10 Essential Shopify Tasks You Should Automate Using AI
If you’re running an eCommerce business, it can sometimes feel like you’re spinning a lot of plates—in fact, you probably feel like you’re juggling 10 people’s jobs most days.
Webs.org provides free advice on marketing, Internet ads, classified ads, domain names, web hosting and website design. It is brought to you by URLs.net.
As well as managing product listings and all the daily tasks involved in running your site, you’ve also got to worry about everything from getting orders fulfilled and shipped out and managing your inventory to customer service and marketing.
With a to-do list like that, you could do with an extra pair of hands sometimes, right? The good news is, you can have just that, and all without the expense of needing to employ someone or outsourcing.
Even better, your new assistant will work tirelessly 24/7, never need a break, and never take a day off. Say hello to AI, the ultimate sidekick for running your Shopify store.
Let’s look at how you could use AI to save a huge chunk of time, energy, and even money, leaving you more time to focus on the big picture of running your store.
1. Customer Support That Never Sleeps
We live in a digital age where customers are used to easily finding what they want and having it delivered straight to their door, all with a few clicks or taps.
Online customers are notoriously impatient, and not just when it comes to receiving their orders. When they have questions or need support, they want answers straight away. Replying in a day or two won’t cut it, and it could lose you a sale.
However, you can’t be expected to refresh your inbox 24 hours a day, waiting to answer any incoming customer inquiries (after all, you have a business to run). This is exactly where AI chatbot customer service can help.
These helpful bots can integrate with your Shopify store and be on hand any time of the day or night to instantly deal with simple queries like FAQs, tracking orders, and even troubleshooting issues.
Image sourced from tidio.com
Far from the earlier robotic versions, modern AI technology is clever and intuitive, learning from customer interactions and able to provide personalized customer service. There’s not much they can’t do, but for more complex problems that need a human touch, they can escalate to a human agent.
Why Automate It?
- Immediate responses keep customers happy.
- Reduces the load on your human support team.
- Saves costs on hiring extra staff.
2. Personalized Marketing Campaigns
If you want to keep your customers engaged and returning to your store, then personalization is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a necessity. Generic one-size-fits-all emails often miss the mark, leaving customers feeling uninspired or frustrated with receiving irrelevant content.
If you don’t have the time or marketing resources to manually segment your customer database and create tailored campaigns, don’t panic—you can sit back and let AI do the leg work for you.
Modern AI apps can automatically segment your audience based on their behavior, preferences, and purchase history, and even create hyper-personalized email marketing campaigns that speak directly to what they’re most likely to be interested in.
They use this customer data to predict what shoppers are most likely to buy and can then generate personalized email sequences, product recommendations, and even retargeting ads.
Why Automate It?
- Boosts customer engagement and loyalty.
- Increases conversion rates by showing the right message at the right time.
- Cuts down on manual marketing tasks.
3. Inventory Management That Thinks Ahead
When looking to keep the right inventory on hand to meet demand, it can sometimes feel like you need a crystal ball. If you hold too much stock, you’ll be stuck with unsold products you can’t shift. On the other hand, keeping too little could mean you run out of stock on popular items and lose out on sales.
While we can’t look into the future and predict exactly what customers will buy, a close second best can be using AI to help you manage your inventory.
Image created by writer. Data sourced from forts.ai.
AI inventory apps integrate within your Shopify store and use machine learning to predict trends, monitor stock levels, and even automatically reorder products when inventory is low. It’s like having your own virtual supply chain manager!
Why Automate It?
- Reduces human error in stock management.
- Saves you from manual tracking headaches.
- Prevents lost sales due to inventory mishaps.
4. Smart Pricing Strategies
eCommerce is a competitive marketplace, and if you don’t keep your finger on the pulse and get your pricing right, you’ll find yourself either outpriced by the competition or losing valuable profit margins.
But let’s be honest—who has time to sit and trawl through competitor sites analyzing their pricing every day? Even if you could, pricing online can change so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep up.
Use AI tools to automate your pricing. They can sift through competitor pricing and analyze the marketplace in an instant, turning a tedious and time-consuming task into a swift click of your mouse.
Even better, they can automatically adjust the prices on your product listings for you, ensuring your products are always priced competitively and hitting that sweet spot between profit and value.
Why Automate It?
- Keeps your pricing competitive without constant monitoring.
- Maximizes profit margins with data-driven insights.
- Saves hours of manual price-checking.
5. SEO Made Simple
Love it or hate it, if you want your Shopify store to be successful, then search engine optimization (SEO) is an unavoidable task.
However, it can often be a bit of a black hole of time and effort. Just when you think you’ve got your site content and product descriptions optimized to perfection, along comes a new Google update or algorithm change to send your rankings plummeting back down.
With the right tools, you don’t need to be a fully-fledged SEO pro for your products to perform well on search engines.
AI tools and plugins can do the clever work for you, analyzing your Shopify site and offering helpful insights where you can make improvements to boost those rankings.
Screenshot of Yoast in Shopify
From identifying broken links to optimizing meta tags, these tools keep your site search-engine-friendly without you lifting a finger.
Other tools include our product description wizard, which uses advanced algorithms and natural language processing capabilities to rapidly and accurately generate high-quality product descriptions for your products quickly and accurately.
Our wizard not only allows you to automate product descriptions that highlight key features and selling points to save you time and money but also improves the visibility of your product and increases its ranking on search engines. Of course, you can choose the description tone best suited to your brand voice and target audience.
Why Automate It?
- Improves visibility on search engines.
- Drives free, organic traffic to your store.
- Takes the guesswork out of SEO.
6. Order Fulfillment on Autopilot
Is getting orders packed and out the door a logistical nightmare at times for you? If yes, you might want to look at using AI to help automate parts of your order fulfillment process. While they can’t physically pick and pack products for you, they can do just about everything else.
From administrative tasks like label printing, to automatically sending shipping updates to customers, you can integrate AI platforms with Shopify and your preferred couriers to streamline the entire shipping process.
So, you can sit back and enjoy all the benefits of a virtual assistant without needing to hire extra staff.
Why Automate It?
- Speeds up order processing and delivery.
- Keeps customers informed with automated updates.
- Reduces manual errors in shipping.
7. Dynamic Upselling and Cross-Selling
If you’ve ever been tempted by the “Customers Also Bought” feature on Amazon, then you’ll know just how powerful upselling can be when done right. This technology isn’t exclusive to the eCommerce powerhouses, though—you can use it in your store too!
AI tools can use customer behavior to automatically suggest complementary products during checkout. This doesn’t just increase basket-spend and average order value (AOV); it can also add a personal touch and make customers feel like you understand them.
Why Automate It?
- Increases revenue per transaction.
- Enhances the customer shopping experience.
- Runs in the background with no extra effort.
Image source: Screenshot from Amazon UK
8. Customer Reviews and Feedback
Positive customer reviews can be one of the greatest assets to your store. They give customers confidence in your products and you as a seller, and help to build trust—making shoppers who are new to your site more likely to go ahead and make a purchase. Collecting and managing reviews manually can be a time-consuming chore, though.
AI tools can automate the review request process for you, automatically sending friendly reminders to customers after their purchase to leave a review. You can even use AI chatbots or pop-ups to prompt customers to rate their experience straight after a transaction while it is fresh in their mind.
Some tools can even use sentiment analysis to identify common themes in feedback, so you can easily spot any recurring issues and improve your products or service.
Why Automate It?
- Builds social proof to increase conversions.
- Saves time collecting and managing reviews.
- Provides actionable insights for improving your store.
9. Abandoned Cart Recovery
Abandoned carts are a common frustration but don’t necessarily mean you are doing anything wrong; in fact, about 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned. But you don’t have to just accept them—by putting the right steps in place, you can save some of those lost sales.
AI tools can automatically send reminder emails, push notifications, or even SMS messages to nudge customers back to their carts. You can even personalize these reminders with discount codes or free shipping offers to sweeten the deal.
Why Automate It?
- Recovers lost sales effortlessly.
- Personalizes the customer experience.
- Increases your overall revenue.
Image sourced from statista.com
10. Analytics and Reporting
Keeping a constant eye on how your Shopify site is performing is important for understanding where you might need to make any changes.
It could be things like making your pricing more competitive, updating the products you stock, or ramping up your marketing campaigns—being on the ball with spotting any dips in performance or weak areas is key to continually growing your store.
If sitting down for hours manually analyzing data and crunching numbers isn’t your idea of fun, then you can use AI analytics tools to simplify the whole process.
These tools use a data processing pipeline to look at your store’s performance data, identify trends, and highlight areas that need attention. From spotting underperforming products to suggesting optimal pricing strategies or flagging customer behavior shifts, AI tools take the guesswork out of analytics.
Why Automate It?
- Saves time analyzing endless spreadsheets.
- Provides clear, actionable insights.
- Helps you make data-driven decisions.
Work Smarter, Not Harder
Running an eCommerce business is a lot of work. But if you use AI strategically to automate the repetitive admin tasks that suck the time out of your day, you can offload those monotonous jobs and free up your time to focus on actually growing your business.
You might even find that AI automation improves some of your processes, making your store run just that bit slicker and more efficiently. So, why wait? Start automating these essential tasks today and watch your Shopify store thrive with less stress and more success.
The post 10 Essential Shopify Tasks You Should Automate Using AI appeared first on .