Source: Pixabay
Online shopping continues to grow as one of the most popular buying methods preferred by U.K. consumers. According to an E-commerce News Europe report, as of 2018, 87% of U.K. consumers buy their retail purchases online, not including groceries. That’s a whopping 9% increase in online retail sales compared to 2017. With online shopping not showing any sign of slowing down soon, it makes sense for shoppers to stay in-the-know and develop strategies they can use to save money while finding products online.
Yet, not all online shopping strategies are created equal. For instance, searching a product in Google or Amazon, and then buying the first one to come up isn’t necessarily the best thing to do not in terms of ensuring quality or finding the best deal for your wallet. To help save you money online, here are buying hacks that won’t make a hole in your budget.
Search for Discounts
Before buying anything, you should always, always check for discounts, coupons and cheaper options which may be available. In this day and age of near instantaneous search results, not checking for lower cost alternatives is just wasting money for no good reason. There are many amazing sites and resources out there for shoppers looking to find discounts and deals on the products they want. Here is an example:
- Plus Voucher Code – Save money at Amazon by picking up the coupon on this page right now.
Compare Prices
In the past, if you wanted to know if a certain price was a good deal, then you had to look the product up on different websites and compare them, plus whatever add-ons or shipping costs were attached. While many people do still do that, you don’t have to. Luckily, there’s an easier way. Price comparison across platforms has long been an annoyance to shoppers, and, as such, many tools have cropped up which can do the heavy lifting of multi-site comparison shopping for you. Here is a place to compare prices:
- Idealo – Compare prices for products or services you want and avoid spending more for the same thing.
Source: Freepik
Research Price History
Amazon alone is one of the biggest online shopping sites, visited by hundreds of thousands of people every day. Whether if people are searching for items, placing them in their shopping carts for later or buying them outright, it is undeniable that Amazon is where a bulk of online shopping happens. As such, there are sites dedicated to tracking Amazon prices. What’s so good about that? Well, these sites can alert you to price drops on the items you’ve set up to track. Obviously, if waiting a bit for a lull period could save you money, then why not? Here’s an example:
- Camelcamelcamel – This free Amazon price tracker alerts you when prices drop, so you can save just by waiting a bit.
Wait a Bit to Buy
You’ve probably heard that you should wait a bit before buying an item you want. Waiting a day or two can help you to see if you still really want that item or the initial “give me” phase has worn off. But there is also another reason for waiting at least a day. Do you know what happens if you place an item in your cart and then leave it there for a day or two? Well, it’s not unusual that you received discount codes by that website. You see, the site doesn’t want to lose you as a customer, so they send the discount as a way of luring you back to buy. Only, if you know this then you can game their system and get a discount on what you were going to buy anyways, just by waiting a day or two!