Google Sheets stands as one of the most widely utilized online tools, forming an indispensable component of countless e-commerce businesses. Its intuitive interface allows for efficient organization of store data into rows and columns, facilitating calculations and structured data management.
However, the primary challenge with tasks involving Google Sheets often boils down to time constraints. As an e-commerce business grows and generates more data, the manual effort required to manage these sheets becomes increasingly burdensome and time-consuming.
Imagine a scenario where your data could organize itself, freeing you from repetitive manual updates. If this sounds appealing, you've come to the right place. This article aims to introduce you to the transformative potential of Google Sheets automation.
Here, you will discover 22 practical Make.com templates designed to inspire and enable you to automate various e-commerce tasks that involve Google Sheets. These solutions can significantly enhance your operational efficiency and accuracy.
Shopify and WooCommerce
Given that Shopify and WooCommerce are two of the most prevalent e-commerce platforms, this initial section of our guide focuses exclusively on automating tasks within these ecosystems using Google Sheets. We will demonstrate how to leverage Make.com to seamlessly integrate and automate data flows between these platforms and your spreadsheets.
It's important to note that while these examples specifically highlight Shopify and WooCommerce, many of the underlying automation principles and templates can be adapted for use with other e-commerce platforms, such as PrestaShop or Magento. The core concepts of data synchronization and task automation remain broadly applicable across different systems.
1. Save New Paid Shopify Orders to a Google Sheets Spreadsheet
Manually transcribing order data into a spreadsheet can be an incredibly tedious and error-prone process. This automation template is designed to eliminate that manual effort entirely, ensuring your order records are always up-to-date and accurate.
The system works by continuously monitoring your Shopify store for any new orders that have been successfully paid. Once a new paid order is detected, Make.com automatically extracts the relevant order details and populates them into the specific columns you've designated within your Google Sheet. This means you can say goodbye to CSV file exports and manual data entry, freeing up valuable time and reducing the risk of mistakes.
This streamlined process ensures that your financial and inventory records are consistently synchronized, providing a real-time overview of your sales performance without any extra effort on your part. It's a game-changer for maintaining organized and accurate business data.
2. Add Products to Shopify from New Google Sheets Rows
While Shopify offers a user-friendly interface for creating new products, the process can become time-consuming when dealing with bulk uploads or migrating products from another platform. Manually adding dozens or hundreds of products one by one is inefficient and prone to errors.
This is where Make.com steps in to handle the heavy lifting. The provided template automates the product creation process on Shopify directly from data stored in your Google Sheets. Simply populate your spreadsheet with product details such as names, descriptions, prices, and inventory levels, and the automation will take care of the rest.
This solution is particularly beneficial for businesses looking to quickly launch new product lines, update existing product information in bulk, or seamlessly transfer their catalog. It eliminates the need for manual data entry, saving significant time and ensuring consistency across your product listings.
3. Google Sheets Rows to Shopify Articles
Many e-commerce businesses might not realize that Google Sheets can effectively function as a lightweight Content Management System (CMS), especially for platforms like Shopify. This innovative approach allows you to manage your website's articles and content in a familiar spreadsheet environment.
By granting your content creation team access to a shared Google Sheet, they can easily manage all your website articles, including blog posts, informational pages, or product-related content. Make.com then monitors this Google Sheet for new rows or updates.
Whenever new content is added to a row in the spreadsheet, Make.com automatically creates a corresponding new article on your Shopify store. This streamlines the content publishing workflow, making it simple to generate snippets, product descriptions, reviews, and other textual content without needing direct access to the Shopify backend.
4. Send Abandoned Cart Information to Google Sheets
Abandoned carts represent a significant challenge for any e-commerce business, indicating lost sales opportunities. Effectively addressing this issue requires two key steps: meticulously tracking abandoned carts and understanding the underlying reasons why customers leave the checkout page without completing their purchase.
While this problem might appear technically complex, you don't necessarily need to hire a developer to tackle it. The following Make.com template provides a straightforward solution. It continuously monitors your Shopify store for newly abandoned carts and, upon detection, automatically extracts all relevant data for each instance.
This data is then seamlessly added to a new row in a designated Google Sheet. This process furnishes you with a clear, organized overview of abandoned cart incidents, enabling you to analyze trends, identify common pain points, and ultimately pinpoint potential reasons for cart abandonment, empowering you to take corrective actions.
5. Get Shopify Discount Codes from Google Sheets
Discount codes are a powerful tool for driving sales and attracting new customers. However, the excitement of offering unique promotions can quickly diminish when faced with the tedious task of manually generating individual codes for each customer.
This is where automation becomes invaluable. Instead of painstakingly creating codes one by one, you can streamline the entire process. With the Make.com template provided, all you need to do is compile your list of desired discount codes within a Google Sheet.
Once your codes are listed, Make.com will automatically retrieve each new row from the Google Sheet and, for each entry, create a corresponding discount code directly within your Shopify store. This automation simplifies the management of promotional campaigns, making it incredibly easy to implement unique, customer-specific offers without manual intervention.
6. Add Order Tracking Codes to Google Sheets and Update the Orders on Shopify
Order tracking codes are highly valued by customers, providing a crucial sense of security and transparency regarding their purchases. For e-commerce businesses, these codes are equally important as they significantly reduce the volume of customer inquiries about order status, freeing up valuable time for customer support teams.
Typically, tracking numbers are generated by the courier service once a product has been shipped. However, the manual process of adding these numbers to each corresponding order in Shopify can be time-consuming and repetitive. This automation template is designed to maximize the efficiency of this critical workflow.
You can create a Google Sheets spreadsheet containing all your customer orders (a process that can itself be automated using the first template in this guide). Within this sheet, you'll include a dedicated column for tracking numbers. When a tracking number is added or updated in this column, Make.com will detect the change and automatically update the corresponding order in Shopify. This ensures customers can track their orders seamlessly, while your team enjoys a much-needed break from constant status inquiries.
7. Add New WooCommerce Customers to Google Sheets and Subscribe Them to AWeber
Email marketing is a cornerstone of e-commerce success, offering a direct channel for customer engagement and sales. For online stores, the most valuable source of email addresses comes from customers who make purchases, many of whom opt-in to receive promotional communications.
However, manually transferring customer data from WooCommerce to an email marketing platform like AWeber can be challenging and inefficient, especially at scale. This is precisely where automation proves its worth. The provided Make.com template streamlines this entire process from start to finish, ensuring a smooth and error-free data flow.
The automation works by continuously monitoring your WooCommerce store for new customer registrations or purchases. Upon detecting a new customer, Make.com automatically extracts their relevant data, adds it to a designated Google Sheet for centralized record-keeping, and then seamlessly subscribes them to your AWeber email list. This ensures your marketing efforts are always up-to-date and targeted effectively.
8. Update WooCommerce Order Status with Data from Google Sheets
Are you tired of the repetitive task of logging into your WooCommerce store to manually update order statuses from "Paid" to "Shipped"? Imagine the inefficiency when you need to update the status of twenty or more orders simultaneously. Traditionally, this would involve opening each order individually and making the change, a process that is far from efficient.
This automation offers a much more streamlined approach. By centralizing all your order data in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, you can leverage Google Sheets' quick search and bulk editing capabilities. Simply locate an order and update its status in the designated "Status" column, or even copy-paste the same status across multiple orders.
Once these changes are made in your Google Sheet, the Make.com template automatically detects them and reflects these updates across your WooCommerce store. The result is a significant reduction in time spent on repetitive administrative tasks and a notable decrease in potential errors, all thanks to the power of automation.
9. Save New ShipStation Orders to Google Sheets
ShipStation is an invaluable tool for optimizing e-commerce shipping and fulfillment processes. However, for effective logistics management, it's crucial to ensure that shipping information is readily accessible and shareable among all team members. This allows everyone to quickly check the status of any given order whenever necessary, fostering transparency and coordination.
An efficient way to achieve this shared visibility is by automatically storing data from new ShipStation orders in a centralized Google Sheets spreadsheet. This provides a single source of truth that all team members can access and reference.
The best part is that implementing this solution requires minimal effort on your part. The provided Make.com template handles all the configuration and implementation, seamlessly transferring new order data from ShipStation directly into your Google Sheet. This automation ensures that your team is always informed without any manual data entry or complex setup.
10. Retrieve New WooCommerce Coupons and Send Them to a List of Customers
Coupons are a fantastic way to attract new customers and re-engage existing ones. However, the process of creating individual coupon codes and then setting up and sending out corresponding emails can be surprisingly time-consuming and involve multiple steps. This manual effort can often deter businesses from running frequent or highly personalized coupon campaigns.
The automation solution presented here is designed to significantly reduce this complexity. It streamlines the entire coupon management and distribution process. First, the automation handles the creation of the coupons themselves within WooCommerce. Once generated, these new coupons are automatically stored in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, providing a centralized record for tracking and analysis.
Finally, the system automatically sends out an email to your specified customer list, incorporating the newly generated coupon code into a pre-defined template. This end-to-end automation makes coupon campaigns incredibly easy to manage, ensuring that your promotions reach the right audience efficiently.
11. Create a Mailchimp Campaign for a New Ecommerce Product
Launching new products in your e-commerce store is undoubtedly an exciting endeavor, but its success largely depends on effective communication. If your customers aren't aware of your new offerings, the effort put into development and listing can go unnoticed. Email campaigns are a proven method for announcing new products, yet the manual process of creating a campaign, gathering product information, and designing the email can be quite time-intensive.
This template is designed to put this entire process on autopilot. It leverages Make.com to seamlessly connect your product data with your email marketing efforts. The automation works by retrieving new product information as soon as it's added to a designated Google Sheet.
Once the product details are captured, they are automatically passed to Mailchimp, where a new email campaign is created based on a pre-configured template. This means your new product announcements can be drafted and sent out with minimal manual intervention, ensuring your customers are always in the loop.
12. Update Inventory Numbers on Google Sheets Based on Shopify Orders
Inventory tracking can often feel like a daunting task for e-commerce businesses. Manually updating inventory quantities after every single purchase is not only lengthy and inefficient but also a critical component for anyone selling physical products online. Errors in manual updates can lead to overselling, stockouts, and dissatisfied customers.
This automation provides a robust solution to this challenge. It allows you to maintain a master inventory list within a Google Sheets spreadsheet, detailing all the items you sell and their available quantities. The real power comes from its ability to automatically update these quantities whenever your Shopify store receives a new order.
By implementing this workflow, you can effectively take the burden of manual inventory management off your shoulders. The system ensures that your inventory data is always accurate and synchronized in real-time, preventing discrepancies and allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.
13. Add New Square Refunds to a Google Sheets Spreadsheet
One common oversight in many e-commerce platforms is the lack of a built-in, comprehensive refund-tracking feature. This is often because refund processes are typically handled directly within the payment gateway used for the original transaction. However, for effective financial management and product analysis, it's crucial to have a centralized way to track these refunds.
Understanding refund patterns can reveal valuable insights, such as identifying products that frequently lead to returns. This automation addresses this gap by monitoring your chosen payment gateway for any new refunds. Once a refund is detected, all the pertinent information—such as transaction details, product returned, and refund amount—is automatically extracted.
This data is then seamlessly added to a designated Google Sheets spreadsheet. It's important to note that while the example mentions Square, this automation can be easily adapted to work with other popular payment gateways like PayPal or Stripe, providing a flexible solution for comprehensive refund tracking.
14. Update Squarespace Products with Data from Google Sheets
Similar to users of Shopify and WooCommerce, Squarespace store owners often find themselves grappling with the cumbersome process of updating product information via CSV files. This method, while functional, can be time-consuming and prone to errors, especially when dealing with frequent updates or large product catalogs.
However, there's a more efficient alternative: directly updating your Squarespace products using data from Google Sheets. This automation eliminates the need for manual CSV imports and exports, streamlining your product management workflow significantly.
By setting up a connection through Make.com, you can maintain your product details—such as pricing, descriptions, images, and inventory levels—within a familiar Google Sheet. Any changes or new entries in this sheet can then be automatically pushed to your Squarespace store, ensuring your online catalog is always current and accurate with minimal effort.
Customer Support Automation for Ecommerce
15. Add Emails from Shopify Customers to Google Sheets
Maintaining a well-organized email database is a proactive measure that can safeguard your business against unexpected customer service challenges and requires minimal setup. In the fast-paced world of e-commerce, customers frequently reach out with inquiries about their orders, return requests, or refund statuses.
If your email inbox becomes cluttered and unmanaged, it's easy for important messages to get overlooked, potentially leading to delayed responses and a negative impact on your brand's reputation. This automation provides a robust solution to keep your customer communications organized.
It intelligently filters incoming emails based on specific conditions you define (e.g., keywords like "order status" or "return request") and automatically stores these relevant emails in a designated Google Sheets spreadsheet. This centralized system ensures that you and your team can easily track and prioritize customer inquiries, enabling prompt and efficient responses.
16. Save New Typeform Entries to Google Sheets
Is the contact form on your e-commerce store constantly being bombarded by spammers attempting to peddle unwanted products or services? This common issue arises because traditional HTML contact forms are often targets for spam bots that crawl the internet, exploiting them for their nefarious purposes.
A highly effective solution to combat this problem is to embed a Typeform on your e-commerce website. Typeforms are not only highly customizable, allowing you to capture any specific information you require from your customers, but they also offer enhanced spam protection. Crucially, Make.com can automatically funnel all submissions from these Typeforms directly into a Google Sheets spreadsheet for easy bulk analysis.
Since Typeforms are embedded and not standard HTML forms, spam bots are typically unable to detect them. This ensures that only genuine customers will be able to submit messages, allowing you to bid farewell to form spammers once and for all and focus on legitimate customer interactions.
Marketing Automation for Ecommerce
17. Post New Shopify Products on Social Media
This automation is designed to effortlessly promote your new products across your social media channels the moment they are added to your Shopify store. It eliminates the manual effort involved in creating separate social media posts for each new item, ensuring consistent and timely promotion.
The workflow begins with Make.com continuously monitoring your Shopify store for any new product additions. Once a new product is detected, the automation extracts all relevant data, such as the product name, description, images, and pricing, and records it in a Google Sheet for your records.
Subsequently, this product data is sent to a social media management platform like Buffer, where it can be automatically published or scheduled across your connected social media accounts. These posts can be rich with product images, detailed descriptions, and other pertinent information, providing an engaging way to announce new arrivals and drive traffic to your store.
18. Save New Facebook Lead Ads Leads to Google Sheets
Facebook Lead Ads are an excellent mechanism for generating new leads for your e-commerce business. However, the subsequent process of extracting and organizing the collected lead data can often be a tedious and time-consuming manual task. This repetitive data transfer can slow down your sales cycle and introduce potential for errors.
Make.com provides a straightforward solution to automate this entire workflow, ensuring that your lead data is efficiently managed. With a simple template, you can configure Make.com to automatically funnel all new lead data collected from your Facebook Lead Ads directly into a designated Google Sheets spreadsheet.
This automation eliminates the need for manual downloads and data entry, allowing you to quickly access, review, and act upon your new leads. By streamlining this process, you can significantly reduce administrative overhead and accelerate your lead nurturing efforts.
19. Send Records from Google Sheets to Facebook Custom Audiences
The strategic use of social media advertising automation can be incredibly powerful for e-commerce businesses. This particular template offers a prime example of how to leverage automation to enhance your retargeting efforts and optimize your ad spend.
The automation works by tracking all your new Shopify customers within a Google Sheets spreadsheet. As new customer records are added to this sheet, Make.com automatically extracts their information and seamlessly adds them to a Facebook Custom Audience. This allows you to create highly targeted ad campaigns specifically aimed at your recent buyers, fostering repeat purchases and brand loyalty.
Furthermore, this workflow can be significantly enhanced by segmenting your customers based on their purchase history. By adding data to specific custom audiences corresponding to the products a customer has bought, you can deliver even more personalized and effective retargeting ads, maximizing your return on ad spend.
Accounting and Sales Automation for Ecommerce
20. Create New Zoho Invoices from Google Sheets Rows
Are you looking for ways to streamline your invoicing process using Google Sheets? This automation provides an excellent solution for e-commerce businesses to improve efficiency and accuracy in their billing operations.
The core idea is to leverage your organized order data within a Google Sheets spreadsheet. This template is designed to retrieve specific order details from your sheet and then automatically create a corresponding invoice using the Zoho Invoice application. This eliminates the need for manual data entry into your accounting software, reducing the potential for errors and saving considerable time.
Once the invoice is generated, it is automatically sent to the customer's email address, which is also pulled from your Google Sheet. This end-to-end automation ensures that customers receive their invoices promptly and can easily make payments with a simple click, enhancing both your operational efficiency and customer experience.
21. Create a Sales Receipt in QuickBooks from Google Sheets Data
For many e-commerce businesses, the process of onboarding new customers often involves recording their details in Google Sheets, while financial transactions necessitate creating invoices or sales receipts in accounting software like QuickBooks. These two tasks, though distinct, are fundamentally linked and often involve redundant data entry.
Recognizing this, merging these operations through automation becomes a clear choice for saving time and accelerating overall business processes. This workflow is designed to bridge the gap between your customer data in Google Sheets and your financial records in QuickBooks.
A dedicated template allows you to retrieve customer and sales data directly from your Google Sheets spreadsheet. This information is then automatically used to create a corresponding sales receipt in QuickBooks. This integration ensures that your financial records are always up-to-date and accurate without the need for manual transcription, freeing up your team to focus on more strategic activities.
Automated Notifications for Ecommerce
22. Post Your Weekly Ecommerce Revenue on Slack
Sharing key performance indicators, such as weekly revenue data, with your team via platforms like Slack is an excellent strategy for maintaining motivation and fostering a sense of shared accomplishment. However, manually compiling and posting this data can be a repetitive task that takes time away from more critical analysis.
This automation streamlines the entire process, making it effortless to keep your team informed. The scenario works by configuring Make.com to automatically summarize sales information from a designated Google Sheets spreadsheet. This could include total revenue, sales by product category, or any other metrics you deem important.
Once the data is summarized, Make.com will then compose and share a message containing all the key data points directly to a Slack channel of your choice. This ensures that your team receives timely and consistent updates on your e-commerce performance without any manual intervention, keeping everyone aligned and motivated.