Have you ever tried online shopping? If you have, we’re certain you know how addictive it can be, right? Believe it or not, we all spend a considerable amount of time each week browsing for things that we do not need at all. Even worse, we end up buying them and realize months later that we could have survived without them. Mindless spending has become a problem with millennials. Online retailers have even used this to their advantage, offering big discounts and drawing in both young and old people to the world of online shopping. Here are some tips on how to be a smart online shopper:
Know The Right Days To Shop
If you’ve never given this a second thought, well, you’re in for a treat! Firstly, weekends aren’t the best days for online shopping. An extensive research found out that Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday are the days when online retailers have the best offers or discounts. Sundays are the best day to book airline tickets. Apparently, it is even cheaper than the erstwhile cheap Tuesdays! Meanwhile, Tuesdays have turned out to be the best day to shop for gadgets and laptops. As for the weekend, Saturdays are the day to buy books from Amazon or Barnes and Nobles. Phew, looks like we sorted your entire week, haven’t we?
Avoid The Dynamic Pricing Trap
Did you ever happen to add a few items to your cart and come back a few days later to find out some of the prices have changed? If you are vigorously nodding your head up and down, you are not alone. Everybody goes through this dynamic pricing scheme which allows retailers to change the price according to your location and your browsing and spending habits. They can actually show you a higher price compared to someone who pays much less online. So, you wouldn’t want to spend more on the same thing than the other person, right? Here are a few things that you can do to avoid it.
– Go incognito while browsing!
– Log out of all your social media accounts so that nobody can keep track of your browsing habits
– Clear caches and cookies and delete your browsing history.
– When booking airline tickets, choose poorer countries as home base.
Take Full Advantage Of Coupons and Discounts
Search online for coupon codes before buying from a particular website. If they allow using more than one coupon, then do it wisely. For example, if you have a 20% discount and a $10 off coupon, use the 20% discount first and then the $10 off. Several websites tend to send good coupons over email, so look out for those. If somehow, the coupons have expired just a couple of days back, then call up customer care. You never know — you might land up an even better deal than the one you were expecting!
Have Multiple Accounts
Most websites have huge discounts and offers for newcomers or first-time sign ups! If you have found out something that you absolutely need but it is too pricey, there is no harm in creating another account with a new email address and avail the discount offered by the website. Another advantage of having many accounts is that the coupon codes that they will be sending can make your cart three times cheaper.
Look For Price Drop Refunds
Several websites have price drop refunds. It means that if the price of the item you bought has dropped and you have informed the website, they will issue you a refund. This is something Amazon does. Even some credit cards have similar policies. This is even better since it won’t matter where you shopped. The only thing that will matter is the card with which you bought them and the price drop of the product.
Having said all that, it is important to understand that an online retailer might have the best discounts to lure you into shopping more, but you must be smart enough to identify when it is a trap. This article might help you identify a few. Also, it is important to know the safety measures you should adopt while shopping online. Comparing prices might also help a lot to save a lot of money. Another trick is to delay your shopping. Add the items to your cart and leave them there for a couple of hours or days. Just like how prices change with time, retailers often offer higher discounts on your cart items. And who knows, you might not feel like buying them at all a couple of days later when you see those items.
