Using manual processes to manage tasks has several unfavorable implications for your business. Brands must look for new ways to improve efficiency by being more organized, using their time better, and increasing productivity by implementing innovative organizational techniques and procedures. A basic plan incorporating several forms of business automation is key to success and enhanced productivity.
When you automate processes, you will see an instant reduction in the amount of time it takes to complete tasks and an improvement in the efficiency of your business. You will effectively handle various company tasks and procedures with the assistance of digital productivity tools, particularly the activities that consume an excessive amount of your time. Every business recognizes the importance of automation and makes it a primary objective to attain this goal—it will assist in reducing overhead expenses and saving valuable time.
E-Commerce automation helps increase openness and accountability, enabling workers to do their jobs more effectively and locate points of contention. The e-Commerce automation provides solutions to typical problems that often arise while doing business. Workers will enhance their performance, enabling businesses to overcome periodic but widespread barriers more efficiently by automating the procedures involved in their online trade.
Automation technologies help simplify your e-Commerce business’s operations in various ways, including accepting orders and delivering them. There are several platforms to choose from—picking the most effective automated solutions for your business will be challenging.
Continue reading as we walk you through 6 time-saving productivity tools that will assist you in automating tasks—freeing up more time to improve productivity. But before delving deep into these essential tools, let us know about e-Commerce automation.
Understanding e-Commerce automation
E-commerce automation software is created to transform your company’s operations, procedures, and campaigns into automated workflows that run independently and only when required. It’s how companies get more out of their current resources.
You will save time, money, and energy by simplifying and automating as much of your e-Commerce operation as possible. Automation is helpful when many different jobs need to be completed. This allows businesses to scale more efficiently and to set priorities for their work more effectively.
Inventory management, conversational commerce, lead conversion, and notification management are just a few areas that benefit greatly from automation. It is possible to run an effective e-Commerce business with the help of these technologies, thanks to the wide range of configuration options they provide.
6 Time-saving tools to improve your ecommerce business
Demands, complexity, and routine tasks increase as businesses grow. Previously reliable systems gradually lose effectiveness and eventually fail. As a result, businesses resort to labor-intensive solutions, diverting resources from more pressing matters to deal with the unexpected. E-commerce automation tools come in handy to provide businesses with the right solution to enhance productivity and growth.
1. Text extraction automation tools—DocHorizon
The text extraction automation tool will extract text from a scanned document or image, and then the extracted content will be converted into a computer-readable format. This is helpful when information is required for further processing—this includes situations like accounting, invoice processing, spending tracking, customer loyalty programs, and identity verification.
While automation will make specific tasks more manageable, integrating automation into robust processes will efficiently handle routine tasks. Businesses widely use this OCR (optical character recognition) technology to capture data from receipts and extract data from documents. It is a productive business process that saves time, money, and other resources.
With the assistance of DocHorizon, you will be able to immediately extract all of the pertinent information, giving you the best option possible for text verification. It includes mobile scanning, OCR, data extraction, categorization, document conversion, anonymization, and verification.
Pricing
DocHorizon’s price is varied and provided on demand.
2. Social media automation—Buffer
A social media automation tool is an absolute need for an e-Commerce company if you want to grow your brands in the digital sphere.
Buffer is the way to go if you are still manually sharing social media updates and want an easy method to plan, schedule, and publish social media posts.
You must put the content in a queue on an automatic schedule or select a specific time for each post. Use a customized publishing schedule, in which you specify the days and hours to publish, or you have the option for auto-post, in which case the tool will automatically post your updates at the optimal times. The statistics part is excellent for monitoring the success of your efforts and receiving in-depth insights into various social channels, and it is one of the sections that comes standard with Social.
The platform lets you plan and deliver content across various platforms using a single, simplified interface. Using Buffer’s start page function, you have the option even to set up a cost-free microsite to begin marketing and selling your goods and services.
Buffer has built-in analytics that keeps tabs on essential engagement metrics, including clicks, comments, shares, and favorites. You can read the most recent posts from an RSS feed, add those items to your queue, and then add further articles from the same source.
Pricing:
A free subscription is available from Buffer, which allows users to manage up to 3 channels. Three paid plans include:
Essentials plan—$5/ month/ per channel
Team plan—$10/ month/ per channel
Agency plan—$100/ month/ 10 channels
Using Buffer’s start page function, you have the option even to set up a cost-free microsite to begin marketing and selling your goods and services.
3. Marketing/sales and CRM automation—ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign promotes itself as the number one automation platform for creating great customer experiences, and it integrates marketing and sales automation with customer relationship management (CRM). Because it comes with various automated tools, it frees you from having to do manual tasks such as segmentation, lead nurturing, and follow-ups, among other things. One feature that stands out is the automatic contact management, which allows you to see the whole sales process at a glance.
However, it is not the most user-friendly option for starting. It’s pretty far ahead of its time. Time is required for both becoming acquainted with the platform and continuing to keep it maintained.
The platform has various helpful features, such as pre-built automation workflows, marketing campaign automation guidelines, training videos, and live one-on-one support, all designed to aid you.
Tracking interactions and identifying the most promising leads are made more accessible by a tool called lead scoring.
Pricing
Pricing policies of ActiveCampaign vary depending on the number of contacts, and the four plans offered are:
Lite plan—$29/ month
Plus plan—$49/ month
Professional plan—$149/ month
Enterprise plan—Custom Pricing
4. Order fulfillment automation tool—ShipBob
ShipBob is the right platform if you want an automated order fulfillment tool that also functions as a solution for hands-off shipping and storing your products. It offers fulfillment services that are the finest in its field, built-in capabilities for inventory management, and demand forecasting based on existing data. ShipBob’s fulfillment network centers allow you to distribute goods over many locations, making delivery quicker and more cost-efficient. Additionally, they provide shipping savings from major carriers such as FedEx, DHL, USPS, and UPS based on the number of packages sent.
Thanks to the platform, you can search for individual orders, filter orders based on their status, and display an instantaneous timeline of where your order stands in the fulfillment process. In addition to this, the program is elementary to connect with Shopify and other e-Commerce systems.
Pricing
Based on delivery, ShipBob’s price structure is adaptable, allowing for a wide range of options for orders dispatched, inventory received, storage in warehouses, and other special projects.
5. Marketing strategy automation—HubSpot
Inbound marketing for online retailers is one of the services offered by HubSpot. It provides a host for various functions, including analytics, content management, email marketing, and control of social network handles—a comprehensive solution for marketing solutions for e-Commerce businesses.
You can handle the whole of the sales funnels with the help of HubSpot’s enhanced capabilities. Personalizing your marketing strategy and using it as a platform to grow your marketing activity on e-Commerce sites are both advantages of using this software.
Pricing
Among the pricing plans, HubSpot offers a free plan among other paid plans as:
Starter—50$ per month / 540$ per annum
Professional—890$ per month / 9,600$ per annum
Enterprise—3,200$ per month / 38,400$ per annum
6. Calendar Automation tool—Calendly
When members of your team attempt to find a date and time that works for everyone, they often engage in time-consuming back-and-forth communication. Calendar automation saves your team members time and frustration by automating this process. Automating your calendar makes it simple to arrange face-to-face meetings with customers, prospective customers, and anyone else who expresses interest in doing so.
Digital calendars and scheduling tools will assist everyone in determining the optimum time to meet, arrange meetings that will occur on a recurrent basis, and automatically send reminders to those attending. In addition, Calendly has the capability to automatically define time limitations for meetings and provide buffer time before and after each appointment.
Pricing
Basic—Free
Essentials—$8 /seat/month
Professional—$12 /seat/month
Teams—$16 /seat/month
Wrapping up
Many e-Commerce teams waste time manually addressing tasks that they must automate. With automation software, e-Commerce companies will provide a more customized customer experience while saving time and resources. Each tool is designed to automate a different process—it is up to the individual business to choose which automation features are most important to them.
