Online shopping websites have made shopping a piece of cake. You can shop right from your comfortable couch, in your pajamas, in the middle of the night. A few clicks and you can purchase anything and everything online. It is unquestionably quick and convenient. The trend of online shopping has sky-rocketed to the extent that E-retailers are devising clever online shopping tricks to get you to spend more of your hard-earned money. Does online shopping really cause you to spend more money? If yes, then how to save money while shopping online?
Read on to tackle the following online shopping tricks used by E-retailers. Remember them the next time you shop online and save money on online shopping.
The free shipping trap
This is one of the most common online shopping tricks used by E-retailers. They offer free shipping if you shop for a particular amount of money. More often than not, you would prefer to buy things you don’t really need instead of spending on shipping charges. This way, you tend to spend more money than you intend to. When you think that you are saving money on shipping, you fall into the E-retailers’ trap.
Letters informing you about upcoming sales
Who isn’t tempted to shop when they come across a great sale? One of the most usual online shopping tricks is the use of newsletters. E-retailers send regular newsletters to their customers informing them about the sale and lure them to shop even when they don’t really need to.
Amount based discounts
You must have come across amount-based discounts that offer you a particular discount if you spend a certain sum of money. The more money you spend, the bigger the discount you get. This trick is highly effective and customers tend to spend a large amount of money just to avail the discount that accompanies it.
Buy one and get the other for the lesser amount
You may not really need a shirt right now. However, if an online website offers you a shirt at a much lower price because you are buying a particular pair of pants; you might buy the shirt. That’s how E-retailers trick you into buying something you didn’t need in the first place. How does online shopping cause you to spend more money? This way!
The easy return policy
Don’t mistake easy and convenient return policies to be the generosity of E-retailers. They are smarter than you think. By providing you with easy return policies, they are trying to increases their sales. When you know that you can return a product, you tend to buy more; thinking you might return the product if you dislike it. But as soon as you receive it, you either begin to like the product or you get attached to it; leading to you changing your mind.
The price fluctuations
Do you ever come across the products you visited the last time and notice that its price has dropped quite dramatically? Online stores often fluctuate the prices of products you are interested in to encourage your purchase. When you see that the price of a certain product is lower than before, you buy it, fearing the idea of a price hike in the near future. E-retailers often use this trick to drive you to unwanted purchases.
Providing a mobile application
One of the most effective online shopping tricks that the E-retailers use is launching a mobile application for their website. As our smartphones are becoming more and more capable in terms of functionality, we are limiting computer and laptop usage. Mobile applications make it easier to browse a website on the phone than accessing it on a computer. This results in higher number of customers visiting a website through its application – directly affecting the sales.
How to save money while shopping online?
In order to save your hard-earned money while shopping online, simply keep in mind the things you actually need to buy and the things that you don’t. Now that you are aware of the tricks employed by E-retailers, you can avoid them and hence save your money.
To sum it up, does online shopping cause you to spend more money? Yes, it most definitely does and in ways which we might even be unaware of.
