3+ Ways Technology & Apps Can Streamline Your Online eCommerce Store
The technology required to make eCommerce work is remarkable in itself.
Go back just a few decades and tell people about today’s online retail scene –
- same-day delivery in some areas,
- seamless mobile accessibility,
- intuitive content management systems,
- one-click purchasing,
- and secure international selling.
It would have sounded magical.
By now we take those things for granted because they’re standardized. They underpin our favorite retail sites — and, of course, our retail websites.
But technology can do more than just make your product pages function and let you work from your living room.
It can help you take your online eCommerce store to the next level, streamlining its operation and marketing efforts.
Today, in this piece of article, we’re going to look at five ways in which today’s technology and apps can take your merchant business to the next level.
Let’s get to them –
Table of Contents
1. You can Add a Live Chatbot on Your WooCommerce Website
Dealing with customer support issues is one of the biggest challenges for an e-commerce store owner, mainly because these issues can be submitted at any time.
If someone wants some help in the middle of the night but can’t get it (because office hours are done), it will reduce the chance of them going on to make an order related to that query.
Due to technology, though, you can easily add a live eCommerce chatbot to field basic queries.
Will it convincingly portray a real person? No, not even close — but it doesn’t need to.
All it needs to do is answer common questions (like “Can I get [product X] in different sizes?”) and keep track of any significant problems so they can be addressed when real assistants are available.
2. You can Dropship More Items to Make Money Online
Dropshipping allows online sellers to skip all the practical work of selling by passing it to third-party suppliers.
The idea is very simple: you list third-party products on your site with the prices marked up, and when orders are placed, they go directly to the suppliers for fulfillment. They take the original estimates, and you profit from that markup.
Because it’s so easy to do, dropshipping — alongside practices like bulk-buying and print-on-demand — is one of the most common home business ideas.
All you need is a website with a CMS that can hook into a drop shipping supply service, and you can start listing products. A great way for streamlining your business is because every item you dropship will take no work to ship.
Find the right mix of dropshipping and regular shipping, and you’ll be in a good position.
3. You can Optimize Social Posting To Pitch Right Products At Right Time
Using social media is a vital part of modern digital marketing, but it can be an exhausting task because the pace is relentless.
If you can’t keep up, your posts will get lost in the noise — so how do you manage it?
You could hire more people to post all day every day, but that isn’t likely to be financially justified. You need an alternative.
That’s where social marketing tool like Crowdfire comes in.
You can use it to schedule posts ahead of time and even recycle them at the most appropriate moments.
Instead of waiting by your smartphone throughout the day, you can create tweet-sized chunks in bulk and let them be automatically formatted to suit different platforms.
4. You can Automate Surveys to Address Any Issues or Concerns
Getting customer feedback is a huge deal when you’re trying to run a praiseworthy eCommerce store because you need to keep changing over time to keep up with the zeitgeist.
If you don’t know what your customers think of your service, how can you tell whether you’re making the right changes?
But manually requesting feedback is time-consuming.
That’s why you should automate your feedback-gathering using email surveys that trigger at appropriate times after people have purchased from your site.
For instance, you might have a basic quiz that goes out after a week, and a detailed one that goes out after a month.
Services like WPForms are what you need, but it depends on what integrations your CMS supports! Here WPForms is compatible with WordPress.
So find something that will sync smoothly, and you shouldn’t have too many issues.
Final Note On Online Apps to Increase Sales and Streamline E-Commerce Operations
With every year that passes, eCommerce merchants are provided with more exciting and useful ways to improve their operations to make more revenue.
If you’re not keeping an eye on the latest developments and making good use of them, you won’t last long against your competition.
Try the suggestions we picked out here. You won’t regret it. 🙂
