This way, you as an Amazon seller can save time and money with smart automation!
Many Amazon sellers have a tight schedule. New goods need to be purchased, the inventory must be stocked, customers need to receive their products, and there should be a contact person for any issues. Additionally, there is the maintenance of the product page and competitor analysis. With so many tasks, one might wonder where to start. Smart tools of our time can provide relief. The keyword here is clearly “automation” on Amazon as well.
But what does that mean? Hiring a little robot to take over the job? Admittedly, we may not be quite there yet. At least not with a limited budget. However, there are several ways to automate processes in your own Amazon business. But more on that later. First, we want to clarify what automation actually means for Amazon sellers.
What does “automation” mean on Amazon?
The economic dictionary from Onpulson offers the following definition: “Automation is the self-operating of machines that reduces or eliminates human communication or control when everything runs normally. Automation was first used by the Ford Motor Company in the late 1940s. It is also referred to as mechanization.”
And this definition is one of the most understandable – if you don’t believe me, just Google it yourself!
So, it’s about machines (or software) that operate independently – WITHOUT the need for human intervention. Automation is therefore a tremendous help for us, as it takes over tedious and time-consuming tasks. In the context of Amazon, the automation of inventory management processes primarily speeds up fulfillment in the logistics centers – thereby contributing to increased customer satisfaction. Additionally, marketplace sellers can delegate some of their daily tasks and sell more efficiently on Amazon through automation.
Who benefits from automation?
It clearly depends on your preferences.
In general, you should ask yourself the following questions (click the small triangle before the question to reveal more content):
Do I want to be supported by a smart tool and give up a bit of control for that?
Of course, those who use certain tools for automation on Amazon give up a bit of control. But is that a bad thing? If you were to hire a new employee, you would do the same. In return, a significant amount of work is taken off your hands.
You are not handing everything over to the “hands” of the tool. Rather, you tell the tool what you want, and it will implement exactly what you have instructed it to do. For example, with a dynamic repricer, you set a maximum and a minimum price. Now it knows the range within which it can operate. It will not set a price below your minimum price.
What benefits does the smart tool provide?
You should always question whether your business on Amazon truly benefits from automation or the tool. In economics, this is referred to as a cost-benefit analysis, which every individual rationally conducts with each decision. Of course, no one does this for EVERY decision. Nevertheless, there are certain situations where it makes a lot of sense, especially when it comes to investments.
When you acquire a new tool, it is also an investment that comes with costs. Imagine you are completely satisfied with the products you are selling and definitely do not want to add any more to your portfolio. Now, there is an automated tool that exclusively searches for new products that you should invest in.
The benefit of the tool is zero because you will not use it. You do not want to add new products to your portfolio. The cost of the tool is €10, which clearly outweighs the benefit. Therefore, you should not invest in this Amazon automation.
Optimization as Self-Benefit
However, it is indeed sensible to update your product portfolio and continually add new products. On one hand, this helps your business grow. On the other hand, having a diverse portfolio makes you less vulnerable to market fluctuations and attacks from your competition.
If you only sell pencils and the demand for them decreases, your business is at risk. However, if you sell both pencils and ballpoint pens, you are somewhat better equipped to handle a potential drop in demand for pencils and can then focus on the business with ballpoint pens.
In this case, you indeed have a benefit from acquiring an Amazon automation tool. Let’s assume you need two hours to search for new products and analyze their profitability. At an hourly wage of at least €9.35, the tool effectively saves you two times €9.35, which amounts to €18.70 – your benefit. The costs remain at €10. In this case, the benefit is greater than the costs, and you should invest in the tool.
Long story short: If it is worthwhile, you should always invest! And yes, even if it costs money – as long as you benefit from it, it is a sensible investment.
Am I willing to spend a little money for more automation on Amazon?
As is often the case, there is nothing for free here either. However, if you have concluded that the acquisition of the tool is worthwhile, you should not hesitate to invest. It is clear: those who want to benefit from smart tools must also be willing to spend a little money. Because, as a rule, you will not be able to provide more automation to your Amazon business through your own programming.
Nevertheless, it makes sense to take a closer look at the provider’s terms beforehand. Is there perhaps a free trial period that you can take advantage of? What are the cancellation terms if the tool does not deliver what you expected, etc.?
What aspects can you automate on Amazon?
Now that you can decide whether you need more automation on Amazon, you probably want to know what you can automate. Below are some steps in the value chain that you can select individually to find out which tools might be interesting.
Finding New Products
If you decide to expand your business and add new products to your offering, you initially have a lot of work ahead of you. You need to not only find a product but also analyze it based on many factors: Is there sufficient demand? How is the competition positioned? Is the product profitable? This is where smart tools come into play. All these analyses are run automatically, and you will only be shown the most suitable products.
The tool “Product Discovery” from Viral Launch is perfect for increasing Amazon automation in your business. It finds products for you that have high potential. The tool analyzes thousands of products and shows you only the best ones. Additionally, it provides you with projected sales, allowing you to make an informed decision.
In this video, you will find all the information about the tool again:
Inventory Management
How many items of your product do you currently have in stock? If you have to run over there to count, you should definitely consider whether this is the best way to manage your inventory. You should always know your current stock level and be able to anticipate how much replenishment you will need in the near future. After all, you don’t want to find yourself in a bind where you can’t supply your customers because the stock is empty. On the other hand, it costs you money if your inventory overflows and you need to expand or outsource.
A smart tool called RELEX Solutions is a great option. In addition to customer-oriented forecasts, it assists you with planning, ordering, and storing goods. This means you no longer have to calculate everything yourself and keep track on lists; instead, you receive all information consolidated in one system. If stock levels become tight, the tool even helps you switch from a low-cost supplier with a long shipping time to another with a shorter delivery time. This is particularly important, as suppliers who are out of stock cannot win the Buy Box on Amazon. Automation pays off here in double measure.
Creating a Product on Amazon
Believe it or not, there are actually tools that can automatically write your product texts for you. So you are not looking for a human freelancer, but a software-based one. Awantego even promises “Unique Content,” meaning unique content created by a machine! How does that work? Thanks to artificial intelligence, the tool can understand the semantics of language and even the context. For example, the tool knows that a winter with several days of minus 20 degrees is a “Siberian winter.” This way, you can receive your product text within minutes.
But be careful. While more automation on Amazon can contribute to a successful business, being fast is not always advantageous, especially when it comes to product texts and A+ Content, which are extremely important for the conversion rate. Therefore, be sure to review automatically generated texts and adjust them according to your customer types.
Running and Optimizing Ads
A well-known automation on Amazon is PPC automation, as the associated tasks are not exactly the most popular. How often do you need to adjust your bids and keywords to keep them current and thus profitable? How long does it take you to set and adjust the budget for your advertising campaigns?
Here, bidx provides a solution. This smart tool continuously analyzes the performance of your ads. By independently adjusting bids and keywords, it also optimizes the profitability of your campaigns. In addition to campaign optimization, the smart tool evaluates your performance and presents the results clearly in the dashboard.
Order Processing
The storage and picking of products is no small task. For sellers who sell multiple products in large quantities, a garage with three shelves quickly becomes too small and, above all, too cluttered. After all, individual items need not only a place for storage but also to be quickly found when they are ordered. Since this process follows the same pattern every time, it is also suitable for automation on Amazon.
Normally, the fulfillment of Amazon orders without automation proceeds as follows: When goods are purchased from you, you can create a so-called pick list. This list records which items you need to retrieve from the warehouse, where to find them, and it’s best to organize them according to the labels of the locations. Then, you take your list to the shelves and work through it by finding the products based on their location labels, taking them off the shelf, and placing them in a transport box. This process is called picking.
With the filled transport box, you go to your packing table. There, the goods are sorted according to the orders and – oh wonder! – packaged. For this, you should create a packing list that records which items belong in which package and to whom they should be sent. Additionally, an invoice, shipping label, and tracking number are generated and attached. Finally, you hand over the package to your shipping service provider.
Confusing with Multiple Orders per Day
With a few orders per day, this process may be manageable manually, but as soon as you need to ship multiple packages per day, it quickly becomes confusing, and the picked goods can get mixed up. This is where automating your Amazon logistics can help. For example, you can have your pick and pack lists generated automatically instead of manually going through and summarizing all the orders. Additionally, barcodes on the goods can assist you in sorting the items by packages.
With smart tools like Pick & Pack from Afterbuy, not only are your lists created automatically. At your packing table, you only need to scan the barcode on the goods, and you will receive all the information you need. This includes the customer’s address and the contents of the package. Once you have packed the package, you can print the invoice and shipping label directly through the tool and include them with the package. An army of individual lists is thus consolidated, and you receive only the information you truly need for the Amazon order – thanks to automation!
Here you can find all the information about the tool in video format:
Creating an Invoice
(If you are using Afterbuy, you have already completed this step during the order processing.)
The goods are picked and packed – ready for shipping. What’s still missing is the invoice. Yay – writing an invoice – NOT! Who wouldn’t want to avoid this tedious step in an Amazon order through clever automation?
This is where billbee comes into play. Once set up, the tool automatically sends invoices to your customers. You can customize the text and subject of the automated emails in advance. Additionally, you can decide how the customer should receive their invoice, either through the Amazon mailing system or via email.
You can find a tutorial for automated invoice sending with Billbee here:
Monitoring and Optimizing Performance
Anyone running a business must inevitably deal with its performance. But who enjoys calculating daily sales or making forecasts about the sales potential of their products? This is where specialized helpers like SELLERLOGIC Business Analytics come in handy. The tool uses complex data to simplify the representation of product performance on an Amazon account and/or marketplace. The data can be intuitively managed and filtered according to user preferences. With SELLERLOGIC Business Analytics, you can quickly identify unprofitable products and cost areas that need optimization, allowing you to initiate appropriate strategic adjustments.
In addition to the tools that track your performance, there are also some that further optimize your performance. This definitely includes repricers.
Consider how much effort you would have to put into pricing on Amazon without appropriate automation: You would need to monitor your competition around the clock and respond immediately to any actions. If your competitor lowers their price, you must lower yours as well, or else you risk losing the Buy Box and potential buyers. If this happens while you are at work, that’s one thing. But what if it happens while you are comfortably relaxing on the couch after work? Or if your competitor decides to change their price not just once, but multiple times a day?
There are two options:
1. You are active around the clock.
2. You seek help in the form of a smart repricer.
So, you invest in a tool that takes care of automated price adjustments on Amazon. The nice side effect of investing in a dynamic repricer like the one from SELLERLOGIC is that the price doesn’t just go down. Your new smart “employee” primarily tries to place you in the Buy Box. Once this is achieved, however, it also raises the price as much as possible – thereby securing the best possible price for you.
Handling Returns
Anyone active in e-commerce knows that returns are unavoidable, especially on Amazon, automation or not. Sometimes the product doesn’t fit, and other times it simply isn’t liked, to name just two of the many reasons for returns. Nevertheless, there is usually still room for optimization.
To make the process as simple and pleasant as possible for the customer, you should rely on automation here. Tools like shipcloud.io offer you a comprehensive solution for this. For example, you can provide your customers with a returns portal where the buyer can initiate the return themselves and choose a shipping service provider. They then receive the shipping label easily via PDF or email. Additionally, you will receive an overview of the current status of the return and the shipping status. This not only simplifies the process for the customer but also for yourself!
Accounting
One of the seemingly least popular tasks for a business owner is probably accounting. Revenues, expenses, taxes… just reading about it makes many people’s heads spin. What if you could simply delegate this unwelcome task? But is it worth hiring a dedicated employee for it?
The solution: Tools! Through your smart working methods, they can cover many processes quickly, and you receive immediate results. BuchhaltungsButler is a good example here. The tool automatically recognizes, sorts, and categorizes your receipts. You simply upload your receipts in the tool, and all the data is prepared for you and your tax advisor. Additionally, you can create invoices and much more directly within the tool. A real relief for Amazon sellers thanks to automation!
Here you can watch the tool in the video again:
Amazon FBA: Automation Made Easy
What if you could automate several tasks in one step? Order processing, customer service, returns management. All of this can be handled by FBA for you. The online and logistics giant Amazon has perfected all these processes and offers them as a service to its marketplace sellers. Those who use Amazon and FBA for automation delegate the entire fulfillment process, from storage to returns.
In the gigantic logistics centers, every product has its place. When an item is ordered, the corresponding shelf moves to the packer, who packs it into the perfect box. The entire picking process is thus automated and handled by robots.
Smart tools also influence the packing of goods: they indicate to the packers which box should be used for the product to be packed. The optimal box is selected based on size and weight and displayed to the employee.
Anyone who wants to take a look inside such a logistics center can check it out here:
Amazon’s customer service is also perfectly focused on the customer. Anyone with a concern is met with professional and friendly advice. After all, the customer is the top priority at Amazon, and all processes are designed to create a perfect customer experience.
The returns management of the e-commerce giant is just as user-friendly. Customers can simply print a return label, and everything is taken care of for them. From here, Amazon takes over.
But even here, nobody is perfect.
You are probably already aware that things can get hectic in Amazon’s logistics centers. This can lead to FBA errors. While they can happen, they must not go unnoticed. In Seller Central, you will also find the FBA reports. You can either go through them manually and check for errors or use a smart Amazon tool for automation.
Lost & Found analyzes your FBA reports and looks for errors. Once it finds any, it automatically prepares a letter to Amazon for you that includes all relevant case details. You simply copy and paste everything into Seller Central, and your refund is requested.
Conclusion
Those who want to save work will certainly find one or more tools for themselves. There are various ways to ease the tasks of everyday business through automated tools. This starts with picking, extends to automated price adjustments on Amazon, and ends with the tedious task of identifying the many small FBA errors.
As always, each user should ask themselves what they hope to achieve and whether the tool can meet those requirements. However, with a little critical questioning, this should not be a problem, and you can make your life as an Amazon seller easier through automation.
Image credits in the order of the images: © artinspiring – stock.adobe.com / © bakhtiarzein – stock.adobe.com
