You’ll find some useful tips and information regarding shopping online to get most out of it.
The days of brick and mortar stores and their glory are slowly fading away. Online retail giants like Amazon get more and more of the market share since you can get pretty much anything there and you get it delivered straight to your doorstep in a day or two.
Traditional Vs. Online shopping
Compared to traditional shopping, the convenience factor favors e-shopping, at least in terms of browsing and making an order. You can do that virtually anywhere. All you need is a smartphone or a tablet and internet connection.
Aside from convenience, there is one more reason why people choose online retailers: the price. Why go to a store to buy a product if you can get the same thing for less money even if you include the shipping fees? Paying more than you need to simply makes no sense. Leaving the house to buy a hoodie, a laptop or anything else for that matter is becoming less and less of a good deal.
One more thing that seems to have convinced a lot of customers to join the dark side was the use of discount codes, also known as promo codes. If you’ve never heard of those, you are in for a treat. Basically, it’s a special code that allows you to receive discounts. Each code unlocks a different price reduction, so it’s good to check them all out.
Using codes often can save you hundreds of dollars a year! The amount of money you save depends on the codes you use and the frequency of your online shopping. Simply put, the more you buy and the more promo codes you use, the more you save.
If you watch YouTube, you might be familiar with discount codes. YouTubers tend to get sponsored by all kinds of places selling goods and services and to see how many subscribers actually get redirected by a certain YouTuber, the channels are given very specific promo codes like “NameOfChannel10” for 10% a discount.
Subscribers get a discount, YouTubers get sponsored and the sponsors get increased traffic from the subscribers. This symbiotic relationship seems to be working just fine or else the brands would stop supporting YouTube channels altogether.
You actually see how much you’ve saved
Promo codes are mostly an online thing. You type a word or a phrase in the appropriate box and you get a discount. The codes themselves change with each offer, so it’s not like you can guess the code, although no one will stop you from trying. One cool thing about using promo codes is that most of the stores show you the difference in price. There is your original order total and the total that includes the discount code. When you can actually see the benefits of a certain offer, you are more eager to use than if you were to take your word for it.
Think about: say you are about to buy a TV and the salesman is telling you that now is a good time to get it because all TV’s are a hundred bucks cheaper than they were last week. Would you feel like he’s being honest or if he’s just trying to sell you a product by any means necessary? Now, consider an alternative. You see the current price and you have a screenshot of the prices from last week. You actually know that buying it now is a better choice than it was a week ago.
How to get these promo codes?
There are a few ways of doing that. Some stores display discount codes on their website for everyone to see and use. These stores use promo codes in the same way they use sales. The thing is, the codes aren’t valid for all that long. Usually, a promo code is invalid after a few days, especially if we’re talking about a regular code that a store releases for a special occasion like Cyber Monday. Most people have a few favorite stores they like to visit, whether it’s online or in a traditional way.
Checking all of them can take quite a lot of time, even on the internet. Another example is the Helium 10 coupon code company where it gives coupon codes with high discounts to attract users.
But not all discount codes are listed on stores’ websites. There are companies that scour the web to find all the sales, deals and promo codes out there. These companies often make deals with stores that allow them to have special codes on their websites. That’s one advantage of using promo code finders.
Another advantage of using discount code websites is that you can find a deal or a store you’ve never heard of before. Obviously, not all shops are worth your time, but finding a new favorite place to buy clothes, devices or appliances for a good price can only be beneficial.
Let’s say you have five stores that offer the thing you are interested in. You can visit each store’s website individually, true, but why not do it all in one place? There are plenty of websites that gather all the discount codes and other promotions from all the stores you can think of and then some, and then they list all the promotions and coupons available in these places. They might even have codes that aren’t listed on the store’s website.
Brands have different promotions in each country and the same thing can be said about promo codes. Just because you see a code on the US site of a brand doesn’t mean that it will be active on the UK website. In fact, chances of that happening are slim to none.
For example, If you are interested in finding discount codes and you happen to live in the UK, you should check out https://buykers.com/uk/stores, that's the same as other big shopping sites like Amazon, eBay and so on.
The cost of using discount codes
Now, for the kicker. You might think that using a code that can shave 20% off your purchase should be something that websites would want you to pay for. Fortunately for all of us, they are not that greedy, so the use of discount codes is completely free of charge.
The main reason for that is that these websites know that people wouldn’t pay for the codes. It would probably turn people away from using them, so stores make it very clear that the codes are free to use.
Price Matching
Online retail is a very competitive branch of industry. There are all kinds of new stores that want to compete with the industry behemoths and everyone is looking for a new idea that will put them in front. Bigger stores tend to have the advantage, and they have their own ways of maintaining it.
One of those tricks is price matching. It’s an agreement that states that if you buy a product in a given store and see the same item in a different store cheaper a few days later, the place you bought it from will give you back the difference. Of course, price matching has a lot of restrictions and is only applicable for a few days after you’ve made your purchase. Still, it’s one of the shopping hacks you can use to buy things cheaper, even if the savings come back to you after the purchase has been made.
Now, it’s not something that can be exploited often, so if you’re making a purchase with hopes of getting some of the money back, you might be disappointed. This one should be treated as a surprise surplus of cash after having spent it first. Moreover, price matching is only used in stores that offer products such as electronics or furniture. Oh, and another thing. Price matching doesn’t require using discount codes.
Free Shipping Promo Codes
There are different types of promo codes. Some of them give you a discount, but you can also find codes that take care of the shipping costs. They aren’t as popular, especially if you consider the fact that more and more online stores offer free shipping as standard.
However, free shipping is often not as straightforward as it might sound. Stores want to maximize profitability, so they know that if you make an order for 10 bucks, getting the item shipped for free means they don’t make any profit from it. That’s why the majority of stores set a threshold you need to reach in order to be eligible for free delivery. It is usually 50 or 100 dollars, depending on the store and the products they sell.
That’s when shipping discount codes come in. They remove the threshold and give you free delivery on any order, regardless of the amount you paid for. Certain promo codes lower the minimum order amount instead of getting rid of it completely. Each deal has its own conditions.
Free gift with discount codes? That happens, too
Who doesn’t like free stuff? Online shopping may not have a lot of freebies involved, otherwise, it wouldn’t be called shopping, but every now and then you might stumble upon a code that gets you a gift for free that you wouldn’t receive without this code.
Don’t expect anything super expensive, unless you make a huge order. One more thing: promo code for a free gift is a rare occurrence. Most stores don’t use them at all and those that do, tend to hold them out for special occasions such as Christmas or Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Conclusion
Online shopping and discount codes are a great duo. You get the same product and pay less for it. Some codes reduce the price of the product, others eliminate shipping costs and you might even find a code that gets you free stuff. If you are looking for a discount, you now know exactly what to do to get it. Happy hunting for deals.