India is one of the fastest growing countries in the field of Internet. Since December 2016 to July 2017, Internet users in India have increased from 432 million to over 450 million. The rate of growth was already very fast but demonetization has made it exponential. Not only online shopping brands but the government itself has started promoting online shopping and this habit is now being adopted by millions of Indians.
Many new online shopping portals have been introduced and many online shopping stores which were available from years have improved the quality of their service, added more items, started providing money safety, fast delivery, made complaint resolution quick & returning of products or money refunds faster.
With all such services, online shopping has become better than ever. Indians love to shop online now without any doubt or fear. They know their money isn’t going anywhere, they are going to receive what they’ve ordered. You don’t have to walk shop to shop to get the best price of a product, you can check multiple online shopping stores for it.
Online shopping has become very easy and comfortable and everyone is shopping online regularly. But, do you know if you just play smart and do a little research, you can save a lot of money while shopping online? Today, I am sharing top 10 best tips to save money while shopping online in India. Implement these tips to score the best deal online, earn huge discounts & cashbacks for literally any product.
1. Compare Prices
Of course, the most obvious yet most ignored step is to compare prices. Most of the people instantly buy a product if they find all the features in it and “think” the price is OK. Don’t be such impulsive buyer even if you had an idea about the product’s price or even if you have checked its price a few days ago, it won’t hurt to cross-check its price again with popular online shopping sites because the price of a product changes very frequently online.
Random events are happening online in different shopping sites which can fluctuate a price of a product. For example, the day when Flipkart was celebrating its anniversary it was providing a flat 5% OFF discounts on every product you buy on that day or Summer SALE has been launched in Snapdeal for the weekend.
On these shopping sites, different merchants are providing the same product at different prices. Don’t assume that the lowest of all those prices appear beside the product because it’s not always the case. Before adding an item to the cart, manually check the price of the product with different merchants, you might get a better price.
You can browse sites like Junglee.com, MySmartPrice.com, etc. to compare prices of a product in different shopping sites at one place without needing to visit each and every website. You can even subscribe to them to get an email notification whenever a price drop happens.
2. Use Discount Coupons
Once you get the best available price of your desired product, don’t hurry up to order it because while making an order, you can use the best trick to save money on your selected product – discount coupon codes. Almost every online shopping site allows you to enter a coupon code while filling order form.
So, search discount coupons for the specific product on google or, you can use the following coupon sites to check all the huge discount coupons available for your shopping sites:
To make it even easier to find coupons, you can add Honey chrome extension which automatically provides you coupon codes for all popular shopping sites when you visit them to buy any product.
3. Follow brands in Social Media
E-commerce sites put a lot of efforts to promote themselves in social media. Follow Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, eBay, etc. in social media and you’ll see these sites releasing special discount offers & coupons for their social media fans. They regularly run contests/giveaways which upon winning you can earn huge discount coupons and gift cards. So, follow brands in social media (especially Twitter), interact with them and you’ll be able to enjoy special offers & discount coupons from your favorite shopping sites.
4. Shopping Cart Abandonment Discount
This is an old hack used by many experienced online shoppers to get huge discount coupons. No shopkeeper likes when a customer browses many of its products and finally select one product, puts it in the cart and at the time of payment, drops it out. It is a pain not only for offline shopkeepers but also for online shopping sites too. According to Business Insider report, globally out of every Rs 100 worth of products which are added to cart 71% is abandoned, means more than 2/3rd sales which can potentially happen, do not happen. Shopping sites try their best to stop it from happening
So, if you add an item to your cart online and leave it there for few days, many shopping sites offer special discount coupons to encourage the customer to buy the item fearing that you will drop it out. When it happens you’ll either receive an email from the shopping site or see its notification in your shopping cart or both will happen.
Use the special discount coupon you have provided before it expires and you will be able to buy your product with such a discount which was otherwise not available.
5. Clean your Shopping History
E-commerce sites use a lot of tracking methods to identify its customers based on their location, frequency to browse/purchase, interesting product category NOT ONLY to serve them better but also in their benefit to earn more margin on products.
Many times, if you browse a product on a shopping site and browse it again by cleaning your browser’s cache & cookies, you’ll see a huge price difference. Moreover, if you use to hide your location and browse anonymously using Chrome’s Incognito mode, you’ll be able to save more on the same product.
Many shopping sites provide an extra discount, cashbacks & free delivery services to new customers (for example, Amazon offers first month free Amazon prime membership to its new users). So, if arranging new email address and signing up again is not much of a problem to you then you can enjoy huge benefits using this trick.
6. Follow Special Instructions
While browsing a product’s detail, don’t only read its features, check the purchase instructions too because many times these instructions include some special purchase instructions for example: get 5% OFF with SBI Debit Card, get 7% cashback on ICICI credit card, etc. If you purchase the product by following these instructions, you can save more money either on discount or via cashback.
7. Use Credit Cards
Credit cards can increase your financial burden but if you use them wisely, they can actually save a lot of money by using them. Credit cards themselves have some offers active all the time (if you don’t know them, inquire about them from the company). And, at many shopping sites, by using credit cards, you can get a discount, earn reward points and get benefits like 0% EMI on credit card, etc. which can lower down your financial burden of the month without putting any extra fee.
8. Club Credit Cards & E-Wallets
Credit Cards & E-Wallets (such as PayTm, MobiKWIK, etc.) both payment methods offer many discount/cashback offers. So, if you club them smartly, you can save even more money. For example, if for a product of Rs. 1000 you can 10% OFF discount while paying via PayTm and inside PayTm, you will get Rs. 50 cashbacks by making a payment of Rs. 500 or more and you have only Rs. 300 in your PayTm account. So, make payment through PayTm, use both PayTm money and your debit card, you will get both 10% OFF (Rs. 100) and Rs. 50 discount.
9. Wait for the correct time
Shopping sites start holiday/festivals sales & huge discount offers on holidays and festivals seasons. So, if your purchase can wait till that time then it’s wise to wait for it because, at that time, shopping sites offer such discount which was never available even at the best price of a specific product.
10. Contact Support Desk
Many shopping sites have some way to contact and some of them even offer online chats. So, contact them via any of these methods (recommended: online chat), inquire about a product, tell them you are really interested to buy it and ask if they can provide any discount or coupon. Not many people know about it but support desk can actually issue a discount coupon. If you are able to receive it, you can save money while purchasing your desired product.
You can also inquire about the recent price drop or SALE which happened just after you’ve purchased the product at higher price. Sites like Amazon cover money protection and refund you the difference which price drop made you pay if you contact them within 7 days. Some credit card companies also offer money protection which assures you to get the difference refunded to your credit card if it happens with your recent purchases.
Implement these 10 tips while shopping online and you’ll be able to save a lot of money. If you know any other great tip to save money on online shopping, don’t hesitate to share it in the comments section below.
