When you think about your average work day, how many repetitive tasks do you perform on a regular basis? Add it all up, and you might be surprised by the amount of time these to-dos consume. Enter ecommerce automation. Used strategically, automated solutions can save you effort and expense—and allow you to focus on growing and maintaining your business.
You can deploy ecommerce automation software to streamline daily processes like setting prices for products and tracking sales trends. Amazon stores have built-in tools to help.
What is ecommerce automation?
Ecommerce automation is programmable software that causes manual or repetitive tasks to perform on their own with little-to-no intervention on your part. You can set up automated workflows for marketing campaigns, inventory management, and many other operations to help your business run smoother.
Effective ecommerce automation can free up time and resources to reinvest in your business. It can also give you valuable data to make informed decisions quickly.
Ecommerce automation tools
Three-fourths of sellers in Amazon’s store use Amazon automation tools to help run their businesses more efficiently. Get started with these three free features:
Brand Dashboard
The Brand Dashboard gives you an overview of customer experience, sales, and brand health all in one place. It’s your portal into ecommerce oversight without the need for complex spreadsheets or toggling between multiple tabs. Visit for a snapshot into how pricing, stock levels, and other factors are working together to drive sales.
Brand Analytics
Take the guesswork out of what’s working and what’s not by leveraging Brand Analytics. These detailed reports on search terms, demographics, purchases, and more criteria can help you spot trends and opportunities to boost sales. For example, download the Search Terms Report to see the exact keywords customers are using to find products like the ones you offer.
Fulfillment by Amazon
Did you know Amazon fulfillment centers can store, pack, and ship products for your business, in addition to handling customer service for those products? When you use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), you connect to our machine learning-based inventory management system. Visit the inventory performance dashboard for:
- Alerts when stock quantities are running low
- Suggestions for optimum inventory levels, demand planning, and sales forecasting
- Estimates on shipment timelines
Benefits of ecommerce automation
Running an ecommerce business isn’t easy, but automated insights into your brand can help. Here are a few examples:
- Gain valuable business insights: Compile data and find information quickly so you don’t waste time hunting for reports or manually inputting spreadsheets.
- Improve customer satisfaction: Give shoppers precise inventory levels, real-time discounts, and price matching to keep them coming back.
- Maintain a consistent brand presence: Keep your branding and messaging reliable across channels by avoiding the repetitiveness of manual updates.
According to McKinsey, as many as 45% of workplace activities can be automated. Think about your business model; what can you automate? Read on for some inspiration and tactics you can start applying today.
7 ways to automate your business
- Automate Pricing
- Monitor stock
- Track sales
- Track orders
- Manage customer engagement
- Prevent fraud
- Enhance marketing
- Order tracking
1. Automate Pricing
Tired of monitoring and changing prices on the fly? Amazon’s free Automate Pricing automatically adjusts prices against your competition. Use this tool to adjust the prices on SKUs and land products in the Featured Offer, where millions of online shoppers can see them.
2. Monitor stock
In the balancing act of inventory management, you want to maintain enough stock to ship out quickly to customers on demand, but avoid excess inventory. Amazon’s inventory management system is built on a machine learning model and can help take guesswork out of the equation. Use FBA to track sales and receive recommendations on replenishment quantities and ship times. The restock tool can also forecast demand, seasonal trends, and more.
3. Track sales
Keeping track of stock goes hand-in-hand with monitoring sales, and automation can help both processes. See what’s selling, compare to past performance, and spot opportunities for growth with the help of Amazon inventory management. You can also find sales status updates and keep an eye on:
- Charts showing year-to-date sales performances by date range
- Product-level sales
- Top-selling products
4. Track orders
Ecommerce sellers tend to overestimate delivery time by 53%. With shipping automation in Amazon stores, you won’t have to manually estimate transit times. Shipping Setting Automation (SSA) gives you accurate delivery estimates based on warehouse location, customer location, and delivery providers. Once you’ve entered an ASIN into the shipping template, delivery times automatically optimize so you and the customer can track the package’s journey.
ASIN
5. Manage customer engagement
Customer feedback and reviews can quickly become overwhelming if you don’t manage them effectively. The Brand Dashboard allows you to track customer engagement, including reviews. With the Feedback Manager tool, you’re able to:
- Get notifications when customers have questions
- Post public replies
- Use customizable email templates to respond to common questions
- Receive recommended actions for negative reviews
- Request the removal of negative feedback
6. Prevent fraud
Proactively protect customers from fraud by enrolling products in Transparency. This serialization service allows you to track products with unique automated codes to guarantee authenticity. Customers can scan the Transparency code to make sure they’re receiving the right products and view additional product details.
7. Enhance marketing
Marketing emails are a form of ecommerce marketing and you can drastically simplify them with automation software. Set up automated email campaigns for customer communications that occur frequently. Consistent email interactions can help your brand connect with customers, strengthening engagement and loyalty in the process. Through automation, you can:
- Create, modify, and send campaign templates
- Schedule emails to go out at strategic times (for instance, seasonal sales)
- Send product review reminder emails to customers who complete purchases
- Track email open rates, click throughs, and total sends from one interface
Small businesses can reach wide audiences when they take advantage of automation software in Amazon stores.
More resources to automate your ecommerce business
Seller Central Partner Network
The Seller Central Partner Network is where you can find more automation tools for optimizing ads, listing products, and more. The Seller Central Partner Network offers more than 6,200 Amazon-vetted service providers and tools which are used by more than one million sellers worldwide to build, manage, automate, and scale their businesses.
Seller App
The Amazon Seller app is free for Amazon sellers and allows you to manage your ecommerce business from the palm of your hand. You can set instant notifications, watch inventory levels, automate pricing, and find third-party apps to further optimize your workflow—all from your phone.
Selling Partner API
Take automation to the next level with an application programming interface. The Selling Partner API allows you to connect automated systems in order to coordinate processes and sync data. For example, if you have employees who want to update inventory information, the Selling Partner API can help you get around the need for multiple logins.
Transitioning to automation for your ecommerce business can be a complex process
Start by trying one or two automated tasks and see what kind of results they give you.
It can be daunting at first, but automation has the potential to quickly bring you a return on investment for time-consuming operations like matching prices and monitoring inventory. It can even help you reach millions of Amazon shoppers through automated opportunities like the Featured Offer.
We’re able to watch our sales every single day [and] look at our inventory levels.
Ecommerce Automation FAQs
How does ecommerce use marketing automation?
Ecommerce businesses use automation software to simplify repetitive tasks and manual processes so they execute on their own or with minimal maintenance. Tracking sales, monitoring inventory levels, and managing customer engagement are three examples of processes you can improve with automation. You can also make use of existing technology like the variety of automation tools available to sellers in Amazon stores.
How do I automate my ecommerce business?
You can use automation to improve a variety of business functions, from scheduling marketing emails to proactively preventing fraud. Explore this article for tips on how to automate prices, track sales trends, monitor the fulfillment process, and more.
How does automation work in Amazon stores?
Amazon has invested tens of billions in infrastructure and built hundreds of tools and free resources to help sellers like you succeed. Create a storefront to gain access to built-in automation and support. You can also deploy a third-party automation software solution or use Selling Partner API to take automation to the next level.
Is automation legal in Amazon stores?
Many forms of automation are legal in Amazon’s store. We’ve developed automated solutions such as Brand Analytics and the Brand Dashboard to enhance your ability to track sales trends, manage inventory, set prices, and more. You can also find a wide array of third-party apps and software options through the Amazon Seller Central Partner Network.
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