For a while now, large businesses have had access to systems like Oracle that can automate swaths of time-eating tasks. Automation solutions have remained firmly out of budget for SMBs, though, until recently. In the past few years, ecommerce automation systems have become more and more affordable. And now, even the smallest merchant can afford Shopify automation to take on repetitive, time consuming tasks.
In fact, more than simply providing some time savings, automation is quickly becoming a requirement for all businesses to compete in the modern online landscape. Automation is the great equalizer for online businesses as it provides customers with the same error-free, instantaneous experience, no matter if the company has a huge budget or not.
Shopify stores of any size can run the following six automations to provide a top-notch customer experience. They’ll save you the time and money you need to focus on innovation, while simplifying your ecommerce operations.
1. Connect Shopify to Amazon and other sales channels.
Today’s customers will shop your stock from a variety of online locations: your ecommerce site, your Facebook catalog, your Amazon shop, etc. That means there’s a lot of data that must be synced across each of these platforms:
- Inventory levels
- Product descriptions
- Prices
- Product images
- Customer data
Automating the syndication of data across your platforms prevents angry customers, loss of sales, and returns. Automatic synchronization also means that your brand experience will maintain consistency from one channel to the next.
Ultimately, customers do not view multiple sales channels as separate entities, the way merchants often do. That means data synchronization is a basic automation that customers expect even the newest, smallest merchant to run.
2. Get weekly Shopify sales reports to your inbox.
C suite executives of large retailers have their teams drop regular reports in their inbox on the department’s KPI performance. The execs can read over the reports and use them to help tweak and optimize ongoing campaigns to meet their goals.
You don’t need a large team to have reports emailed to you regularly, though. Instead, setup a Shopify automation to email them to you daily, weekly, or monthly.  With regular KPI reports hitting your desk, you’ll quickly be able to spot any issues your store is having, from marketing campaigns to fulfillment strategies. You can then optimize your strategy in real-time based on how your customers are behaving.
3. Segment customers by region to trigger geo-centric campaigns.
Location is a key data point for customer segmentation. Location can determine a wide variety of things, such as:
- Shipping costs or free shipping threshold
- Product availability
- Current events
Auto-segmenting your customers by country, region, or even town enables you to trigger geo-centric campaigns with a minor amount of work.Â
With auto-segmentation, you can green-light a campaign in response to a local event like a hurricane in minutes. It’s becoming harder and harder to differentiate your brand. Being the first to advertise, for example, a home generator a few days before a massive storm can be the differentiator you need. In the words of Ricky Bobby, “if you aint first, you’re last!”
4. Set a threshold to notify you of fast-selling and low-stock inventory.
In making better merchandising decisions, knowing which stock items are selling out is key. Monitoring your inventory data daily is not really an option for most busy Shopify merchants. Rather, having your software system monitor it for you enables you to:
- Re-order products that are selling out.
- Determine which items and categories should not be reordered.
- Turn off campaigns for items that are about to sell out.
A good Shopify automation app can free up your or your inventory manager from having to meticulously watch stock so they can spend more time choosing your future assortments.
5. Hide or clearly mark sold-out products on your store.
There is perhaps no worse experience for a customer than to purchase an item and then receive an email stating that they’re being refunded because the item was out of stock. This problem is easily remedied using automation, though. In fact, the right Shopify automation can prevent these unsatisfactory experiences to begin with, or even turn an out-of-stock item into a chance to delight your customer.
There are a few ways to handle an out-of-stock problem, each of which can be automated. Some of these solutions can even be used together:
- Hide the product from your catalog and site navigation. You should keep the web page up as it’s important for SEO, but don’t advertise the product anywhere on your site (or around the web).
- Place a label on the page stating that the product is out-of-stock.
- Push items labeled out-of-stock to the bottom of category pages.
- If the product will come back into stock, you can place an email form on the page so visitors can receive a restock alert.
- You can have a “similar items” section displayed prominently.
6. Schedule price changes for slow-moving products.
There are a variety of ways to deal with slow-moving inventory. The easiest way is to simply automate price change schedules. Determine a threshold at which you consider a product to be slow-moving. Then, your Shopify automation system can lower the price of items as soon as they become slow-moving.
Automated price changes free your small team up to focus on other business activities. You don’t need to spend time identifying which products are slow-movers and then go through and change all the prices.
Once the price changes are in effect, you can also automate retargeting ads to help move these newly discounted items.
Conclusion
Shopify automations help your small team compete in an increasingly more competitive digital world. Automation won’t make you the next Amazon, Levi’s, or Walmart, but it will make your job easier and help you deliver a five-star customer experience.Â
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dustin Thede is Vice President and Co-Founder of FOMO agency, and a well-known problem solver. Before starting FOMO agency, he spent the better part of a decade in retail and ecommerce, including as an Account Executive in Silicon Valley selling complex ecommerce website development and task automation projects.
At FOMO agency, he is focused on all things growth: marketing, sales, and partnerships. When he’s not doing ecommerce-y stuff, you’ll find him in nature, around or on the water, or spending time with family and friends.