Ecommerce Automation – Make it Work For Your Business

Internet marketing gurus disagree often. But one thing they do agree on is that you should automate as much of your business as possible.

Think about all the different things you have to do in a day.

1) You have to process orders and inquiries.

2) You have to send out email to stay in touch with customers and prospects.

3) Manage your affiliate program.

4) Track your search engine rankings.

5) Write ad copy.

The list goes on and on.

You have three choices for each task. You can do the work yourself. You can pay someone else to do it. Or you can automate the process.

If you do the work yourself, you’ll devote time and attention and energy to routine functions.

And while you're doing the routine business tasks, you can't be developing your site, lining up new products and vendors, or forming strategic alliances.

You can pay to have it done for you, either by hiring someone to do it in house, or by hiring a contractor and outsourcing it. But this usually costs more money than doing it yourself and introduces a world of headaches.

There are the regulation headaches. You have to be sure that you comply with payroll tax regulations and fair labor standards laws. You have to make sure that the contractor relationships you have meet legal tests.

And there are supervision headaches. You've got to hire and fire. You've got to supervise, checking on work to make sure it's done right. It can take as much time as doing it yourself.

Automating processes gives you the best of all the worlds. For one thing, software is more reliable than people for routine tasks. And it's available 24/7, which is good for you and your customers.

Automation eliminates the hassles of supervision and of managing vendor relationships. And it frees you up to spend time on activities that grow your business and your profit.

So take a look around your business and figure out what you can automate. Here are some things to consider.

1) Automate your order processing. You need a shopping cart that will handle most customer orders automatically.

The shopping cart should also maintain customer records and make it easy for you to download information to your computer, database programs, and accounting software.

2) Automate your e-zine and newsletter signups. Your email marketing system should handle subscribe and unsubscribe requests automatically, and keep all these subscribers in a simple to use database.

3) Automate your system of sending information to customers and prospects. Autoreponder software can respond to requests for information. You can also use it to create courses that are delivered by a series of emails.

4) Automate as much fulfillment as possible. If you ship electronic products, look for a shopping cart that lets customers get their product right after purchase. If you ship physical products, look for a system that helps you create labels and other shipping documents automatically.

5) Automate the signups and record keeping for your affiliate program. Make sure that your software can download information to your accounting software and that your payment systems are automated, too.

Now you've got two basic choices for software and services to help you automate. You can purchase individual programs or you can purchase an integrated shopping cart service that includes them all.

Individual programs may have distinct features and strengths, but you will have to do the work of making sure that all your programs work together. That can eat up your time whenever one program vendor comes up with a new version.

For most businesses, using a high-powered, integrated ecommerce shopping cart software is the best choice.

The cart software vendor carries the load for coordination and technical support and the pieces of your marketing system work together seamlessly.

Automating as much of your business as possible improves your profit and frees you up to spend time on getting more business or developing products. It's a smart strategic choice.