Online Shopping Facts

• Shopping online can saves you time, money and gas!!

• E-commerce goes beyond travel reservations or car rentals.

• Shopping online is greener as long as you select ground transportation.

• Every year more green products are sold online as people are becoming more conscious about the environment and about their health. Even well known companies are making eco-friendly products to satisfy the increasing demand.

• Every year more people uses the internet to research products. Every day more people end up buying the item they looked online as it is convenient for them, fast and easy.

• Retailers offer discounted prices and promotion for online only purchases. It is much easier for them to ship items directly form the warehouse, instead of having to rent a space inside a shopping mall and pay all the expenses doing this involves.

• Shopping online is safe and secure, in many cases even more than handing your credit card to a stranger that can easily copy the information and use later without your consent.

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My Experience as Online Shopper

Nowadays we have become more conscious about the money we spend every month. We are all looking ways to save money on everything we buy. So I wanted to share some real experiences.

A person I know needed to make some home improvements and in order to do so he needed to spend about 4000 in materials in Home Depot (after all we all need to go to Home Depot at one point in our lives) So, on Friday he went to this site and bought a $4,000 gift certificate at Home Depot and he elected to have it e-mailed. He received the e-mail and printed the certificate, went to Home Depot and paid with it. That got him $90.00 in cash back!

Another great example on how you can take advantage of this portal is when you suddenly need to buy electronics and you don't have time to wait for the shipment. So go to your portal, go to Best Buy and find the product you are looking for and select the option "pick-up in store" then you find the closest store and make the purchase. After about an hour you will get an e-mail saying that your item is ready for pick-up. You saved time and you also got cash back on something you were going to buy anyway.

We all have booked a flight on Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, ChepOAir, Priceline, etc. Ot we have booked a car on Avis, Budget, Enterprise, right? Well, what if you can get cash back on those purchases? You are going to book it online anyway! 

My father is a doctor and he sent me a list of books that we bought on Amazon thinking he got the best prices for them. To my surprise I checked every book on a retailer called Alibris discovering that every single item was cheaper with free shipping! In all, he could have saved $194 buying from this retailer plus I could have gotten 4% cash back. That was the last time he ordered from Amazon.

 

Traditional Shopping vs. Online Shopping

I am sure that by now you are probably familiar with E-commerce or online shopping. We all have booked a flight, a hotel or rented a car on the Internet and yes, that is considered online shopping too! even when the purchase is intangible.

As retailers try to attract more customers, they have improved their shopping experience with better websites and easier shopping carts. You can find now all kinds of reviews, ratings and comments on specific products as well as detailed description of it item. So what are the advantages of shopping online vs. going to the store? Let me try to explain this with a real example:

You need to buy supplies for your pet (s) and traditionally you will get in your car, drive to the store which can take about 10 minutes, find a place to park, walk to the entrance, get a cart, find the item you are looking for (stores love to reorganize every time we go and it seems you will never find one item in the same location), load it in your cart, in the mean time you get caught by one of the store special for some items you don't need but they make you feel you need it, you make a line to pay (it can take from 0-15 minutes to reach the cashier), they scan your products (hopefully all bar codes work properly), you swipe your card, walk to your car, put the items in your car and finally drive back home. In all, it probably took you about one hour to complete this small task, after all you only went for food and bedding for your rabbits, right? Oh! If you have kids, you might want to add another 30 minutes MINIMUM to the whole shopping experience.

Now lets take a look to a more modern option. Kids are sleeping, you are watching TV with your laptop and a glass of red wine. You go to your this website website, find the pet store you need (takes about 10 seconds) you are linked to their official site, find the items you need (using their search tab makes it faster and if you know the item code is even better) add them to your virtual cart, you checkout and done! you completed the purchase in 5 minutes (or less, as you get better at online shopping) Now you only have to wait about 5 business days or less for the delivery. So now you saved time and gas and using your Shop To Earth portal will give you a percentage of cash back. Oh! did I mention that your kids were sleeping???

Every month we need to buy supplies for either our office or our homes. Online shopping has many advantages:

• Save gasoline
• Save time
• Save money as many retailers have special online only prices
• Save on State Tax since depending on the retailer's location you might not have to pay tax
• Use of discount online coupons that retailers issue to their online customers
• Avoid going to the store when it is raining, when it;s cold or too hot
• Save money as you impulse buying at the store can really add up in your bill
• You can compare in seconds the sales price of the same item among different retailers

The more shopping power you transfer to online shopping, the more time and money you will save every month. Let me show you how to simplify your life at the same time that you can save thousands a year on the items you have to buy anyway.

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