How to Add Automation to Your eCommerce Store

Growing an eCommerce brand is hard work. Between marketing, customer service, inventory management and fulfillment, your team’s time can be taken up by lots of manual and repetitive tasks. What if you could automate those tasks so you can focus on more strategic projects?

With the rise of app stores, thousands of applications have been introduced that can save you and your team time. Email and SMS marketing, rewards, customer service, live chat, subscription management, shipping, fulfillment, and other types of apps are great at their key focus areas, but even they can be limited because not every app is integrated. You need a true automation solution that can assimilate your apps and workflows from one place. 

In this article, we’ll cover how to add automation to your eCommerce store and the best tools to use.

Let’s start by going back to the basics and deciphering what eCommerce automation actually is!

What is eCommerce Automation?

Ecommerce automation is the elimination of manual processes and tasks involved in running an eCommerce store. Automation technology emerged from Founders, Marketers, Operators and Engineers needing to scale dozens of workflows without scaling the headcount on their team. Ecommerce automation is done through workflow automation and unifying your app integrations. 

Why is eCommerce Automation Important?

Automation used to only be available for enterprises that could spend a significant amount of money on developers who build custom workflows and use APIs (application programming interfaces) to integrate apps. As an eCommerce brand owner, you can now automate your workflows and daily tasks across your entire eCommerce tech stack. But why should you automate in the first place? 

Here is why automation is important for your business:

Remove Manual Work

Manual tasks are prone to human error which can harm or slow down your business in the long run. Just one mistype on a discount code could lead to customers getting 100% off instead of 10%. Creating shipping labels takes time and can delay shipments if the person creating the labels gets distracted or has to deal with an emergency. With our immense technological advancements, many manual tasks these days can now be automated to reduce human error and improve productivity.

Scale Faster

Automation allows you to scale your business faster than ever before. Instead of hiring multiple people to work on manual tasks, you can build workflows that help your existing team scale their productivity. For example, with customer service automation, you could create automatic replies to common questions to reduce the number of tickets your support team has to handle on a daily basis. 

Automation can also help your business handle fraud. As your Shopify store grows, fraudulent orders will likely become more common. If an order has a high-risk level, you can automatically cancel the order to prevent a chargeback and save money in the long run.

Integrate your eCommerce Tech Stack From One Place

Most Shopify stores are using at least 10 different apps from the Shopify App Store to run their day-to-day operations. Some of the best Shopify apps include Klaviyo, Smile.io, Postscript, ReCharge, and Gorgias, which explains why they’re used by thousands of Shopify stores! However, they don’t all integrate with each other. Ecommerce automation tools sync data between your apps so no part of your tech stack is left behind! 

How to Add Automation to Your eCommerce Store 

Alloy Automation is a free eCommerce tool that can set up automation for your store. Alloy Automation is a no-code tool for creating automated workflows for any eCommerce store. With Alloy, there are an endless amount of opportunities you can receive from our automated workflows, guaranteeing that you’ll be able to focus on growing your business in a matter of minutes. 

Built for Shopify & Shopify Plus

Alloy is specifically built to integrate with the Shopify ecosystem. You can be up and running with automated workflows in just 5 minutes. Check out the Alloy Automation app on the Shopify App Store to get started right now.

Integrates your Favorite eCommerce Apps

Alloy integrates with leading Shopify apps like ReCharge, Gorgias, Postscript, Smile.io, Shippo, and more. New integrations are available every week. 

Pre-Built Workflow Templates

Alloy has built a library of over 100+ workflow templates that you can easily use and customize for your Shopify store. Best of all, the workflow templates are free and won’t cost you extra fees to use. 

Steps to Adding Automation to your eCommerce Store

Now that you’re ready to automate your eCommerce store, you can get started with three simple steps:

1. Get started with Alloy Automation and set up your free account here
2. Follow the onboarding steps in order to get familiar with how to set up an eCommerce automation
3. Use the examples below to set up a workflow that will save time for you or your team

Examples of eCommerce Workflows to Automate

Ecommerce workflows can be set up in minutes using Alloy’s recipe marketplace, which is filled with hundreds of pre-built workflows. These recipes are built and open-sourced by tech vendors, agencies, and freelancers.

Marketing 

Marketing automation is a big focus for many growing brands. By automating marketing tasks, you can create personalized campaigns for each customer to help improve conversion rates and see a better return on investment (ROI) for your marketing campaigns. 

Send a Coupon Email When a Customer is Tagged

Tagging is important for segmentation. If a customer leaves a negative review, you could tag them as “negative” and automatically email them a coupon to improve their rating of your business.

Reward Your Customers With a Discount Code When Their Friends Sign Up

Referral marketing is powerful when it’s automated. With this workflow, when a new customer makes a purchase, you can collect their friends’ email addresses and email them discount codes of X% with suggestions on what to buy. 

Customer Support 

Automating customer support means you can spend less time replying to common questions and more time focused on improving products, shipping, and other areas of your business to improve the customer experience. 

Ask the Customer For a Review After Their Order is Delivered

Happy customers tend to leave positive product reviews, but many Shopify businesses don’t ask for reviews when a product is delivered. With this workflow when an order is marked as delivered, an email or SMS message is sent to the customer asking for a review…making the process seamless!

Email Customer After Purchasing a Specific Product

Order confirmation emails are pretty standard these days and every Shopify store needs to use them. When an order is processed, you can send the customer an email after making the purchase to confirm their purchase and its estimated delivery date.

Send an Email to a Customer When An Order is Tagged

Sometimes an order needs to be tagged for a specific reason. These reasons include fraud detection, shipping delays, out-of-stock notifications, and more. So when an order is tagged, an email is sent to the customer notifying them about their order.

Shipping & Fulfillment 

Shipping and fulfillment automation allows you to speed up delivery rates and more efficiently pack your orders. It also allows you to better manage your inventory to ensure products don’t go out of stock.

Automatically Pause Advertising When Inventory Starts Running Low

If you’re running a successful ad campaign that’s causing your inventory to run low (congrats on the successful campaign btw!), you can use this workflow to automatically turn off the ads once you reach a specific inventory threshold. 

Send a Low Stock Notification When Product Variant Inventory Drops Below a Threshold

You can’t sell products without inventory, right? If inventory drops below a certain threshold, an email or text is sent to your team to let them know it’s time to reorder those products.

Notify Customer That Order is Low Inventory, Buy Fast

The fear of missing out (FOMO) can be a powerful incentive to make customers buy your products. Once the inventory level for a product reaches a certain threshold, you can send a text or email your customers to notify them that the product is running out fast and get them to make a purchase.

Fraud

Fraudulent orders and chargebacks can be a big drain on your profits. With automation, you can prevent fraud to protect your Shopify store.

Notify Staff and Tag Fraudulent Orders

Your team has to be made aware of any fraudulent orders. When an order is placed and it’s high-risk, a “Risky” tag is applied and a team member can begin verifying the order.

Cancel the Order and Email the Store Owner if the Order Risk Level is High to Prevent Fraud

Want to automatically cancel high-risk orders? When a new order is placed, check if the order is listed as high risk and if the conditions are met, cancel the order and email your team notifying you it was canceled. 

Upselling

Upselling can be a great way to improve customer retention and average order value (AOV) – especially if you personalize recommendations for each customer.

Use Email to Cross-Sell Products that are Complementary to the Ones They’ll Be Receiving in their Next Shipment

Here’s an example of an automated personalization email: When a customer makes a new purchase, get all the items in the same product category and trigger an email campaign to the customer with product recommendations.

Send Customers an SMS Message with a Special Upsell Offer

SMS is a great channel on its own. For customers with a certain tag, you can send them an SMS message with a discount code.

Conclusion

With eCommerce automation, you can scale your store to new heights while saving precious time for your team. By automating both simple and complex tasks, your eCommerce store can keep up with the competition and grow even more. 

Alloy Automation is a no-code tool for creating automated workflows for any eCommerce store. With the abilities Alloy can do, there’s an endless amount of opportunities you can receive from our automated workflows, guaranteeing that you’ll be able to focus on growing your business in a matter of minutes.