Buying a product on the Internet can have serious ramifications unless you have done your research thoroughly.
While the word research sounds like a lot of work, it’s not actually as hard.
There are online shopping tricks that can be followed to avoid any regret or disappointment in future.
Here are some of the best practices you can follow to have a rewarding experience shopping online.
Use a Price Comparison Engine
If you want to buy a new product online, the first thing you want to do is find out some competitive deals. The same product might be on sale for different prices at different sites. The best way to determine the best deal is to compare them all. However, it’s not easy to do it manually since it may consume considerable amount of your time.
Luckily, there are many price comparison engines that can help you with this task. But MySmartPrice.com is probably the popular one right now. When you search for your desired product, they show you a table of different online stores offering the product with their corresponding prices alongside. This lets you compare the prices at which your desired product is offered by different online marketplaces in India, and choose the one you want to go with.
Check Out Seller’s Reputation
Even as you have figured out the online store that’s offering you the product at the lowest price, your job doesn’t end there. Why? It might be possible that the seller of that particular marketplace offering the lowest price has a catch.
Considering the reputation of the seller that sells your desired product is extremely crucial to your overall shopping experience.
The problem with many online marketplaces in India is that they tend to be lenient with their criteria before listing sellers on their site. This leads to increasing customer dissatisfaction if most of the sellers overpromise but fail to live up to it.
You should check the popularity of the particular seller within the marketplace and take it into your consideration for buying your desired product.
If you find a seller to have no reviews or ratings at all, you can choose to avoid the seller for your peace of mind.
Review Marketplace Popularity
It might be possible the marketplace has dubious record or scores very low on popularity index. Obviously, you wouldn’t get all this information on a price comparison engine like MySmartPrice.com.
This is where consumer reviews sites such as MouthShut.com rise to your help.
On MouthShut.com, you have access to a circle of trusted advisors and experienced buyers who can tell you if a particular online marketplace is worth buying from.
For example, this review of Tradus.com reveals approximately 80% of people who bought from the marketplace wouldn’t recommend the site to their friends. In such a situation, you need to make an informed decision if you should buy from a certain marketplace that offers you the desired product at the lowest rate but has a pretty low score on customer satisfaction index.
However, it should be noted that MouthShut.com tends to attract more negative reviews about a brand and therefore, you should exercise your caution and use your discretion with regards to making a decision based on the reviews available on this website.
While the above exercise may appear time-consuming to you at first, you will learn the hang of online shopping once you start shopping more often. That said, reading different resources will stand you in good stead and help you become an informed buyer.
See Who Fulfils Your Order
Order fulfilment typically involves everything from processing your payment to delivery at your doorstep. In fully matured and developed e-commerce industries like the US, sellers usually outsource their fulfilment services to a specialized fulfilment service like ShipWire.com.
However, in India, the logistics challenges and low-cost e-commerce model don’t allow sellers much opportunity to spend on such services. Therefore, it’s the marketplace operator that processes the payments and the seller that does the rest.
In some cases, however, vendor specific retail stores such as Flipkart and Myntra handle their fulfilment operations on their own with a dedicate in-house team.
Renowned online marketplaces such as Amazon.in have their own fulfilment services as well.
When you’re buying a product fulfilled by the very marketplace, you’re less likely to experience any trouble having that product delivered.
Avail Discount Coupons
Just when you think you have got the cheapest deal for your desired product, you have not! Because, it can get ever cheaper if you can find a discount coupon code for it.
For example, if you’re able to find a smartphone that is priced at Rs. 15,000 at marketplace, a discount coupon code can bring it down by Rs. 300 to 500.
While shopping online, you should try your luck at some of the popular websites offering discount coupons such as RetailMeNot.com and CouponDunia.in.
In some cases though you won’t be able to redeem those discount coupons since the deals are available at their discounted price already.
Hope this post has helped you in making an informed decision on online shopping. Be sure to share this post with your friends if you find this useful. If you have any thoughts on this post, please leave a comment below.