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Home | Product Reviews & Shopping I used to have all my favorite online stores and customer report sites bookmarked, categorized depending on what I look for, stored and backed up so they are handy every time I need to buy something. Not long time ago my way of shopping was changed thanks to the discovery of comparison shopping search engines. Comparison shopping search engines can be looked at as huge, well-stocked and organized online stores, except they have very important features that traditional "brick and mortar" stores don't usually have: search and price comparison functionality, which literally bring the best deals of the day right to you. This is what makes them truly a unique power tool of online shopping. This new type of search engines totally focus on customers and their buying habits or buying experience. They can make every savvy shopper’s dream comes true. After all, we all get the biggest satisfaction when we find a really good deal on things we have been looking for, for a long time, right? But how often this happened to you? Ask yourself how much time do you have to spend on shopping, going from store to store or visiting online merchant web sites, one by one, checking prices, getting product information and reading reviews and customer testimonials? Now the situation for shoppers and merchants has changed forever. The whole idea to save time and money while shopping for needed products is very appealing to a lot of people. With comparison shopping search engines you can compare specific products in the same category, and by many purchasing factors. Price, no doubts about it, is a very important one. Other important factors are being able to find product information, access to consumer buying reviews and reports that enable you to make a better buying decision. Online merchants can’t ignore shopping search engines any more. They are eager to show their products to online shoppers and sell them, even when they loose money to gain your business. Merchants also know the fact that people who use comparison shopping search engines are savvy consumers and that they are ready in their buying cycle, and will probably make their purchase decision very soon. While all kinds of reports show growth of e-commerce and consumer confidence, shopping online for many people still seems risky and they are not willing to risk sending their credit card or personal information because of fear that it would be stolen in transit and used by an unauthorized persons. Another fear factor is to be ripped off by disreputable merchants or having trouble to return purchases in case they were damaged during shipping and get their money back. Many shopping search engines have addressed this problem with their rating systems for participating merchants and even money-back guarantee, ability for consumers to share their experience, submit reviews and testimonials for each online store and each product sold online. So now the question is what comparison shopping search engines you should use? There are plenty of them, but I will discuss only the most important of them. You can separate all comparison shopping search engines into two categories: major general comparison shopping sites with hundreds of categories and tons of products, and smaller shopping search engines focused on specific groups of products. Major Comparison Shopping Search Engines Here is a list of major comparison shopping search engines that can offer you millions of products categorized into many departments or categories. All you need to do is to browse through department, find the product you are looking for and then click on button “Compare prices” or “Details”. Yahoo Shopping ( shopping.yahoo.com) is one of the biggest engines that provides connection to thousands of online stores: traditional retail stores, catalog sales sites, small online boutiques and specialty stores. You should also visit Google’s Froogle (www.froogle.com), MSN Shopping (shopping.msn.com) and CNet Shopper (shopper.cnet.com). E.W. Scripps’ BizRate (www.bizrate.com) and Shopzilla (www.shopzilla.com ) are basically the same engines, with slightly different design, so you can use one or another for your search. Both engines provide nice feature Smart Choice that based on lowest price from trusted online merchant. Owned by EBay, Shopping.com will provide comparison shoppers with auction’s listings as well, so it gives more options for buyers to make purchase online. NexTag (www.nextag.com ) has a nice feature called “True Prices” that shows final price after tax and shipping charges depending on Zip code. PriceGrabber (www.pricegrabber.com ) is another good comparison shopping engine that is available in English and Spanish, with member ratings of products. PriceRunner (www.pricerunner.com ) can be really helpful to get price comparison on many products with ratings that include reviews from both experts and end users. MySimon (www.mysimon.com ) is one of the oldest shopping search engines on the Web, so do not forget to use it as well. It shows you final price including taxes and shipping charges, product reviews and rating system for merchants. Specialized Comparison Shopping Search Engines For price comparison on computers, computer parts and peripherals, software and electronics I would recommend to visit PriceWatch (www.pricewatch.com) If you are looking for health products like prescription drugs or nutritional supplements, then probably you can’t find better place to shop than HealthPricer (www.healthpricer.com ). While some of major comparison shopping engines do have prescription drugs and supplements listed, they usually can’t show you more than very few price comparisons for each product and doesn’t include price per tablet which depends on how many pills you are going to buy. At HealthPricer.com you can find and compare prices for drugs from more than 50 eTailers, check information about trusted licensed online pharmacies (mostly Canadian) and compare their ratings. Most of the listed drugs are 100% FDA approved. Try to use it and you will see that price difference can be huge, especially on expensive drugs. Another good site to compare drug prices is www.PharmacyChecker.com . This site has its own rating system and online verification program that let consumers know that they buy prescription drugs from a pharmacy in good standing. It also has a lot of information about personal importation of drugs into USA and legal issues related to that. Contact lens prices should be checked again at www.HealthPricer.com , where you can get comparison for more than 500 products and prices based on how many boxes of contacts you are going to buy. To shop for the books you should visit AddAll (www.addall.com) book search and price comparison engine that brings you results from more than 40 online books stores, 200 sellers and millions of new, used and out of print books. It also lists magazines, CDs, movies on DVD and VHS. Good comparison shopping for books, electronics and sporting goods can be done at PriceScan site (www.pricescan.com) which claims that they don’t accept money from vendors to be listed. Are you interested in ordering some wine or wine gift baskets online? Then do not forget to visit 800wine.com or Allwinebaskets.com sites. (sorry, but there is no online testing provided) To find special offers, coupons, freebies and free trials available online you should visit SpecialOffers.com. It has many categories not just for products but services as well like loans and mortgages. Nine Rules of Cost Effective and Safe Online Shopping 1. Know the product you are looking for by learning about it. Read expert and end customer’s reviews for the product. 2. Find products and check their prices by using different comparison shopping search engines. Find the lowest price or use “Best Deal” label attached to the listing. It is better to pay a little bit more but to deal with trusted merchant that’s more security-conscious and customer-friendly. 3. Check taxes, shipping and handling fees to get final cost. 4. Check the refund and return policy. Review warranties. Read the fine print. Check seller’s Privacy Policy. 5. Be careful with retailers you don’t know. Check customer testimonials for retailer you are going to buy from. While user feedbacks and rating systems are helpful, please check the Better Business Bureau before buying from small online merchants. 6. Keep your login information safe. Use credit cards for payment because of better fraudulent protection. Make sure that ordering and payment go on a secured server. Look for indicators that the site is secure, like a lock icon on the browser’s status bar or a URL for a website that begins “https:” (the “s” stands for “secure”). 7. Track your purchases and keep receipts and website printouts like product description and price. Check your credit card statements as you receive them to be on the lookout for unauthorized charges. 8. Inspect your purchase carefully as soon as you receive it. Contact the seller as soon as possible if you discover a problem with it. Tell the seller in writing about any problem that you are concerned with, ask for a repair or refund, and keep a copy of your correspondence. 9. After you get your purchase please submit your testimonial and share your experience with other customers. It will help customers to make their buying decision and will improve or lower merchant rating. Conclusion Knowledge is power, and comparison shopping search engines can be a real power tools for savvy shoppers to make informative buying decisions. Save time and money during the coming holiday shopping season and have the best possible shopping experience by finding great deals quick and easy. Happy shopping! Article Source: http://www.articlewheel.com
Dmitriy Minenko is working as a Sr. SEO Specialist for One Person Health Inc., developer of price comparison engine for health products such as prescription drugs, contact lenses, nutritional supplements and vitamins. He has many years of expertise in e-commerce and online price comparison shopping techniques that allows people to use power of Internet to make informed buying decisions. Visit www.healthpricer.com for more info.
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