Online shopping is a phenomenon that has changed the way we shop for the things we use and need in our day to day lives. An informal survey of web users reveals that over 90 percent buy products and services online at least once a month, and many of these people make it a habit to shop online several times a week.

What is it about this practice that keeps them going back for more?

If you are one of those people who have yet to shop online, or if you have perhaps completed only one or two transactions online, you don’t know what you’re missing! Not only have you not experienced the fun of hunting down a good online deal, but you haven’t had the satisfaction of saving a bundle of cash on the things you would be buying anyway, online or in a brick and mortar store.

Everything that you buy offline can more than likely be found online – from groceries to prescription drugs. “Sure,” you may be thinking. “Online shopping is probably a good thing for people who live miles away from a store. It would almost be a necessity for them in order to have a good selection. But I have all sorts of stores really close to my home. It’s more convenient for me to shop the way I always have.”

That really depends entirely on how you define convenience…

Consider the ways in which many of us have shopped for years. There’s nothing ‘convenient’ about it!

• You get into your car and drive to the store of your choice, then drive around the parking lot a few times looking for a parking space.
• Entering the store, you walk the aisles looking for the things on your list, only to find that they are out of the two most important things you need.
• You go back out to your car and drive to your second choice store.
• Finally locating the items you need, you stand in an extremely long check-out line behind a woman with a set of 2 year old twins who are screaming for candy.
• The cashier is cranky, and acts as if she would rather be doing anything other than serving you.
• You start back out to your car with your packages, and discover that it is pouring rain. You have no umbrella, and your car is parked way in the back of the lot – the only empty space you could find.
• You brave the elements, and make a run for your car, only dropping your packages once. Dripping wet, you turn on the ignition and head for home. It’s late afternoon, and the traffic is horrendous. As you inch along, you hear a suspicious little tap-tap-tap on your windshield. A closer look, and you groan aloud. The rain has turned into ice.

Meanwhile, your next door neighbor has decided that she is in need of a few health and beauty items. She sits down at her computer in the comfort of her nice, cozy den. A few clicks of her mouse, and her web browser has taken her to an online drugstore that actually offers more product variety and sales than the local drugstore that is only a mile from her house. As she reaches the screen where she is to finalize her order, she remembers an email she received from a website yesterday. It contained a coupon code that will give her free shipping when she purchases a certain dollar amount. Scanning her order, she sees that she needs to spend $1 more to take advantage of this code. Another few clicks, and she has added a toothbrush to her virtual shopping cart.

As she clicks the “Place Order Now” link, she smiles. That one little code has saved her $8.00! Hearing a sound from outside, she rises and steps over to the window. Pulling back the curtain, she looks outside. It has begun to sleet!

She smiles again as she thinks how nice it is not to have to brave the cold and instead be able to shop from home and have the order delivered right to her front door.

So I ask you again…Which scenario would you rather find yourself in? The answer should be obvious.

Internet shopping can be a much easier alternative for you, especially if you:

• Work long or odd hours and have trouble finding the time to shop after work.

• Lack reliable transportation.
• Are sick of rising gas, vehicle maintenance and parking costs.
• Have small children that are difficult to handle on a shopping trip.
• Have any sort of physical disability which limits your mobility.
• Are looking for items not readily available in your area, such as ethnic foods, classic fragrances, or large shoe and clothing sizes.
• Are sick of paying massive mark-ups to small business profiteers.

Shop online for the best deals! You’ll have fun, save money, and can do it from the comfort of your home.

Shopping online can save you more time than you could imagine. As is illustrated in the scenario above, it is much less of a hassle to make purchases from home, from your office, or anywhere you happen to find a computer than it is to physically shop at the mall or the grocery store.

Plus, if you want to shop at 2 AM while wearing your pajamas, you can do that, too!

Online shopping is a lifesaver for Christmas shopping. While everyone else is fighting the crowds, you are greeting the UPS or FedEx driver as your boxes are delivered. You can easily purchase items for gifts without others knowing what you’re buying, which comes in very handy when you need to buy gifts for people who live in your home with you.

Or maybe you are in need of something that you would rather not have other people know that you use. Online shopping can save you the embarrassment of having nosy strangers or even family members observe your buying habits.

Comparison shopping is a breeze on the Internet. Instead of having to make phone call after phone call, or walk/drive from store to store in search of a product you need, you can do a search on Google or another search engine in order to locate the best price for an item. Once you locate what you’re looking for at a price you want to pay, you are ready to order!

Now, imagine how much more difficult this would have been if you were doing it all the old fashioned way. Let’s say you had to visit 10 web sites in order to find the exact product you wanted at a reasonable price. Transpose this shopping equation to real life. By the time you got done with searching 10 brick and mortar stores, you’d be exhausted, and you might even cut your search short and buy the product at a higher price than you had expected to pay in order to finish your shopping and go home! With online shopping, you won’t have this problem.

“But I need it TODAY,” you might say.

“I don’t want to have to wait until an online store can ship my purchase to me!”

If you are in a hurry for an item, you can sometimes order it online and then pick it up at the store, as long as there is a store available in your area. Office supply stores and department stores with a web presence usually offer this feature to their online customers. It can be a real time saver as all you need to do is go to the Customer Service desk to pick up your order.

You can also choose to pay an extra shipping fee when ordering online in order to have your items sent to you sooner, even overnight, but the cost of this could very well negate any savings you may have realized by shopping online.

Here is where you have to sit down and decide what your priorities are. Is the hassle of navigating your way through crowded stores and having to search for the items you want to buy, plus the chore of standing in long check out lines to pay for the items better than the convenience of ordering the items online and having to wait a few days before you receive your order?

For most people, the convenience of online shopping far outweighs the minor inconvenience of not being able to take possession of their purchase immediately. Try both scenarios, and then make your decision. I’ll bet you choose online shopping! This is probably why online shopping has become one of the most popular ways to shop. You have so many choices, and can custom tailor your shopping habits to suit yourself.

After last week’s post on shopping with coupon codes, here is a follow up to answer some questions I’ve been receiving.

Coupon codes are also called promotional codes by some merchants. Don’t let this confuse you – they are the same thing, really. Most of the time, the online code is a series of numbers, numbers and letters mixed, or a short word that relates to the type of product, usually in all capital letters.

For example, a PetSmart code could look like this – MEOW838. The codes themselves are somewhat predictable. Generally, they are like the ones in the example above – a percentage or a flat amount off of your total bill, or free shipping. There have also been instances, usually seasonal, where the addition of a special coupon code will yield a free gift.

Another type of code is a clickable link that leads you to a page where a number/letter code will be displayed for you to enter when you check out. These codes are often included in email newsletters that online retailers send to customers who have signed up for them.

If you think about it, you’ll realize that an online coupon is merely a more modern version of the coupons that shoppers have been clipping from the Sunday newspaper inserts for years. And, like those paper coupons, online coupons can be found for almost any product that is sold on the Internet. You should be able to find coupon codes for the following:

• Clothing for Men, Women and Children
• Auto accessories
• Health and Beauty Ads
• Pet Food and Accessories
• Magazines and Books
• Computers and computer accessories
• Gifts and Flowers
• Electronics
• Furniture
• Food
• Sporting Goods
• Shoes
• Jewelry
• Art and Photography
• Office Supplies
• Online Services
• Music CDs, Movie DVDs, Video Games’
• Kitchen accessories, including cookware
• Gardening and Outdoor supplies
• Toys and Games
• Cigarettes and Cigars
• Airline Tickets
• Concert and Event Tickets
• Rental Cars
• Hotel Accommodations
• Restaurants

In short, anything that is sold on the Internet by a retailer or company, large or small, can have a coupon code associated with it. You will sometimes see multiple codes, and in this case, you should stop and figure out which one would give you the best value.

When you are just starting out using coupons online to save money, this all might seem a little confusing. But, after you’ve completed a transaction or two, you will catch on like an old pro.

For example, let’s say that you want to do some shopping at The Body Shop online. Your first step is to visit a website devoted to coupon codes in order to see if there are any current ones for this retailer. You spy not just one, but several codes. There is one that offers you free shipping on your order another which gives you 10% off of the total amount you spend, and another that is for $10 off when you spend $25. How will you know which one to use?

Stack Your Coupon Codes and Save Even More Money!

Depending on how much you are planning to spend, it’s a tossup between the $10 off and the 10% off. On some web sites, you can use more than one coupon code, which is called stacking. This is a very popular method for maximum savings, and a perfectly legitimate option. You won’t know if a retailer will allow the use of multiple codes until you actually type them into the space on the order blank and update the page to see if they went through. If they did, you will notice that your total amount due has been reduced. If they didn’t you will see a brief message, sometimes in red text that explains why you were not given the discount. It’s well worth your time to try multiple coupon codes each time you shop online!

Ever used a coupon at your local store? Well we have them online too. The online coupon is actually a code that you’ll enter into the shopping cart to receive a percentage or dollar amount discount on your order upon payment.

One thing you need to know is that some coupon codes expire very quickly while others can be valid for days, weeks or even months.

When you enter the code, whatever discount it represents is immediately taken off of the total of your order. It’s a good idea to check your total on
the checkout page once you refresh it to make sure the code went through. Occasionally, coupon codes are removed without notice by the seller or merchant. And, sometimes a coupon code is so popular that the web site where you use it is jammed with customers! If this happens, you might have to try your code more than one time to get it to go through.

Some web sites have live help where you can actually chat with a customer representative in an instant-message type setting and they can often supply you with a live coupon code or ensure your code is working correctly at checkout. They are quick to answer any questions you might have as they realize that a happy customer is usually a repeat customer.

Coupon codes are just one of the many neat things about shopping on the Internet – most of the time, help is but a mouse click away.

Some Points of Interest on Shopping Online with A Coupon Code

Make sure you understand the terms of the coupon code. If it states that you must spend $25 to get that 10% off, don’t think you can squeak by with spending $24.98! You have to spend the stated amount down to the last cent. Luckily, most online stores will have items for sale that are quite cheap – in the case of Amazon.com. This makes it easy to add another item to your shopping cart to bring up your total.

Another point: Don’t confuse coupon codes with rebates! Unlike a manufacturer’s mail in rebate, an online coupon code saves you money the instant you use it.

Have you ever trudged through the mall, going into store after store looking for just the right birthday gift for your best friend? Or, have you ever tried to find an article of clothing in a particular color shade, only to be told over and over, “Sorry, we don’t have that in stock.”?

How about a popular book, DVD movie or music CD that you just have to have, but to your dismay, every store you check has sold out of the title?

Maybe you are buying a wedding gift for your cousin. She wants a certain silverware pattern, and so far you’ve had no luck in finding it. In desperation, you haul out the Yellow Pages and call each store listed that you think might have the elusive pattern, but again, you are out of luck.

Or maybe your favorite curling iron or electric razor has stopped working . You go back to the store where you purchased it, only to find that
they no longer sell that particular brand.

Were you one of the many people who were standing in line this past holiday season outside of an electronics superstore at the crack of dawn, after camping out on the sidewalk all night? You were hoping and praying that when the doors opened, you would be one of the select few who were able to purchase one of the latest and greatest video game systems that the store had received a shipment of only 10 units the day before.

Perhaps you and a group of your friends gathered outside the Ticketmaster box office early in the evening and stood in line until they opened at midnight in order to grab concert tickets for your favorite music act before they were all sold out.

Or, maybe you need airline tickets, but you only want to spend a certain amount. You know you are supposed to be able to get a good deal if you purchase your tickets two weeks in advance, but when you call the airlines, they quote you an outrageous price that’s nothing like the price you expected to pay.

In all of these scenarios, shopping online with a valid coupon code could save you time, trouble, and money. You could spend a pleasant hour browsing stores on the web for a gift that would thrill your best friend, and if you used a coupon code when paying for it, you could either pocket the difference, or maybe put it toward a little bit nicer gift than you had originally planned to give.

That shirt you are looking for in just the right shade of red can be easily found on the Internet. There are hundreds of clothing web sites. Most have photos of the items they sell, color charts, and size charts. Some even have virtual models that you can customize with your own measurements, then use to “try on” the clothes. You would more than likely have no trouble at all finding exactly what you are looking for, pay a
bargain price with the help of a coupon code, and enjoy the process to boot.