Rosa had been selling handmade candles at weekend markets for a couple of years.
She had regular customers, a table full of candles and several boxes that seemed to live permanently in the back of her car.
What she didn’t have was a website.
So one evening she went looking.
Build your own website. No experience necessary.
“Perfect.”
Rosa signed up.
The company asked what kind of site she wanted, showed her a few designs and walked her through the rest.
She dragged pictures of her candles onto the page.
Added prices.
Wrote a short article about trimming candle wicks.
Then another about keeping candles away from drafts.
The company showed her how to add a small shop and a page where people could contact her.
A couple of evenings later Rosa clicked Publish.
There it was.
Her candles.
Her pictures.
Her articles.
A little shop.
“I have a website.”
She sent the link to everyone she knew.
“Who is Beth?”
About a week later Rosa opened her email and found a message from someone named Beth.
Love your site. Could you write something about why my candles sometimes burn down the middle instead of melting all the way across? I keep wasting half the candle.
Rosa read it again.
“Who is Beth?”
She didn’t recognize the name.
Then she noticed the subject line.
New message from your website
“Oh.”
Someone had actually found the site.
That part was exciting.
The next part was confusing.
Rosa opened the website and clicked around.
The contact page was there.
Name.
Email.
Message.
Send.
She remembered putting the page together.
She did not remember telling the website to send anything to her email.
For that matter, why had the message come to her email at all?
Shouldn’t it be sitting somewhere on the website waiting for her to check it?
Rosa went back to the company that had helped her build the site and found its support form.
She wrote:
Hi. I just got an email from somebody named Beth who used the contact page on my website. This may be a dumb question, but why did it come to my email? I thought I would have to check the website for messages.
A little while later, a reply arrived.
Hi Rosa,
Not a dumb question. When you set up your contact page, you entered the email address where you wanted new messages sent. When Beth pressed Send, the website saved her message and sent a copy to that email address automatically.
Beth also received a short message letting her know her question had been received.
—Eric
Rosa read the message twice.
Automatically?
She wrote back.
So the website is checking the contact form for me?
Eric replied:
Pretty much. Nobody at our company is sitting here waiting for Beth to press Send. The website already knows what to do when someone uses the form.
Save the message. Send you a copy. Let Beth know it arrived.
You set that up once. After that, the software keeps doing it.
Then he added:
That’s a simple automation.
Rosa stopped.
Automation?
She had heard that word before.
Usually from people talking about businesses considerably more complicated than hers.
“Did I pay for that?”
Rosa had another question.
Do I pay extra for the automation?
Eric’s answer came back a few minutes later.
Not for that one. The contact-form notifications are included with your website plan.
Rosa wrote back.
What else is included that I don’t know about?
Your nightly backups, for one. The system makes a copy of the site every night in case something goes wrong.
You mean somebody copies my whole website every night?
The software does.
Every night?
Yep.
Rosa looked at the clock.
“Good. It can have the night shift.”
Then Eric added:
Your shop has some automatic jobs too. Some other things may need another service or a different plan. It depends on what you want the site to do.
That answer made more sense than Rosa’s original picture of “automation” as one mysterious product she would have to go buy.
The first order
Two days later Rosa’s phone made a noise while she was eating breakfast.
New order
She nearly dropped her spoon.
Someone had bought a candle.
Not somebody she knew.
An actual stranger had gone to her website and bought one of her candles.
Rosa opened the order.
Cedar & Orange Candle — $24
Payment received
The customer’s name and shipping address were underneath.
Rosa clicked Order details.
Payment: Complete
Receipt: Sent
Order status: Processing
“Receipt sent? Must be another automation.”
She opened Eric’s support thread.
I just got my first order. Did the website already send the customer a receipt?
Congratulations. And yes.
Did it take the payment too?
The payment service did. Your shop passed the order to it, the payment was approved and the shop recorded the order as paid.
Rosa looked back at the screen.
The customer had paid.
The order was recorded.
The receipt had gone out.
“Well, I guess I better get packing.”
Rosa finished breakfast and went looking for the Cedar & Orange candle.
Beth again
A few days later Rosa finished the article Beth had asked for.
She deliberately burned one candle badly, took pictures of what happened and wrote:
Why Your Candle Is Burning Down the Middle
Rosa sent Beth the link.
Beth replied that afternoon.
This is exactly what mine looks like. Thank you! If you write any more candle articles, can you let me know?
Rosa started typing:
Sure.
Then stopped.
Sure was easy with one person.
If twenty people asked, she wasn’t going to remember twenty email addresses and what each person wanted to hear about.
She opened Eric’s support thread.
Another question. Can I put something on the site where people sign up if they want me to tell them about new articles?
Sure. You’d use an email list for that.
Rosa had seen those signup boxes plenty of times.
Does it work like the contact form? Someone puts in their email address and the website sends it where it needs to go?
Exactly. Usually the signup form is connected to an email-list service. Someone signs up and their address gets added to the list automatically.
That made sense.
Then when I have a new article, I write one email and send it to the list?
Right.
Rosa thought about Beth.
Can the website send something to her when she signs up too?
Yes. You could have the email service send a welcome message, or send something you’ve promised people for joining.
Now Rosa had another question.
Is the email list included in what I’m already paying for?
The signup form can be. The email-list service is usually separate. Some have free plans when you’re starting out. Others charge depending on the service and how many people are on your list.
Rosa went back to the sentence that interested her.
Usually separate. So my website can automatically send somebody’s signup to a completely different service?
Yes. Different pieces of software can work together.
“Okay. That’s pretty cool.”
She sent Beth another message.
I’m setting something up for this. I’ll send you the signup link when it’s ready.
How much of this can you do?
A week earlier Rosa had thought she bought a website.
Now she knew the contact form was quietly sending messages where they needed to go, the shop could take an order and send a receipt, and the whole site was being backed up every night.
And now Eric was telling her one piece of software could hand a job to another one.
She wrote:
So how far can you take this? What kinds of things do people automate?
Eric replied:
Depends on the business. Orders, appointments, emails, reminders, invoices, backups, customer information. There are a lot of possibilities.
Then:
Some are built into the software you’re already using. Some need another service. Some are free and some aren’t.
Rosa thought about her candle business.
Taking an order automatically made sense.
Sending a receipt made sense.
She wouldn’t mind something reminding customers when their favorite seasonal candles came back either.
On the other hand, Beth hadn’t wanted an automatic answer about her tunneling candle. She wanted somebody who knew candles to look at the problem and help her.
Rosa wrote:
So I probably don’t want to automate everything just because I can.
Now you’re asking the right question.
Which things are actually worth automating?
Eric’s answer came back a minute later.
That one is going to take a longer email.