Smart Consumer Tips to Pay Less on E-Commerce Shopping

As more and more people are taking to shopping online, there is a corresponding rise in e-commerce business. Shopping online has become more convenient than ever before. Aside the convenience of shopping online, shoppers are increasingly in search of good bargains. This is more so with the countless options now available to them. With these numerous options available, there is a tendency to overspend without even realizing it. To hedge against this tendency, there are smart strategies that can help shoppers pay much less for their purchases. When adopted, they help shoppers maximize savings on their online purchases. These here are some smart tips to help shoppers spend less in their online shopping.

Sign Up for Price Alerts and Diligently Track Price Changes

You can actually pay less for products if you diligently track price fluctuations over time. Based on demand, inventory, and seasonal factors, prices of online products usually change quite often. If you track these changes closely enough, you can actually take advantage and make your purchases when prices are lowest. That helps you to maximize savings on purchases. In some instances, some e-commerce websites at times offer price match guarantees. This allows shoppers to claim a refund if the price drops shortly after they make a purchase. For best results, shoppers can rely on reputable price tracking tools like CamelCamelCamel or Honey to monitor price fluctuations. With these tools, anytime a product you’re interested in drops in price, you automatically receive an alert.
 
Always Lookout for Free Shipping Deals

While shopping online, shipping costs can add up quickly and often go unnoticed until the checkout stage. Always be on the lookout for free shipping offers to cut shopping costs. This is because many online retailers usually offer free shipping promotions at certain times of the year or after you meet a minimum order threshold. Taking advantage of these offers can help you save good money. If you are diligent enough, you can find free shipping codes online. You can also closely monitor websites like RetailMeNot and Honey. These websites often have updated lists of active discount codes. These codes can sometimes include free or reduced shipping options on some products. Checking these websites out before finalizing your online purchase can help you save on shipping costs.

Take Advantage of Cashback and Rewards Programs

Some popular e-commerce platforms at times partner with cashback and rewards programs to offer additional discounts to shoppers. These programs do give a percentage of their purchases back to shoppers as cash or points. Shoppers can accumulate these over time and redeem on future purchases as they choose. If however you choose to activate the cashback offer before shopping, you’ll automatically earn rewards with each purchase. If you shop with credit cards, some do offer cashback for shopping through their portals. You can take advantage of this by choosing to shop only with credit cards that have these special offers.

Occasionally Abandon Your Cart to Trigger Discounts

When online retailers are eager to close sales, they offer discounts and other incentives to persuade shoppers to complete their purchases. When retailers notice shoppers who have abandoned their shopping carts, some quickly send follow-up emails with discount offers to entice these shoppers to complete their purchases. This practice works especially well with websites where customers are already logged in or subscribed to their email list. So, if you commence shopping and you leave your shopping cart unattended for a day or two, it could result (but not guaranteed though) in special deals or discount codes being sent your way to entice you to complete your purchase. You can make a bit of savings from such offers.
 
Try to Buy in Bulk or Bundle Products

You can take advantage of the marketing cliché. “buy more, pay less.” This is yet another very effective money-saving strategy. So, if you buy items in bulk or take advantage of bundled product deals, you can actually pay less per item when compared to when you are buying singly. To sell more, many online retailers usually offer discounts when shoppers purchase larger quantities of a product. This usually engenders significant savings for bulk purchase shoppers. For most shoppers, bulk purchase is particularly useful for high consumption items like household essentials, toiletries or beauty products that require frequent purchase. You may in addition come across some websites that offer bundles where related products are packaged together at a lower overall cost than if bought separately. You can also take advantage of this type of packaging to save costs. If therefore you always try to opt for bulk purchases or bundles, you can actually save big on both the item price and potential shipping costs. But, always make sure you’re buying only items you actually need so as to avoid wasting money instead of saving it.

Take Advantage of End-of-Season Sales

Many online retailers occasionally embark on sales to clear up old inventory. These retailers often mark down products to make room for new inventory by offering significant discounts on old items that are still in great condition. So, smart shoppers can always take advantage of that if they plan their purchases around end-of-season-sales cycles. It is one of the best ways to save on e-commerce purchases by shopping out of season at periods of discounted sales at give-away prices. If you want to stay well informed about such sales, it is best to sign up for newsletters or follow your favorite retailers on social media. You’ll always be among the first to know since many online retailers usually announce these promotions through these channels. Since these offers usually last while stocks last, you can always act quickly to get ahead of other shoppers as soon as you get the right information.

Wrapping Up

The foregoing tips are essentially to help you save in your online shopping. Paying less for most if not all your e-commerce purchases is one great way to save money while shopping online. Whichever of these tips you feel like adopting, aim to be a smart shopper by paying less for your purchases. That ultimately results in significant savings as the bottom-line.

9 Must-Have E-Commerce Website Features for a Successful Shop

Every e-commerce business owner always wants to run a hugely successful store. An e-commerce website is considered successful if it invites web visitors to the store, communicates your brand values and clearly showcases your products. It takes good website features to guarantee these services. You can therefore deliberately build these features to make your shop creative and intuitive enough to always give your customers a great shopping experience. What really matters though is to create a website that catches the attention of your ideal customer and gives them the confidence they need to make an informed purchase.

Following are some of the core e-commerce website features that can help you accomplish this noble goal:

1. Homepage: The homepage is usually the first point of call of most visitors to your e-commerce website. It is one place that can easily send visitors away if not well structured. If you want to make more sales, you must devise ways to encourage visitors to spend a bit more time on your homepage. Your chances of making sales are higher if visitors spend more time on the page. When visitors land on your homepage, chances are they’re going to make all kinds of assumptions about your products based on the information you present on the page. You must therefore ensure the page is designed to be attractive and informative enough to keep visitors on the page a bit longer anytime they hit the page.
 
2. About Page: The “About page” is another very important page your e-commerce website should have. This page provides the mission of your e-commerce business to visitors at a glance. Anytime visitors hit your “About page”, it signifies intent that they want to learn more about you and your business. To capture their attention further, it’s important to map out the page in a way that presents organized, bite-sized chunks of information easy to assimilate and digest. Give out information that will easily convince visitors that they are in the right place to do their desired business. Above all, leave all your contact addresses, telephones, social media handles and so on where visitors can easily make contact with you 24/7.

3. Functional Search Bar: If you want your e-commerce website attract shoppers online, make it searchable. These days, most online shoppers usually expect searchable e-commerce sites to do business with. A functional search bar makes that possible. It usually helps to keep visitors on your site longer and prevent them from resorting to an outside search engine to find what they’re looking for. If well designed, a functional search bar should be effective for predictive search that helps to enhance the site’s user experience. Anticipating what a customer is trying to type into the search bar is a common best feature of a functional search bar that helps improve your e-commerce website’s user experience (UX).

4. Good Navigation: Good navigation is also great for enhanced user experience. A good navigation design is therefore hugely essential. With good navigation, your website allows customers to find what they’re looking for within just a few clicks. Your website visitors can use different navigation elements—menus, collection pages, filters, and search to get what they want fairly easily. Even within something as simple as a site menu, you have lots of options for prioritizing product discovery. Visitors can easily use drop-down menus to find and purchase their ideal products as quickly as possible.

5. Mobile Site: Since more and more people (well over 70% of shoppers) are now shopping online, it is smart to design your e-commerce website to be mobile-friendly. For your e-commerce business to thrive, you can’t afford not to prioritize a mobile version of the site. With most shoppers now depending on mobile devices to shop and in most cases via apps, making your website mobile-friendly is a great way to cater to this huge numbers of shoppers.

6. Product Pages: When designing product pages, you must pay special attention to what’s going to help customers feel confident in their purchase. Do not attempt to overwhelm them with too much information. Give out the basic information that will help them to easily make their buy decisions. Prioritize a hierarchy of information. This way, what customers see first is the most important information followed by secondary and tertiary information within close reach. Information relating to clear product photos, description, prices, sizes, shapes, handling and shipping costs, discounts, and product return policies can help customers make their buy decisions.
 
7. Collection Pages: Typically, a collection page is a home for multiple product pages that have something in common, such as new arrivals or a product category. Collection pages are usually designed depending on the size and categorization of the e-commerce shop’s inventory. Whether it is a single product or multiple products you are selling, the collection page showcases them adequately for shoppers to access easily. With its in-house filtering feature, it ensures that when someone lands on the page, they can drill down and narrow the results so they can more efficiently find what they need.

8. Wish List: A wish list is usually an optional site feature that allows users to save their favorite products for a later date. A wish list feature is a great way to build brand loyalty because it encourages customers to buy a product they love when they’re ready, rather than pressuring them into purchasing. A wish list is best installed as a functional app in your e-commerce store.

9. Filtering: If your e-commerce store is big and with a large inventory, product filters can be incredibly helpful. Product filters are great for sorting one-of-a-kind products by styles, sizes and even colors. Using these filters, shoppers can really drill down and filter by a particular style or size since some of such one-of-a-kind products may be available only in one size or style. Large e-commerce businesses like Shopify for instance have in-house Search & Discovery app which allows you to customize filters both within collection pages and search results from within the Shopify admin.