The world of business is becoming increasingly automated. According to IBM’s research, 61% of companies worldwide are using automation software, and 19% of businesses plan to use it in the next 12 months.
Read on to find out how automation is affecting e-commerce.
What Is Automation & How Is It Used in e-commerce?
Automation in e-commerce refers to the use of technology and software to automate various processes and tasks throughout the e-commerce supply chain. It includes automating tasks such as order processing, inventory management, shipping, customer service, and marketing.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the core of e-commerce automation technology. AI automatically generates responses to actions on the website, like placing an order or signing up for a newsletter.
Merchants are implementing automation to streamline a range of tasks, saving time and money.
For instance, automation is used to process orders as they come in, including checking inventory levels, verifying payment information, and sending order confirmation emails.
Automation also helps with shipping, automating label printing, barcodes, and tracking packages. Everything gets done faster because a lot of detailed work is taken out of the hands of humans and handled by automation software.
Automation is also used to great effect for inventory management and to automate marketing and advertising.
The greatest benefit of automation in e-commerce is the tremendous improvement in customer experience and service.
Benefits of Automation In eCommerce
Increased efficiency in processing orders, managing inventory, and shipping products
Automation can significantly improve processing orders, managing inventory, and shipping. For instance, automated systems can automatically send order confirmation emails to customers, verify payment information, and detect fraudulent orders. These actions can significantly improve customer experience.
Overselling and overstocking the inventory have traditionally plagued e-commerce merchants, making managing inventory notoriously troublesome. Automation can help merchants manage inventory more efficiently by tracking inventory levels in real-time, sending alerts when stock levels are low, and automatically reordering products when inventory levels are low.
Online merchants can use automation to streamline the shipping process by leaving it to the software to generate shipping labels, track packages, and update customers on the status of their orders.
Automated systems can also optimize shipping routes based on real-time traffic data, reducing delivery times and shipping costs. This helps businesses to provide better customer service and minimizes lost or delayed shipments.
Cost savings through reduced labour costs and fewer errors
Automation can save money for e-commerce merchants by reducing labour costs and improving efficiency.
Tasks such as order processing, inventory management, and shipping are time-consuming for humans to do. As soon as a business becomes successful and orders start streaming in, these tasks multiply, putting staff under tremendous pressure. Errors inevitably start creeping in.
Automation can handle these tasks faster and more accurately than human workers, who can be occupied with tasks better suited to humans than machines.
By automating repetitive tasks, e-commerce businesses can reduce labour costs.
Automation definitely improves efficiency. The software streamlines processes, which speeds up operations. In addition, AI operators tend to be more accurate than humans. Fewer errors can lead to cost savings by reducing the time and resources needed to correct errors.
Improved customer experience through faster delivery times and more accurate order fulfilment
As mentioned earlier, improvement in customer experience is probably the greatest benefit of automation in e-commerce.
When a customer lands on your website and needs a question answered, the answer is a click away, not at the end of a telephone call. Modern consumers are busy and impatient – they want instant service and instant answers.
Chatbots can give them that. They can instantly answer common queries related to order tracking, product information, return policies, and so forth. And best of all, these assistants don’t go home; they are available 24/7. If a customer on the other side of the world wakes up at night and wants to place an order, the automation system takes care of everything.
Automation can help eliminate errors, so orders are registered correctly every time. No more waiting for lost parcels along the way, or opening a package containing something you didn’t order.
It is extremely annoying when you have paid for something and have been waiting for it to arrive, only to find that the item is not what you ordered. Automation systems can eliminate many of these frustrations for consumers, contributing to customer retention.
Cart2Cart as a Bright Example of Automation in e-commerce
What happens if, for some reason, your current shopping cart platform does not serve your purposes anymore? For instance, you have been using Wix for some years, but have decided that Shopify will serve your business objectives better.
So you decide to migrate your store. This is not a task you want to tackle manually. The process is time-consuming and technically demanding.
Fortunately, in these days of automation, there is Cart2Cart. The platform simply automates the entire process.
How the service works
Store migration with Cart2Cart is a fully automated process requiring store owners to do the minimum manually. To perform the migration, a store owner only needs to do four things:
- Specify the current store.
- Specify the new store.
- Select the data to be transferred and the additional migration options.
- Run a demo to check that the migration works as planned.
Pros & cons of the service
The benefits of cart migration with Cart2Cart far outweigh the drawbacks. Here is a list of the advantages of migrating with Cart2Cart.
- The Cart2Cart Migration Wizard has been developed with non-tech users in mind. Anyone can use it.
- Your existing store remains open for business while the migration is in progress.
- You can test the migration by doing a free demo migration before you go ahead and migrate your entire store. The demo migration allows you to transfer part of your store so you can see how it works and how the new store will look.
- The entire process is automated. Store owners only specify the current store platform and the one they want to migrate to, choose the entities they want to move, and connect the two platforms. Cart2Cart takes care of everything else.
- The Cart2Cart test store is a great innovation aimed at helping store owners make the right choice in terms of the platform they migrate to. Store owners can first migrate to the Cart2Cart test store if they can’t decide which platform to transfer to.
- For a solution that takes care of the migration of entire online businesses safely and accurately, Cart2Cart’s rates are very reasonable. The price starts at $29 and increases according to the number of entities to be transferred and the number of additional migration options chosen.
What about the cons? Well, there are not many, as we mentioned. The one drawback of the tool is that it can’t automatically migrate design and 3rd party apps.
Final Thoughts
The era of automation has arrived. Most businesses are leveraging automation technology to speed up their processes and improve their customer service. Cart2Cart is making its own very useful contribution in this regard by making it super easy for online store owners to migrate their stores to an alternative platform.
