Ecommerce sites without autoresponders are doomed!

It’s hard to believe that some ecommerce businesses still don’t use autoresponders to automatically reply to customers. There are a whole host of uses for autoresponders. For ecommerce, they should be used to confirm certain actions such as a sale, despatch, delivery and refund; along with acknowledging things like returns, customer support enquiries, etc.

Recently, I placed an order for a present for someone and paid by Paypal. I checked my email but had received nothing other than the Paypal receipt. “Where’s the order confirmation from the site I ordered from?” I thought. A couple of days later I sent them an email to chase and they replied cheerily: “Oh you should have received an email confirmation from Paypal! Your order has been despatched…”.

Hmm, what they didn’t even register was that I should also have received an email from their store when I placed the order and another when the order was despatched – instead I was left wondering if the order had been received and processed by the shop itself.

The ecommerce businesses that will survive are the ones who keep up with customer expectations and current online retail trends.