Website Automation - Getting More Done

November 28, 2006

Many of us who work on the internet these days are one-man shows. Speaking for myself, I have people doing work for me throughout the country, but locally in my office I am currently the only person. As any sole business owner can attest to, running a business this way makes you a true jack of all trades. In any given day, I am responding to emails, shipping orders, doing client development work, handling issues on the website, doing statistics, etc etc etc. Now, I am in the process of finding an assistant, but there are ways which you can use technology to assist yourself in performing the work of more than one worker.

I am speaking of automation, and there is nothing better than putting your web server and computer to work for you. Make your website actually perform some work for you rather than you working for the website all the time. Let’s look at some ways you could automate tasks.

Responding to Emails

One of the things I have to do every day is respond to emails regarding internet orders, product inquiries, etc. All of the emails fall into certain categories, all of which I could send basically the same blob of text to to answer their question. Typing a response to each inquiry is tedious and time consuming. A better way is to set up a library of responses which you can then use to reply with at the click of the mouse. The way you do this depends on how you handle your email. If you deal with your email in a traditional email client like Microsoft Outlook, then you are going to need something that runs locally, probably integrated into Outlook. Here are a few options:

If you don’t use Outlook, you can search Google for some options for your particular mail client. If you want to set up a messaging system on your website to handle large volumes of email and have staff handle it, you might want to check out Cerberus Helpdesk. This system takes emails sent to an email address and inserts them into a database. Then you can handle the message via the web-based system, assign it to departments, reply with templates, have full history, etc. Another option is to get a custom-coded solution tailored to your business.

The point here is to allow you to briskly handle a large volume of email without having to type each one by hand. You want to sound personal, but be quick in reply.

Keeping in Touch with Customers

If you conduct sales on the internet, use the power of your web server to automatically keep your customers in touch with their order without you having to take the time to email them. When they make an order, the system should send them a “thank you” and receipt automatically. Their order should then be queued to accounting to be sure the invoice is properly entered in your accounting software. It should then be queued for shipping. When a shipment is made, the customer should be sent an email automatically notifying them of shipment. If you use tracking, the system emails them their tracking number automatically.

Properly set up, any ordering system on the internet should be a well-oiled machine, able to deal with large order volume, keeping all customers informed, and the whole thing be operated by a single person.

Problem and Solution

The key to getting more done is automation. It is sitting back, taking a broad look at the situation, what is required, and then designing a system that will get it done. In other words, you design a solution to fit the problem. For many, this will involve hiring a website programmer to tailor a solution to fit your business. Sometimes you can find out-of-box solutions to fit the problem.

To expand your business and not be dragged down by the administration of it all, you need to automate. You need to create systems to get the work done; systems which can be operated by anybody regardless of intelligence. I don’t mean to sound rude at all, but if you design your business systems in such a way that it can be run by anybody, then your business is more independent and not directly tied to you and your knowledge to operate. And that’s the point - you want your business to produce for you. You don’t want your life to become all business. So, to do this, you start to look at your business strategically and in terms of automating everything that can be automated.

If just so happens that in the web business, a web server is sitting there waiting to do whatever it is commanded to do. Put the right code on there and your web server can perform work for you, not just sit there and host your webpages.