Shopify Flow: Introduction and Benefits

We will cover following topics

• What is Shopify Flow?
• How does Shopify Flow Work?
• Benefits of Using Shopify Flow
• Why Use Shopify Flow?

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Setting up a Shopify store offers multiple opportunities to scale your business and enjoy various opportunities and convenient features as a merchant. However, you might need help handling numerous orders, stock monitoring, and many other processes on your own. 

Moreover, taking care of such repetitive tasks can significantly limit the time and resources dedicated to generating new ideas, implementing new custom features, and boosting your efficiency. Is there a way to solve this? Process automation comes in handy right away. This is an excellent solution if you're not yet ready to hire new employees or want to manage most of the processes independently.

The good news is you don't even have to search for a reliable automation tool to manage your daily tasks, as Shopify Flow is here to help. It's a relatively new platform represented by the Shopify team, and it's now fully available for free to every user. 

So, what are Shopify Flows and how to implement task automation into your business operations? In this article, we've gathered the main advantages you'll get by using this one platform together with your active Shopify store page. Shall we?

What is Shopify Flow?

Before we get to the best part, let's learn some basics. So, what is Shopify Flow? 

This is a native Shopify tool that allows you to generate fully automated custom workflows and automated related tasks. This way, you can simplify running your online store and trust multiple processes to Shopify Flow.

Here are some examples of what you can automate using the tool: 

• Auditing products that are out of stock or low on stock
• Preventing suspicious transactions and sending automatic alerts to your fraud or security team
• Customer tagging based on their purchase history and behavior
• Adding third-party reward systems that enable new features for customers

Since the official Shopify Flow app has yet to get more customer reviews, we've made a quick roundup of its main perks and features, together with the key reasons to install it for your online store. Thanks to the platform, you can eliminate the need to track product availability and remove them from the store when necessary — Shopify Flow will take care of this.

How does Shopify Flow Work?

Now that you know more about what Shopify Flow is, let's see how it works and how you can generate automated workflows.

Accessing the service

You can get a Shopify Flow app from the official Shopify App Store and instantly integrate it with your store. It has to appear on your dashboard — this is how you know you're good to go. There are no complex interface elements or features, so you won't need additional skills to handle the platform. 

To see how the automation process works, you can start with the default templates provided by Shopify. These templates can also help you figure out how to automate more complex tasks in the future. 

For instance, both new merchants and experienced Shopify users should look at the high-risk restock workflow as it's one of the most necessary in managing the store. This flow automatically denies accepting high-risk orders, restocks the SKUs, and sends a respective cancellation email to the customer. No other third-party apps or tools are needed. 

Key Shopify Flow components

Do you need to set up your workflows properly? Three main components in the Shopify Flow app come in handy: Triggers, Conditions, and Actions. There, you specify a trigger, which conditions you need to implement, and then what task or action the system has to complete considering the first two parameters. 

Let's do a quick overview of each parameter in more detail:

• Triggers are events that start the workflow and that can happen in your Shopify store or app (e.g., a new order). You'll find nine default triggers in Shopify Flow, but you can add more using third-party apps.
• Conditions show whether someone takes action you specified (e.g., the total order price exceeded a particular amount)
• Actions are changes that have been made once the system met a particular condition (e.g., a customer who made a specific order received a particular tag)

As you set up a new workflow, Shopify Flow will allow you to edit its details, activate or deactivate it, add the necessary tags, and provide extra conditions. 

Shopify Flow use cases

There are multiple ways of using Shopify Flow that can help you quickly react to various customer requests or actions. We've made a brief category breakdown — this will help you realize which processes need to be automated.  

Inventory

• Placing tags on items that are out of stock
• Removing items that are out of stock from the store
• Sending internal emails to your team when particular products are low or out of stock 

Product promotion

• Tracking the effectiveness of promo codes
• Conversion rate optimization
• Sending internal emails after receiving large orders
• Installing third-party loyalty apps or tools to expand the store's functionality

Customer categorization

• Sorting customers by their purchasing habits, zip codes, email addresses, order history, IP address, etc.
• Creating multiple customer tiers based on their lifetime spending
• Including customers in special marketing campaigns

Orders and products

• Sending an email to employees whenever a customer places an order or asks for a refund
• Informing employees about suspiciously large orders
• Automatically adding new products to the store's specific collections by using keywords in the product description

Benefits of Using Shopify Flow

As an E-Commerce store owner, you can benefit from using Shopify Flow in many ways. Take a look at some key benefits you'll get by implementing the tool in your daily operations.

Time efficiency 

The Shopify Flow app is a universal tool that can help boost your productivity and save a bunch of time on hiring new people or completing daily repetitive tasks on your own. The app is now free for every Shopify user, so you can access it anytime and get the most out of process automation with no hassle.

High level of customization

Although Shopify Flow offers default templates, you can easily set up your workflows that fit your primary needs at the moment. Moreover, you can quickly edit them and add new ones, giving you total freedom in automation management.

Great for business scaling

As you grow your Shopify marketplace, you get more tasks and must go through complex processes. Shopify Flow will help you automate some of them, saving you enough time and resources to handle new challenges, take care of more important tasks, and grow your business while the key processes keep running independently.

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Why Use Shopify Flow?

Shopify Flow can significantly help any merchant. Apart from its practicality, ease of use, and helpful templates, there are plenty of other reasons you will enjoy it once you integrate the platform with your online shop. Let's have a look at some of the most prominent ones.

Minimal or zero risks of human error

Setting up automated workflows for your routine tasks will help you avoid plenty of manual mistakes you can simply lose sight of. Now, you can forget about sending an email to the wrong customer or losing track of orders. However, it's vital to add the proper setups to a workflow to make sure the automation process is running the way you intended.

Easier business management

One of the main perks of using Shopify Flow is the opportunity to focus on high-priority tasks and spare much more time for ideation and improving customer experience on your Shopify page. By automating routine tasks, you'll also save a lot of time in general. Just think of how much time you used to spend every day on repetitive tasks related to order processing or sending out letters to customers. 

Setting up multiple conditions and actions

The main task of process automation is to help minimize the time spent on as many tasks as possible. That's why Shopify Flow allows you to launch several conditions and actions. Hence, you'll get the chance to automate more tasks and categorize actions and requests from your customers.

Final Thoughts

Shopify Flow is a relatively new tool introduced to every Shopify store owner that can be a real lifesaver if you handle multiple processes simultaneously. This is a convenient and reliable platform that allows you to automate a wide range of tasks you face every day. Even if you're just thinking of starting your own business in E-Commerce, Shopify Flow can be of great help.

This feature is also time- and cost-effective. It can save you countless hours and up to thousands of dollars per month on micromanagement or hiring extra staff. Hence, you can increase productivity and focus on high-priority processes related to your online shop. Moreover, automating all your routine tasks will exclude human error, and with proper Shopify Flow setups, you'll forget about most issues you were facing before.

Our Shopify development company is always looking for new tools and features that facilitate handling any Shopify store and implementing them upon your request. We can also help optimize and increase the efficiency of any process to make things even smoother for you. 

If you are looking for cooperation opportunities to boost your online marketplace with the Shopify Flow app, feel free to contact our team, and we'll gladly help you out.