How to Automate Online Shopping (And Get Your Evenings Back)

The average Australian now shops across 16 different online retailers every year, up from 9 seven years ago.[012] Sixteen stores, sixteen sets of product pages to check, sixteen reasons to open an app during the couch window and end up forty minutes later with nothing purchased and a vague sense of having wasted the evening. For most people, keeping track of prices and availability across that many stores has quietly become a second job. This guide explains how to hand that job to software.

"The thing that changed how I thought about online shopping was realising I had become a human price alert. I was opening the same product pages every few days, refreshing the same car listings, keeping tabs open in my phone browser just in case something changed. I was doing the exact job a piece of software should be doing. Once that framing clicked, setting up automation was not a tech project. It was just handing the job to the right tool."

Joey Krosch, Founder of FindFetcher

What automating online shopping actually means

Automating online shopping means setting up alerts that monitor prices, availability, and new listings on your behalf. Instead of manually visiting product pages and store websites, automated alerts notify you by email when something matches your criteria, so you can stop searching and start buying only when the time is right.

The distinction is who is doing the watching. Manual shopping means you carry the mental load: you remember what you want, at what price, and when to check back. Automated shopping shifts that load to software, so you only engage when there is a genuine match. It is not the same as deal newsletters, which push promotions regardless of whether you want them. It is not the same as browser extensions, which only flag prices on pages you are already visiting. Proper shopping automation starts from your specific criteria and works outward from there.

Step 1: Map what you're watching manually

Before setting up any alerts, spend five minutes listing everything you are currently tracking by hand. This usually falls into four areas:

• Retail products: specific items you want below a target price, such as electronics, homewares, clothing, or sporting gear
• Event tickets: concerts, sport, theatre, or experiences you want access to at a price you are willing to pay
• Car listings: a specific make, model, year range, or feature set within a price band
• Dining and experiences: restaurant bookings, spa packages, cooking classes, or activities that book out or fluctuate in price

Most people discover they are monitoring more items than they realised. That list becomes the input to your automation setup. Each item on the list is a job you are currently doing manually that software can do instead.

Step 2: Automate retail price alerts

Retail is where most Australians start, because the value case is clearest. 84% of Australian shoppers say price is the single biggest factor when choosing where to buy.[005] But manually checking prices across multiple stores is inconsistent and time-consuming. You will miss sales that happen on days you do not check.

To automate retail price monitoring with FindFetcher:

1. Create an account at FindFetcher (takes about 30 seconds)
2. In plain language, describe what you want: the product name, a price ceiling, and any specific variant such as colour, size, or storage
3. Set the category to Retail and confirm the fetch
4. FindFetcher checks across Australian retailers on a daily schedule and sends you an email when your criteria are met

You do not need to visit the product page again until you receive a match notification. For a comparison of the best retail price tracking tools available in Australia, see our retail price tracker Australia guide and the broader best price tracker app Australia comparison.

You can start monitoring your first retail item with no ongoing effort required.

Step 3: Automate ticket and event monitoring

Tickets are one of the most difficult categories to track manually because availability can change in minutes, and face-value tickets for popular events can disappear before most fans are even aware they went on sale. 91% of Australians say they are looking for deals more than ever, driven by cost-of-living pressure,[004] and live events are one of the areas where timing genuinely determines whether you pay face value or secondary market prices.

To automate ticket monitoring on FindFetcher:

1. Describe the event: artist, sport team, venue, or category, your city, and a price ceiling
2. Set the category to Tickets
3. FindFetcher monitors ticketing platforms and alerts you when availability or pricing matches

This works particularly well for events that sell out on initial release and then see returns and supplementary allocations appear at face value over the following weeks. The alert catches those windows without requiring you to refresh the booking page daily. Start monitoring events from the FindFetcher tickets category.

Step 4: Automate car and experience searches

The same setup applies across the other two categories FindFetcher supports.

Cars: describe the make, model, year range, and maximum price. FindFetcher monitors new listings across Australian car marketplaces and alerts you when a match appears. This is particularly useful for specific variants or trim levels that come to market infrequently. Instead of checking Carsales or CarSales every morning, you receive a notification only when something worth evaluating has appeared. For more on this use case, see the best car buying app Australia guide.

Experiences: restaurants with hard-to-book tables, spa packages that fluctuate in price, tours, and activities can be tracked the same way. Describe what you want, name your city, and FindFetcher monitors availability and price on your behalf. Browse the FindFetcher retail and experiences category to start.

Step 5: Configure your criteria and let go of the checking habit

The final step is also the most important: once your alerts are active, stop checking manually.

Between 7 and 10pm, Australians make 35% of all their daily online purchases.[015] That evening window is also when most habitual shopping-app browsing happens: not with a purchase in mind, but because the habit of checking has been wired in by months of monitoring items manually. Automated alerts interrupt that loop. You receive a notification when something matches and engage only then.

A few practical configuration tips to get the criteria right:

• Set a price ceiling you would actually pay, not the lowest conceivable price. Aspirational thresholds produce no matches and keep you waiting indefinitely.
• Be specific about variant requirements. "Any blue Nike Air Max" will produce more noise than "Nike Air Max 90 in Navy, size 10, under $180".
• For tickets and cars, prioritise alerts over speed: the daily cadence is sufficient for most searches. Pro users who want faster coverage for time-sensitive items can upgrade one fetch to hourly monitoring.

Once your criteria are set, the mental load transfers. You are no longer the monitoring system. The job is done.

What to expect in the first week

Most FindFetcher users describe the first week as quieter than expected. You will not receive a flood of alerts. The system notifies you only when something genuinely matches your criteria, which on a given day may be nothing, or one item, or occasionally several if your criteria are broad.

That quiet is the point. If you have converted five items from your manual monitoring list into active fetches, you have offloaded five ongoing jobs. Those are five product pages you are no longer visiting on a habitual schedule, five sets of tabs you are no longer keeping open, and five reasons to open a shopping app during the evening that no longer exist. The behaviour that remained was never really about shopping. It was about monitoring. When the monitoring job has been handed off, the behaviour largely dissolves.

For more on the relationship between habitual checking and screen time, see our guides on how to save time shopping online, how to stop doom scrolling shops, and reducing screen time from shopping apps. The practical mechanism behind all three is the same: automation removes the underlying reason to check, which makes stopping much easier than willpower alone.

Set up your first automated alert and see what your evenings look like when the monitoring is done.

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