How to automate before launching: Best analysis and sourcing automation for Amazon FBA

18. November 2021

Table of Contents
automation best practices

Many online sellers dream of turning their FBA business into an e-commerce career that will allow them to live more independently. Therefore, they dream of automation pre launch. It’s clear that, building any business from the ground up comes with many challenges. As a result, in most of the cases’ automation before launch is not as easy as one might expect.

In the e-commerce world, most of these challenges revolve around the complex process that is needed. From researching and sourcing products to making sales and then fulfilling orders, as well as taking care of customer needs afterwards – it is virtually impossible for a solopreneur to excel in all of these areas. 

This is where automation pre launch comes into play! Therefore, we not only want to show you how automation pre launch fixes the entire process, but also present you some automation best practices.

If automation before launch fixes everything in your business, it’s a scam

The bad news first: It won’t be possible to just throw a lot of money at the entire thing – if that amount of money is even available – and expect everything to magically work out without putting much effort into it.

Therefore, if anyone offers you something like this, be careful! Scammers often promise a fully automated FBA business out of thin air. These self-proclaimed automation magicians usually tell Amazon newbies that they should just invest a lot of money in their “automation” before launch program, and they will do everything from sourcing to selling. 

Then they typically use some excuses to prolong the process until you give up yourself and leave – without your money, of course. In the end, you neither have an automation pre launch nor any penny left. As a result, it is better to read our automation best practices at the end of this article.

There is a right way to do automation in e-commerce

The existence of some fraudulent sharks doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t use automation pre launch to your advantage. Quite the opposite! If done right, automation before launch can help you with almost all the areas and processes mentioned earlier.

While many online sellers may think that automation pre launch can only help them with tasks that take place later in the e-commerce, there are actually immensely important areas that can be automated before the first product even reaches the digital shop counter. 

Product research and sourcing in automation

Before launching automation or even thinking about selling, you have to get a product first. If you don’t happen to be the owner of a brand, you’ll find yourself in need of research almost immediately on your e-commerce journey. And there are many more steps until you can think about automation pre launch.

Creating a product portfolio is not just finding a product… 

The product also has to be analyzed in the whole automation pre launch process: Is there a demand for this product? How is the situation in the target market? Is there competition and if so, what are they doing? And, is the product profitable and therefore worth your time?

All of these questions can be assessed by tools and smart software for the automation pre launch process. They automatically run all the research processes that would cost you, or an expert, many days: After analyzing thousands of articles, these tools show you only the best products with the highest potential. 

Most software products even have a dashboard with turnover and revenue prognoses and other numbers that can be of interest in your research and sourcing process.

This way, you can not only make a decision based on knowledge and research, you can even do so without wasting unnecessary time in the automation pre launch process.

Now that you know which products you want to sell, you still have to acquire said goods before you can build up your automation pre launch process. Don’t worry, automation best practices will help you with this point.

Sourcing products often comes with its very own set of challenges. Typically, profitable countries to source from are in Asia or Eastern Europe which means there regularly is a language and cultural barrier – let alone the geographical distance requiring time and money to travel – that can complicate communication with suppliers and warehouse managers.

Therefore, automation pre launch can definitely make sense when it comes to the sourcing process. Of course, you won’t find a computer tool that talks to suppliers and magically acquires your products for you. Instead, sourcing is a prime example of a different kind of automation pre launch, that is outsourcing tasks and processes to experts or specialized freelancers.

Sourcing experts are frequently bilingual e-commerce pros or people who for example were born in China and then lived in the U.S. for several years and therefore can mediate between sellers in the West and manufacturers in China, not only when it comes to languages but also local holidays, price negotiations and more.

Pricing in automation

Speaking of prices, the automation pre launch can also simplify your life. 

Without any automation best practices, you have to invest time again into research before pricing your products, you have to keep your eyes quite literally on the price.

It’s crucial for any online seller to stay competitive in order to keep up sales and generate revenue.

If your prices are higher than those of your market competitors, you might have difficulty selling your products. On the other hand, if your prices are too low, you might be losing out on revenue. This is important before you start your automation before launch.

SPACEGOATS extra tip: While pricing in automation pre launch is definitely an important parameter for your business, you shouldn’t use your product price as the only marketing tool to draw attention to your product. If a seller’s only strategy is to keep their prices lower than their competitors’, this usually speaks to a low-quality product that can’t convince customers with any other attributes.

There is another way before launch to track all price fluctuations of your articles and send notifications in case of an increase. There are several price trackers you can use. It’s a simple tool to help you in comparing prices of different articles.

With an Amazon price tracker you are able to monitor marketplace prices easier. Those tools can track millions of products and warns you when prices drop. And the best message is: There are free ones as well.

Effective price tools in the automation pre launch process can create history charts of the prices before launch. That leads to increased profits, it can drive up market prices and undercut your competition.  By the way, this is one of the automation best practices, that we will present you later.

Finally, you can find optimal prices for your private label items during the automation pre launch process. Sounds great, or? Automation pre launch will not only be important for the price topic but, by the way, also for listing creation.

Listing creation in automation pre launch

Lastly, automation pre launch is about creating a listing. Automation in this topic means that product texts will be written automatically. Copywriters are no longer needed, and you save some costs. 

But how do you do that before launch?

For effective automation pre launch, you can use a tool with artificial intelligence. But: Please be careful, especially when you have to translate a text. The reason is simple: Product texts are powerful for your brand. Tools can easily mess up those texts and this might badly influence your conversion rate. This is just one of the automation best practices, that we will go into detail later.

SPACEGOATS extra tip: Check out our other articles before launch on that as well, and keep in mind that more automation pre launch as well is not always better; that is why you have to check your product texts after they are written. All in all you can use automation pre launch as a basis: That will be a huge help! 

But now we will tell you some further automation best practices for a better understanding of what’s important during the whole before launch process.

Further automation best practices before launch

In conclusion, you can use the following automation best practices to increase the effectiveness of your selling process. The first of the automation best practices is to increase the easiest repetitive flows. By focusing on the flows that are very simple to automate, you can quickly have a sense of achievement and are motivated for other automation best practices. 

Automation pre launch also means that you build automated test cases that each one of these test for only one thing. That means, you create some test cases that focus on one condition. 

Another point of the automation best practices: it is significant for the automation pre launch process that all test cases are independent and self-contained. This point is essential because automation comes with flexibility.

Furthermore, the automation best practices say that you should keep in mind when it comes to automation pre launch that success comes with the knowledge of your team. Each person should have the ability to work with the automated process.

Additionally, one of the automation best practices before launch are telling that using a tool with a good technical fit can help to identify scenarios and implement automation better.

The automation best practices before launch should help you to overcome the first obstacles. 

Simplified e-commerce expansion