Online shopping is no longer just a convenient way to shop from the comforts of your home but also an easy way to save money. With ruthless competition among the e-commerce companies to retain most customers, at the end of the day, it’s us-the online buyers who can save a lot. As offering discounts become the survival tactics for online stores, as an online shopper, you must know there are several ways to save money while shopping online.
What are the most effective tricks to save money when shopping online?
Let’s have a look.
1. Add and Abandon
One of the major challenges that e-commerce companies have to deal with called abandoned cart, where the buyer adds products to the cart but does not fulfill the order and simply logs out. Now to curb the nuisance of abandoned carts, sellers have no other solution than to offer the buyer a lucrative discount to fulfill the order. Make most of this vulnerability and add the products you wish to buy to the cart and simply logout. The only problem is you might have to wait a few days before you receive a discount message or email to complete your online order. However, this trick will work for you twice or thrice as the system will detect you are a serial “care abandoner,” and that’s the end of the road for you.
2. Credit card offers
One of the best ways to get lucrative discounts on most of your online orders is to use a credit card as the mode of payment. Most banks tie-up with e-commerce stores such as Flipkart and Amazon to offer to their customers on using credit cards. Usually, you can avail a discount of up to 10% or 20% with a credit card. The only flaw in an otherwise perfect money-saving scheme is usually to avail the discounts, you have to do high-value shopping normally Rs 3000 or above.
3. Cash Back
Credit card offers are awesome, but you can further your riches by using online wallet services such as Paytm, PhonePe, and PayUMoney. Just as banks tie-up with e-commerce stores to get discounts for their customers, online wallet service providers agree with companies to secure more users for their services. Flipkart has its wallet service now in PhonePe, and Amazon has Amazon Pay, while Paytm is already a market leader in cashback offers.
4. Discount Coupon
Coupon industry is a multibillion-dollar domain with international sites such as Groupon making millions from saving online buyers their money. Discount coupons are growing in popularity as e-commerce companies continue to push for more customers and market share. From footwear to gadgets, you can save while shopping for any product using online discount coupons.
5. Price Comparison
Abundance, competition, and comparison is the underlying principle here. There are dozens of online stores now selling the same products. However, not all of these stores can offer the same discount. So how do you know on which one of the e-commerce sites the price is lowest?
Either you go to every online store and check the price manually, or you can play it smart and use price comparison websites for the same. Price comparison websites list the price of products as offered on online stores for easy comparison. With a few clicks, you will know where the product is available cheapest online.
6. Shop through Mobile App
Buyers are rapidly migrating to mobiles to shop online, which is why e-commerce stores are under pressure to offer an incentive for buyers to adopt their mobile apps. If you want to avail ‘app only’ discounts from leading e-commerce stores, you will have to shop via mobile app only. It’s a good thing, though, as you get to use all the tricks mentioned above to save money along with available discount coupons and offers available only for app users. For online sellers, mobile apps mean less time for customers to think and order from desktop and laptops and buy more impulsively.
7. High-Value Shopping Discounts
A rather common scenario on major online shopping portals, customers are often offered discounts for high shopping value. For instance, often, online fashion stores offer a discount of up to 20% for shopping for Rs. 10,000 or more. Now it will be an epic failure on your part if you buy more stuff to get a discount. Instead, you can create a shopping pool with your friends and family. When most of you buy together, the final order value will be high, but individually you will have to spend only what’s needed and avail discounts.
8. Festival discounts
Flipkart’s Big Billion Day Sale and Amazon’s Great Indian Festival are ideal examples of how much can an online buyer save while shopping during the festive season. We recommend you keep all the big purchases of the year reserved for the festival season when discounts are soaring. You will be glad that you followed our advice when you would save huge on your big purchases.
9. New customer discounts
Online shopping sites welcome new customers with open arms, most of the time offering discounts. While as an existing customer, you cannot avail these discounts, but what’s stopping you from creating new accounts and saving some extra bucks?
And yeah, don’t forget to clear your browser cookies or use incognito mode when registering as a new customer, else websites will detect you are an existing customer, and all your efforts will go in vain.
10. Watch for deals on social media platforms
Most online shopping brands are active on social platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Even some of the brands post offers and deals on their social profiles regularly. By following your favourite brand or online store on social media platforms, you can always stay in touch with the latest discounts.
Takeaway
A Rupee Saved is a Rupee Earned, and we have given you enough tips to keep saving while shopping online. Whatever you are buying, there is a way to get it at a discounted price. You just have to be proactive to find out how.
