing:

Missinglettr 

• Free – $0 
• Solo – $9/month
• Pro – $39/month 

Buffer

• Free – $0
• Essentials – $6/month 
• Team – $12/month 
• Agency – $100/month   

Yotpo

Implement modern marketing ideas into your ecommerce business with Yotpo by your side. It’s an advanced marketing solution specialising in SMS marketing and utilising customer reviews. This tool's visual marketing aspect helps engage customers with additional interaction. With easy-to-use dashboards, loyalty programs, and referral options, it’s an excellent tool for beginners.  

Use case 

• Increase sales and connect with customers instantly using SMS marketing
• Build trust and get better conversion rates by showing authentic customer reviews. 
• Use loyalty and referral programs to engage more customers 
• Provide subscription services to generate more recurring revenue 
• Utilise videos and photos to connect with the customers emotionally
• Boost your sales and customer value with personalised emails for customers.

Pricing: 

• Free – $0
• Growth – $15/month
• Prime – $119/month 
• Premium – Custom
• Enterprise – Custom

Jotform Store Builder

Get an all-in-one design solution with Jotform store builder. The tool can simplify all the visual store management tasks for an ecommerce store. You can start from the basics, which is to build the store and finish it by marketing the business to your targeted customers. Plenty of widgets can add a lot of functionality and user-friendliness to your ecommerce store. 

Use case

• Create appealing visual designs on your store with drag and drop feature 
• Customise your branding element with ease using pre-built templates 
• Additional functionality and user-friendliness with 80-widgets 
• Make exciting forms and reports using the form and report builder 
• Choose from more than 25 payment gateways to get proper payment processing.
• Collecting orders, booking appointments, and paying for goods gets done automatically.

Pricing:

• Free – $0
• Bronze – $34/month 
• Silver – $39/month 
• Gold – $99/month 
• Enterprise – Customised

ShipStation

Starting from order fulfilment to order delivery, ShipStation has got you covered with everything related to shipping. It’s the fastest and most affordable way to ship products to your customers. With this tool, you can automatically remove all kinds of hassle and trouble shipping products. 

Use case

• Get access to more than 70 selling channels that are some of the best. 
• Easily manage all your orders from all platforms and prepare them for shipping. 
• Gain control over all the orders and get insights into the orders at every stage of shipping. 
• ShipStation provides you with the best rates along with multi-label creation. 
• Manage your inventory and stock with stock levels and inventory alerts. 
• Integrate the shipping delivery process with any shopping platform.

Pricing: 

• Free – $0
• Starter – $9.99
• Bronze – $29.99
• Silver – $59.99
• Gold – $99.99
• Platinum – $149.99
• Enterprise – $229.99
• High-volume – Custom

Hubspot Marketing Hub

Here’s a complete solution for automating your ecommerce store activities. Its tool helps you in several business areas, including marketing, customer support, order fulfilment, order processing, inventory, and sales. A company can grow much more successfully with proper use of the tool. 

Use case

• Personalised email marketing automation for better customer engagement. 
• Design landing pages and websites easily with drag-and-drop features 
• Implement advanced content marketing trends using the creative content management system 
• Grow your leads and sales by using all the tool functions in unison. 
• Track marketing performance and get insights on the outcome of marketing campaigns. 
• Add more features and functionalities to the store as the business starts growing.

Pricing:

• Free – $0
• Starter – $18/month 
• Professional – $800/month 
• Enterprise – $3600/month 

Zendesk

Building strong customer relationships becomes much easier with the help of Zendesk, an excellent CRM automation tool. The tool helps you personalise all your conversations and anticipate customer requests with AI integration. It also adapts to the ever-changing needs and demands of customers. On top of all that, it has excellent decision-making abilities that are usually driven by data and information. 

Use case

• The ticketing system allows you to collect all customer requests from one place.
• Use a customised knowledge base for customers to fulfil their specific needs and queries. 
• Builds online community forums to create stronger bonds with customers.  
• Customer portal and email-to-case feature for uninterrupted communication 
• Use the power of AI to automate all the repetitive tasks regarding customer relations.
• Integrate all customer interactions into a single platform to become the all-in-one CRM solution. 

Pricing: 

• Team – $19
• Pro – $55
• Enterprise – $115
• Suite Team – $55
• Suite Growth – $89
• Suite Pro – $115
• Suite Enterprise – $169

Pixc

Creating a professional-looking design asset aesthetically pleasing to your customers becomes easy with Pixc. You can create engaging social media graphics, marketing materials, and website banners within moments. Plenty of templates can help you create beautiful designs, even if you are a beginner. It also provides video content marketing opportunities. 

Use case

• Quickly edit product photos for your business at affordable prices 
• Automatically optimise and add the alt text on your product images. 
• Get insights regarding the clicks on your pictures with the shop analyser 
• Reduce the time spent on editing photos and put more time into clicking 
• Integrate with various platforms to get product photos for all businesses 

Pricing:

• Small – $20 (10 images)
• Medium – $100 (50 images)
• Large – $400 (200 images)
• Extra Large – $2000 (1000 images)

Maverick

Increase your leads in speed with the Maverickapp. The app will find prospects for your business and bring them as your daily target. Personalised email responses allow you to manage your task list to close deals frequently and quickly. All you have to do is write a good email set and leave the rest on the tool. You can also track your progress very easily to analyse the results. 

Use case

• Engage with leads automatically by inputting minimal information on the app. 
• The engagements keep happening every day automatically 
• Send custom email responses to close out more deals 
• Schedule emails and responses to deliver them following a routine 
• Track the progress and results of your emails and responses
• Analyse your progress and make slight adjustments to find better solutions. 

Pricing:

• Pilot – $298
• Co-Pilot – $498
• Autopilot – $1500

Things to consider before automating your ecommerce marketing

Finding the best marketing automation for ecommerce requires you to consider some factors. These are some questions you must ask yourself before you avail a marketing automation ecommerce tool. 

What are your business pain points?

The first thing you have to do is figure out the pain points of your business. It can be simple repetitive tasks or complex struggles. You can focus on areas where you see the potential for the most improvement with automation.  

What business goals are you working towards?

Next, you have to find out what goals you have set for your business. Whether you want increased sales and leads, higher customer retention, or brand awareness, you must choose the right tools that align with them based on these goals.

How will you implement an automation tool?

Afterwards, you move on to implementing the tool into your business. Learn about the tool's technicalities, requirements, and budget. Avoid choosing tools that require a lot of training and expertise. 

Automation doesn’t replace the human touch.

Remember that automation will only help you speed things up; it won’t get everything done for you. You will still need to employ your mind to make strategic and creative decisions. The idea of personalising your activities will come down to your thought process. 

FAQ

Still have some questions in your mind? Then, check out the commonly asked questions regarding marketing automation tools for ecommerce. They might clear out all your confusion.  

Conclusion

After reviewing the discussion, you know some of the most popular ecommerce automation tools. It’s up to your needs and preferences to choose the tool you desire for your business. We also shared how you can make that decision as well. 

So, based on the factors, choose the right tool to get the most benefits out of them and grow your business. 

Author Bio: Linda Marks is an accomplished writer and dedicated ecommerce enthusiast. With a sharp focus on the rapidly changing landscape of online business, Linda's articles combine industry expertise with a passion for clear, concise communication. As a trusted voice in ecommerce, Linda offers valuable insights and practical advice, making her an essential resource for those navigating the dynamic world of digital commerce.