Have you ever wanted to shop online but never known where to start? Take a look through these handy tips about buying online and hopefully I can clear up some of your questions. You will find tips on the best places to shop to how to save money on buying and shipping.

1. Remember to always use USD, many sites have unfavorable exchange rates to your currency unless you know that the rate of exchange that your bank charges is normally higher than a particular store.

2. Online stores often use Special Sale days to boost sales quickly without having to distribute stock to stores. Wait for crazy sale days like those below.

Memorial Day – the last Monday in May,

Columbus Day – 12th of October,

Gray Thursday – actually the afternoon and evening of American Thanksgiving (the 4th Thursday of November),

NB: Black Friday – the day after American Thanksgiving,

NB: Cyber Monday – the Monday after American Thanksgiving and is the biggest online shopping day of the year,

Green Monday – second Monday in December,

Free Shipping Day - Dec. 17,

Super Saturday – the last Saturday before Christmas,

Boxing Day – Dec 26.
 

3. Shop from reputable sites that you might’ve heard from already, e.g. Amazon, etc. Also, you might want to check the Better Business Bureau. Look for ratings of sellers on eBay and Amazon, and maybe Google the site to see what comments there have been on the store, and then finally use your better judgment on whether you should trust them or not.

4. It’s better to shop with secured sites, and avoid using "click-throughs" which might have nefarious intent, take the time to enter the site URL properly.

5. Always compare product pricing and availability; Amazon sometimes does that with their affiliate stores (i.e. stores using Amazon to sell), and Google Shopping is also a valuable comparison with reviews.

6. Sign up for coupons and special offers as many times you will find great deals. Maybe use a personal email account rather than a work one as there can be quite a lot of spam, but look out for the coupons and extra discounts. Sites like Honey (www.joinhoney.com) have clever browser extensions that automatically find and apply coupon codes at checkout with a single click.

7. Keep items in a shopping cart if you want to think about it first (which is wise), and you can always return to buy. Many sites these days use a strategy called "Retargeting", you may find a mail or a pop up or a note somewhere offering an additional discount to encourage you to close out. Monitor when discount deals come around.

8. Use alerts to save and not spend, many times these are just trying to get you to shop, compare prices to check if it’s a good deal first.

9. Use free shipping to eLogX, we wouldn’t recommend (unless you really want to) shipping anything expedited, the charges are quite high so save yourself the extra cost.

Have fun and happy shopping friends!

Nick