Ecommerce has changed the way people shop over the past decade. Since 2014, ecommerce sales have more than quadrupled, and a further 39% growth is projected by 2027 (Statista).

This is good news for busy ecommerce businesses, but it also presents challenges. All of those transactions create vast amounts of work for teams, and scaling comes with added—often costly—complexity.

Ecommerce automation for small businesses can dramatically improve outcomes by enabling online retailers to free up time spent on repetitive tasks, enabling them to refocus on high-value activities that drive growth. AI startups are well-positioned to support clients in making the transition to automation.

What Is Ecommerce Automation?

Ecommerce automation refers to using software, including AI solutions for small businesses, to automatically complete tasks within a retail business that would otherwise be done manually. 

In simple terms, ecommerce automation software works by setting up triggers, conditions, and actions that activate the next step in a workflow. In this way, businesses can put routine activities on auto-pilot.

Let’s consider an example to illustrate how an automated ecommerce store might work: a trigger could be set up every time a customer places an order. An associated condition might be that the customer has now spent over $500 in the calendar year, which entitles them to receive a free gift. The action may be to automatically add the free gift to the packing list received by the warehouse.

Ecommerce automation is equally helpful when it comes to internal operations: a similar workflow can be used to automatically order low-stock inventory, for example. Wherever a person is completing a repetitive action, ecommerce automation can likely be used to lighten their load.

Benefits of Ecommerce Automation

According to the Anatomy of Work report from Asana, knowledge workers spend a shocking 60% of their time on “work about work”: communication, coordination, looking for documents, and other non-productive activities.

In light of this, the ROI that results from marketing and ecommerce automation becomes evident.  Implementing ecommerce automation can revolutionize the way stores operate, offering many advantages that drive growth and boost efficiency from marketing to sales to fulfillment.

By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, businesses can redirect their focus to strategic initiatives. If you run an AI marketing agency or consultancy, here are some of the benefits of automation you can communicate to your ecom clients:

• Dramatic time savings: Repetitive tasks aren’t cognitively demanding but they can eat into many hours of the day. Running an automated ecommerce store frees up valuable time, allowing teams to concentrate on high-value activities instead.
• Increased sales and marketing effectiveness: Using ecommerce marketing automation integrations can help each marketing and sales team member make a greater impact with their time as automation boosts conversions.
• Reduced human errors: Manual data entry and management inevitably lead to occasional errors. Ecommerce automation reduces the likelihood of errors that result from the banes of the human mind, which are distractions and fatigue.
• Happier customers: Automated AI-powered funnels lead to faster response times, while self-service options like AI chatbots enhance customer satisfaction.
• Pain-free scalability: Scaling an ecommerce business is challenging, but automation can dramatically improve the experience by making it easy to handle increased transaction volumes without the need for costly staff increases. 

Want more insights into the vast opportunities available in ecommerce today? Check out this video.

What to Automate in Ecommerce

There are plenty of areas that can benefit from automation in an ecommerce business, and your clients will likely know where they’re struggling most. But if you’re looking for impactful, low-hanging fruits, here are key areas to focus on:

Processes Touched by Three or More People

As a general rule, if more than two people are involved in a process, it isn’t efficient. Not only are people likely to duplicate work—something that wastes a surprising 10% of a worker's time—but having multiple touchpoints also increases the likelihood of human error (Asana).

Workflows that require coordination among multiple team members are ideal candidates for automation.

Cross-Platform Data Transfers

Marketing automation strategies can help businesses reduce errors and maintain consistent information across their various systems. Automated data synchronization is often used to connect platforms like ecommerce storefronts, CRMs, marketing platforms, and accounting software.

By limiting the likelihood of human error, businesses can reduce data loss and keep their ecommerce stores humming along smoothly. 

Tasks Triggered by Customer Actions

AI email marketing can be used to automate responses to customer actions, enhance their shopping experience, and boost conversions.

For example, automatic order confirmations and shipping notifications help customers feel they’re being taken care of, increasing the likelihood of repurchasing. Cart abandonment emails are a great way to drive conversions automatically by re-engaging prospective buyers who may just need an extra nudge to convert.

Examples of Ecommerce Automation

If you’re starting an AI agency and want to offer a variety of automated ecommerce business solutions to clients, consider these high-value examples.

Operations Automation

Ecommerce businesses require a wide range of operational tasks to run smoothly every day. Automating these can help teams feel more organized and in control. Here are some key examples:

• Inventory management: Ensure SKUs remain in stock while avoiding overstocking by setting up reorder alerts and continuous stock level monitoring. These can be set up to take supplier lead times into account.
• Order processing: Customer communications related to orders, like status and shipping notifications, are easy automations that can be set up in your email client. Internally, AI integration services can establish an automated fulfillment process, enabling warehouses to process orders faster and more accurately.
• Fraud detection: Fraudulent transactions can hurt the bottom line and expose businesses to security risks. Implementing automated systems to verify orders based on predefined rules can mitigate this problem.

Customer Service Automation

Practical customer service automations include:

• Trained chatbots: Most customer inquiries are routine FAQs that trained chatbots can handle 24/7. By providing instant support for most queries, support staff are freed up to focus on more complex cases. 
• Automated responses: Customer data can be used to trigger automatic communications and responses. Order updates are the most common, but this can also include AI-powered responses to emails. 
• Self-service options: Ecom sites can benefit from self-service knowledge bases and automatically updated order tracking, further saving staff time.

Marketing Automation 

From AI-powered WordPress builders to AI lead generation, there’s no shortage of automation applications for ecommerce stores. Here are some of the most impactful ones: 

• Email campaigns: Behavior-triggered email flows are great conversion boosters. Similarly, automatic drip campaigns can be used in lead automation to nurture more leads to conversion. AI content marketing solutions can also aid in crafting email content.
• Social media scheduling: Automating social media posting is a major time saver for ecommerce businesses, which frequently rely on high social media engagement to drive organic traffic.
• Ad campaign management: Instead of hovering over ad campaigns all day, you can use automation tools to adjust bids and targeting. AI tools can also analyze metrics in real time, adjusting budget allocation in response to data.

Website Automation

The management of an ecommerce website involves numerous tasks that can be automated for greater efficiency. Here are some examples:

• Content publishing: Keeping websites fresh and up-to-date without much manual input is possible through ecommerce automation tools that assist in updating product listings and publishing blog content. 
• A/B testing: Automatically test different designs and layouts to determine the most effective interface for conversions.
• Personalized product recommendations: Boost average order cart value through cross-selling and upselling by presenting product recommendations based on customer data and behavior. 

Implementation Tips for Ecommerce Automation

While there are a lot of ways to make money with AI and automation as a digital agency, it’s important to be aware of marketing automation best practices when setting up clients with new solutions.

Keep these tips in mind to ensure a smooth transition:

• Identify processes suited for automation: Focus on repetitive, time-consuming tasks.
• Choose the right automation tools: Choose tools that integrate easily with your existing systems.
• Set up workflows: Establish workflows with triggers, conditions, and actions to automate tasks efficiently. This takes a bit of planning upfront, so make sure you understand the client’s needs when setting up a new process.
• Test automation flows: Run tests to ensure automations work as intended before a full-scale rollout.
• Train staff: Provide training sessions for team members on how to use any new automation software and how to get the most out of it.
• Continuously optimize: Review and refine ecommerce automation processes to make sure they’re making the full desired impact. Process optimizations can be used to deliver better results over time.

Resellable Ecommerce Automation

With Vendasta’s resellable white-label ecommerce software solutions, your clients can be online with their own beautiful ecommerce website, discovering new channels of revenue to support their store.

Whether you’re providing your clients with their very first entry into the market by selling ecommerce website software or empowering them with tools to add a digital storefront to the offering they’ve already established, you are opening up an important new revenue channel.

Supported by WordPress and WooCommerce, Vendasta’s resellable ecommerce software solutions provide endless opportunities for customization. Each client is different and will have different needs—we understand this.

WordPress provides full control to the user, and as the user’s comfort level increases, WordPress can be customized further with coding. Even if your clients do not consider themselves “tech-savvy,” you can assure them that they don’t have to be. They will still be able to reap the revenue-generating benefits of ecommerce website software to create the online retail experiences that their customers want.

Future of Ecommerce Automation

The future of ecommerce automation is exciting: we foresee artificial intelligence driving deeper personalization, empowering automated ecommerce stores to deliver exceptional experiences at scale. On the operations side, predictive analytics are becoming more sophisticated, enabling stores to manage demand forecasting and other important areas more effectively.

Looking further ahead, voice assistants and conversational commerce are poised to enhance the shopping experience, and digital experiences will likely become more immersive with automation in the metaverse and Web3 spaces. Ecommerce is here to stay, along with the AI businesses that support it!