Running any type of business always takes more time than initially planned. Just like other businesses, dropshipping businesses have a lot of details that you need to manage effectively for your business to run smoothly.
Fortunately, you can grow your dropshipping business continuously without having to add more hours to your normal workday. This allows you enough time for other tasks and family and friends as well.
The key to achieving this success lies in implementing automated workflows. This allows you to use your time better instead of engaging in detailed, tedious, and repetitive tasks that can be automated.
So, what can you automate in a dropshipping business? Here is the ultimate guide to automated workflows for hands-off dropshipping;
Adding Products To Your Store
The first step to take when automating workflows for your dropshipping business is to automate the process of adding products to your store. You can get different software applications that make this process easy.
Automating this process means that the tools you choose can take either single or bulk products from your suppliers and add them to your marketplaces such as Shopify and eBay, among others. This takes a very short time compared to doing it manually.
The tools will also add all the required details for you, such as product specifications, descriptions, photos, and title, among others. You can even schedule the addition of products to target sales or even events.
Order Processing
Let us assume that you have just started your dropshipping business. A few months down the line, your business is doing very well and you are processing over one hundred orders every day. How long would it take you to handle these orders manually?
Well, you will not even be able to process the orders on the same day. This may lead to delays and inventory problems that might leave your customers frustrated. This is poor customer service and might make your customers stop working with you.
To improve customer service, you can automate order processing. Using automation tools, you need to set up your processing rules and let the tools do the work for you. This can speed up the process and ensure that all orders are processed immediately.
Listing Optimization
Those who have been running a dropshipping business understand how frustrating and tedious it can be to manually optimize the listing of their products. Fortunately, you can use automation tools for dropshipping to do this for you.
All you need to do is to provide the tools with the rules you need them to follow when optimizing your product listing.
Some tools can use the templates you have in your store returns and policies, meaning that you do not have to worry about the rules. However, if you want to be specific about your optimization, then make sure that you have guided the tools.
Inventory
Now that you have automated the addition of products to your store, you need to automatically get notifications regarding inventory issues. For instance, you need to know when a product goes out of stock to remove it from your shop.
What do you think would be the reaction of your customers when they place an order but then you have to tell them that the product is out of stock? This would push some of them to your competitors.
Automation ensures that changes are tracked in real-time and that your store is updated to avoid having any products on display when they are out of stock.
Shipping, Tracking, and Feedback
You might have to charge your customers some shipping fees depending on the product they have ordered from you. Make sure that this process is automated so that the shipping fees are calculated and added to the final price automatically.
After processing an order, you need to dispatch it to the owner. Some customers will not just sit and wait for the product to reach them. You also do not need to receive calls all the time from customers asking where their products are. You can automate your tracking process for customers to follow their products without calling or involving you.
Finally, you also need to automate customer feedback. This is an important part of every business today since modern customers are looking at the experience of other customers before working with a business. You can create an automated messaging system that encourages your customers to tell you about their experiences.
