In our previous post we’ve just embarked on explaining which processes in your webshop can go automatic. And in this article, we are diving deeper in details and are opening a sea of hands-free opportunities to release from routine and focus on creative activities.
Ready? Let’s move on!
These are some areas where you can focus your online shop automation efforts:
Purchasing & fulfillment
You can streamline the eCommerce order management using the power of automation tools.
Shipping rates:
Get live shipping rates via Shipping Estimate. This Shipping estimate add-on for CS-Cart stores’ owners will display a shipping fee estimation block on the product page so that the user or customer can check/find out the shipping fee.
To make this work, you will need automatic identification of customer location enabled with the help of:
IP Geolocation by MaxMind uses the MaxMind large databases to assist in determining the country and address of an unlogged-in visitor for more precise pre-login shipping cost estimation.
Geolocation by Google uses Google maps to determine a customer location and set a corresponding shipping method.
Bookkeeping:
Automation can help streamline invoice payments and documentation
If you’re drowning in receipts, unpaid invoices, and other documents while trying to juggle other accounting duties for your small business, then it’s probably time to try automating this process. Manually updating your ledger and keeping up on numbers with purchase orders, sales, and expenses will eat away at your time, and it can be a headache even for seasoned accounting professionals.
QuickBooks Online Integration syncs your CS-Cart products, orders, and customers to your QuickBooks Online account so you only enjoy the seamless cloud accounting and financial reporting without a need to manually update that information.
E-mail Marketing
Abandonment recovery:
The average eCommerce store loses over 75% of its sales to cart abandonment. One of the best ways to recapture those customers is through automated cart abandonment emails. You can also connect an email platform like MailChimp to create automated cart abandonment emails or set up a custom automated series. The average order value of recovered carts is 58% higher than direct consumer orders. For CS-Cart license owners, integration with MailChimp service is done with the MailChimp Advanced add-on.
Customer follow-up:
This service is also an excellent way to build loyalty and affiliation. An entrepreneur adding a customer to his or her email marketing list in MailChimp, is able to ask the customer to return or leave a review with a link back to the site or product page and invite for further discussion. This completely automates the process of acquiring reviews.
Some more hints to think about and automate with email marketing:
- Thank new and repeat customers: send thank you emails based on order count;
- Win back inactive customers: email customers who haven’t purchased in a while;
- Behavioral emails: email customers based on the review, booking, or points activity;
- Get customer feedback: ask for feedback and product reviews;
- Build social proof: use Review for Discount to build testimonials and reviews.
Customer Engagement
Social Proof:
Apart from automatic emails which is a powerful personalization tool, of course, another area to direct your automation efforts can be building brand awareness, social proof and creating your brand image to reside longer in minds of your target audience. Put more social buttons on your website page and connect your Instagram feed with the store to showcase your latest activities and lead traffic from mobile. Your posts will be automated in real time automatically and shown right on the storefront.
Closing
There are lots of extensions you may use to automate in your online shop or marketplace. It all depends on your business area and needs. So, if you find your business need integrating some notifications, think about how to integrate this service to your platform more rationally. Ask yourself whether you really need all the functionality of the additional application or it is wiser to sync only critical things you need to add to your online business operation. Integrating a service is always unique as any process cannot run the same for all. Ask Simtech devs to share a better idea with you about the service you’ve chosen! We can embed almost anything with the API provided.