Online shopping makes it much easier to access purchase clothing and other products from your favorite brands, regardless of where they’re situated. With e-commerce sites like Amazon, you could get same-day delivery or have items delivered in the same week, making online shopping much more fun and exciting.
Now the go-to for most people, total online commerce sales surpassed traditional brick and mortar sales for the first time ever in April 2019, and this trend shows no sign of slowing down.
If you’re a dedicated online shopper, you might be interested in a few ways to optimize your experience. Here, we cover three tips for savvy shoppers and show you have to shave dollars off your next online spree.
Access location-specific deals by using a VPN
The price for some products and goods you’ll see online changes based on where you’re connecting from. For example, a customer in India might see a price that’s equivalent to US$20 for a tee shirt, while a customer in New Zealand might see the same tee shirt on the same website priced at the equivalent of US$35 dollars.
This is known as geographic or dynamic pricing, which refers to changing a product’s sale price depending on geography to account for delivery expenses or to match the local market’s clearing price.
The only way to skirt geographic pricing is to hide your true IP address from retailers. With a VPN such as the ExpressVPN app, you can choose where you’re connecting from (or at least seem to be connecting from) and access location-specific deals.
Our top tip: Use your VPN app to find better priced flights. Just connect to a server in the airline’s home country. For example, if you want to fly with Finnair, connect to a server in Finland.
Always, always check for a current discount code
Retailers regularly send special discount codes or offers to their subscribed customers. More often than not, these are available for non-subscribed customers too. If you spot something you really want, but the price is a bit off-putting, make sure you look for a discount code first. Some dedicated websites help you find codes, or you can simply use your search engine to look for current offers. We love the Honey app and browser extension.
Here’s how it works: When you use well-known shopping websites, Honey looks at the products in your shopping cart and then looks for applicable discount codes. You save money and Honey helps you avoid the hassle of manually searching for and inputting any codes because the app does this for you automatically.
Use cashback websites
Cashback websites will give you cash back on certain purchases if you click through them first. Sometimes they’ll even give you extra cashback if you go through them when buying something specific (like an Amazon purchase).
This can be a great way to save some money on the things you’re already going to buy, but only if you’re actually planning on buying those things!
Follow these tips next time you’re online and you’re sure to have a happy shopping (and saving) experience! Want more helpful tips? Take a look at our round-up of the clothing shopping mistakes you might be making.
