Top 5 e-commerce automation tools to optimize your business

The idea of automating a portion of your workload sounds freeing. Imagine all those tasks that you have to perform regularly to run your business suddenly disappearing from your to-do list, taken over by software that always does them right and on time.

Achieving that reality doesn’t happen with just any e-commerce automation software, though. You need the right e-commerce automation tools to give you peace of mind. In this article, you’ll find some of the most popular tools used by marketing professionals and business owners alike

5 top e-commerce automation tools

There’s a lot that goes into an e-commerce business. There are standard sets of tasks associated with manufacturing, shipping, inventory, order management, marketing, payments, and returns processes, and many of those tasks are ripe for automation. The following list of tools will help you cross some of them off your to-do list for good.

Business management automation: Jotform Store Builder

A lot goes into managing an online store; Jotform Store Builder  simplifies nearly all the tasks associated with store management, starting with building the store itself. 

With Jotform, you can create an online store in minutes using ready-built industry-specific templates that can be easily customized with your own branding elements. Choose from more than 80 widgets, like product lists and images, to build a store that’s both functional and user-friendly.

No matter what kind of products you sell, Jotform Store Builder makes it possible to collect orders, book appointments, and pay for goods and services directly. You’ll have your choice of over 25 payment gateways — including PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Square, and Stripe — so you can offer customers their favorite payment methods. 

Jotform’s capabilities even extend to after the sale, to help you run your business better. Once an order is placed and payment is collected, the order details automatically appear in Jotform Tables, where you can manage tasks related to order fulfillment, shipping, and more. Jotform Tables also has functionality to create reports, enabling you to understand and analyze your sales. 

If you already have a website, you can embed your new store into your existing WordPress site using the Jotform Shopping Cart plug-in. Your new online store can also be used independently of a site — simply use Jotform Store Builder to create a URL for your store and share it with potential customers. The platform can also create a QR code that leads to the online store. You can distribute the QR code on flyers, business cards, and other promotional materials.

Shipping automation: ShipStation

Getting products into the customer’s hands on time can be challenging without software that helps you automate order fulfillment.

Sol Spier, founder at Dawning Digital, recommends ShipStation for e-commerce businesses that need to streamline their shipping processes.

This web-based e-commerce shipping platform streamlines and automates the fulfillment process, provides branded customer pages, and offers a mobile app.

Email automation: Klaviyo

Email communications are critical for keeping customers coming back again and again. Abe Breuer, CEO and owner of VIP TO GO, recommends Klaviyo for high-quality email marketing management and segmentation.

“Klaviyo provides integrations with a large variety of e-commerce systems, allowing you to control everything from a single dashboard,” says Breuer. “It also has excellent segmentation and personalization capabilities, including dynamic data blocks that ensure that different sections of an email are displayed to distinct groups of people who have been properly targeted.”

Social media automation: Missinglettr & Buffer

Social media platforms are an important part of reaching new customers at scale, and they are often a key driver for e-commerce businesses. The ability to automate scheduling and social media analytics will help you focus less on the technicalities of social media and more on your message.

Adam Crossling, marketing manager at Zenzero, recommends both Missinglettr and Buffer to support your social media marketing efforts.

“Both of these tools will save you numerous hours each day by automatically publishing,” says Crossling. “Buffer will even compose the posts on your behalf, and it allows you to pre-load posts that will be automatically metered and posted at regular intervals.

“Do you have a major sale coming up? Write several tweets for it in a single coffee-fueled sitting, then leave it to Buffer to regularly post over the following week or two.”

SMS marketing automation: Yotpo

Short message service (SMS), better known as texting, is becoming a more regular channel for e-commerce businesses to reach customers with news about new product launches or sales.

To automate these communications, Cary Hastings, head of content at Bonsai, recommends Yotpo.

“Yotpo is an e-commerce platform that has features for SMS marketing, customer reviews, ratings, visual marketing, loyalty programs, and referrals,” says Hastings. “It’s a powerful tool for social proof, and it can be integrated into your online store.”

The right tool to shorten your to-do list

Sometimes automation is a double-edged sword. If you don’t find the right software, you might replace the tasks you just removed from your to-do list with tasks that are required to maintain that software.One way to make sure this doesn’t happen is to find solutions that keep as many of your business processes as possible in one place. For a tool that works to automate orders, payment processes, inventory management, and integrates with over 400 other tools you’re probably already using, sign up for Jotform for free today.