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5 ways to super savings when shopping on the internet. Save at least 200 dollars for 1000 dollars of shopping– that is 20% of the total money spent. With common sense and little prudence you can save hundreds of dollars on your holiday shopping bills. From my past experiences, I have chosen the five best practices that will give you the maximum savings. Peruse them, put them into action and email me your numbers on savings.

Comparison Shopping:

Gone are the days when there was no easy way to compare the price of a product at different stores other than visiting the stores. In this new era of cyber-shopping, there are numerous options to compare the price of a product at different locations of the globe. With very little effort, internet would find the best and right price, at the right store for you to save big bucks.

A few days back, I was shopping for a Mini DV camcorder in the price range of $500 to $700. An ardent internet shopper, I researched on brands, their prices and decided to buy a JVC GRD200 Mini DV camcorder. It is (may be “it was”) my belief that Amazon.com delivers the best products at the lowest prices (It does sell the best products, but not at the cheapest prices – at least in this case). As always, I was poised to buy the product from Amazon.

The comparison on the price of this product (via www.shopping.com) revealed that the product was sold as low as $299.00. With further research I understood that the price was indeed 299 US dollars. Delaying no more, I bought the camcorder from this seller instead of my first option – to save only $400.

As I look back, it still perplexes me how I saved $400 on a single buy. Does it not surprise you when you cut down 400 dollars on a single item? Perhaps the most important thing I did was comparing the prices for this product on www.shopping.com. It paid!

Cognizant Shopping:

As a customer, your goal is to buy the best product at the cheapest price. Right?

You agree with me that it is not an intelligent idea to buy a product for 10 dollars when it is sold at 3 dollars less at the near by store. Neither do you accord it a savvy-shopping, to buy a product for 50 dollars when its price can be reduced by 10 dollars via the special store discount/coupon for the product.

Many of us do not realize the power of coupons. They hold tremendous potential for huge savings. Depending on how you use them, a coupon for 10 dollars for every 50 dollars would save 40 dollars over a period of month, assuming shopping once a week. Extrapolating, it is a 200 dollars savings over a 1000 dollar shopping-money. A typical Christmas shopping would amount to these numbers easily.

Although the example seems to be ideal, it resonates the ideas of retails stores like JC Penny or Sears, whose holiday-shopping-placards read “$10 off for every $50 shopping – JC Penny”, “$35 off for every $250 spent on electronics – Sears”. Get into the habit of using the coupons whenever possible to appreciate the savings accumulating into your pockets.

Selective Shopping:

Depending on which state you buy the product from and which store you buy it from, you may or may not be charged a sales tax. If the sale is exempted the sales tax, it is a savings of 6 percent to 9 percent of total sale amount. Each seller clearly indicates if a sales tax would be applied on the sale in the geographical location. Thus, a little cautiousness would translate to a savings as high as 9 percent.

On the downside, you may have to pay for the shipping for the product which in most cases would compare less to the total of sales tax. And, by the way, due to the immense competition among the internet-sellers, you may end up making a bargain by not paying the taxes and not paying for the shipping either. Free shipping – as it is called, is common on many internet sites these days. For an item priced at $1000 you would save as much as $90 as sales tax savings – all you do is pick the right seller.

Early Shopping:

Planning on shopping near the beginning of the season will give you ample time to compare the prices on the product at various sellers. During this process, you will form a ballpark estimate of the item.

Let me remind you that the variation of the price can be any where from few dollars to few hundreds of dollars depending on the original price of the product, which makes it necessary for you to do this homework as to know the kind-of best price before you finalize on buying the product.

In addition, sellers usually hike the prices as the holiday season approaches so that they can display higher discount-numbers on their sale-advertisements. The higher discounts not only attract more customers but also compensate and compete the prices for the similar items at other stores. The fact is, even when you see greater discounts, you would not realize tangible savings around the holiday season unless you end up getting an early bird discount. I am somewhat reluctant to say this is true all the times, but is the case in several occasions.

Team Shopping:

Like in a workplace, collaborative shopping produces amazing results. You are not mandated to go to a shopping mall as a team, but exchanging ideas and information as a team would be advantageous.

Talk to your friends about their experience buying a similar item in the past. Gather information about the quality of the product, prices at different stores, seller reputation, etc that play a vital role on your buying-decision. Moreover, ask your friends and relatives if they could share any discount coupons. If preferred customer, they would share the coupons with you, which in turn would give you the opportunity to cut down on the final price. Beware that some sellers distribute non-transferable coupons in which cases you need to be creative to maximize your savings.

So finally:

These ideas only scratch the surface of the iceberg. You can get innovative and creative to find the best deals on the market. Websites like www.techbargains.com, www.ecoupons.com, etc are some of the few sites that gather information about the greatest deals of the day. Internet has many such great money-saving ideas.

Armed with this information, I am sure you would be able to craft a good plan which would save you many dollars each shopping trip. If you are meticulous enough, you would save at least $200 for every $1000 dollars spent. I guarantee it. If you deny my proposition or have a different opinion write to me and I will help you see the potential of putting the above facts to work.

More and more people are shopping on-line today than ever before, especially with the holidays just around the corner. We're looking for gifts for our kids, gifts for our family, and gifts for our friends. But is shopping on-line safe? Is our information secure? Is it convenient? For as many of those who are on-line shoppers (and I am a big on-line shopper myself), there are just as many, or more, who don't or won't shop on-line. They cite various reasons for their reluctance. Believe me, it can be scary to try new things. So, I have considered the reasons for their fear and apathy and have come up with what I believe are great reasons you gotta love on-line shopping.

1. Security Issues

Many people are worried about putting their personal information out into "cyberspace". Personally, I feel safer on-line. Identity theft actually occurs more in the malls and department stores than on-line according to a recent report on CNN. They report that there are far more opportunities available in a mall.

The truth of the matter is that through the process of encryption, the internet is actually a safe place to shop. Encryption is like coding. The only one who knows what is being coded is the one with the key. Secure socket layers, or SSL, is the protocol that most browsers and web servers use to protect our personal information while it is being transmitted. Keys are created with each transaction and then discarded, with each new transaction producing a new, unique key. There are so many combinations possible with 128-bit, for example, that is has been likened to trying to find one particular grain of sand in the Sahara Desert. You can tell that you are using encryption when you see the padlock symbol on the toolbar. And you should see an "s" appear after the http in the address window.

2. Save Money

These days it is a lot easier to save money on the internet. Shipping and handling can get pretty pricey. However, today many of the stores you can shop at on-line are offering some great shipping deals. In some instances, shipping and handling are waived entirely, if you spend a certain amount of money. Many of the book clubs and stores are offering a low fee for S&H, too, when you purchase a specific dollar amount. The price of gas alone is well worth the cost of S&H. And, although the price of gas has come down some, it can still get pretty costly as you run from mall to mall in search of the newest, hottest, gotta have item.

3. Convenience

This one is a biggie for myself. Rather than fight the throng of mad shoppers, I can shop in the comfort of my own home and buy, compare, research anything I want. You can find just about anything on-line, too, no matter how obscure. I also love the fact that I don't have to beat the traffic to get my shopping done. I don't have to run from store to store to store to try and purchase the items and gifts I know will please everyone on my holiday list. One stop gift shops are perfect in that you can shop for everyone on your list in one place and still get that special something for each person on your list.

4. Comparison Shopping

There are a number of sites on-line where you can comparison shop and get the best deal. The holidays are about giving. That doesn't mean you should break the bank in order to do so. Look at sites like froogle.com, yahooshopping.com, or pricegrabber.com to buy at the best prices on-line or even in your area.

There you are. No more reasons not to avail yourself of the convenience and safety of shopping on-line. I hope I have been able to help you become more comfortable in cyber space. You should enjoy your holidays and shopping on-line gives you that extra time to spend with family and good friends. Happy Holidays and Great Wishes to all of you and yours!!

People are conditioned to trust written words, not to mention images. "I read it in the paper" or "As seen on TV" are worn out but still effective clichés. The Internet combines both the written and the seen. It is both a textual and a visual (and audio) medium. Do people trust Internet content? Is the incredible Internet - credible?

In the "brick and mortar" world, credibility is associated with brands. A brand, in effect, guarantees the quality and specifications of a product (think McDonald's hamburgers), its performance (think Palm), level of service and commitment to customer care (Amazon), variety, or price (Wal-Mart). Brands are sustained and enhanced by advertising campaigns. The content or sales pitch of specific ads are often less important than the message conveyed by the very existence of a campaign: "This company is rich enough (read: stable, reliable, trustworthy, here to stay) to spend millions on advertising".

The Internet has very few brands (Yahoo!, Amazon) - and some of them are tarnished. Some "old media" brands have entered the fray (Barnes and Noble, The Wall Street Journal, the Britannica) - hitherto without much success. The overwhelming bulk of Web content is created or disseminated by small time entrepreneurs and monomaniacs.

So, how does one establish or acquire credibility in such a diffuse and anarchic medium?

Enter Stanford University's "Web Credibility Project".

They define themselves thus:

"Our goal is to understand what leads people to believe what they find on the Web. We hope this knowledge will enhance Web site design and promote future research on Web credibility. As part of this ongoing project we are:

• Performing quantitative research on Web credibility.
• Collecting all public information on Web credibility.
• Acting as a clearinghouse for this information.
• Facilitating research and discussion about Web credibility.
• Helping designers create credible Web sites."

Examples of current projects: Timeliness: How does having out-of-date content affect the credibility of a Web site? Interaction: How does having a personalized interaction with a Web site affect its credibility? Negative Content: How does displaying negative content associated with a branded web site affect the credibility of the brand?

It is useful to confine ourselves to this definition of trust:

"The subjective belief, perception, or conviction that information provided is true, factual, and objective, and that commitments undertaken, explicitly, or implicitly, will be honored fully and in a timely manner".

Such perception, belief, or conviction are based on:

• Past experience in general (with spam, with merchants, or providers, with a similar product category, with the same type of content, etc.) and personal proclivity to trust or to distrust
• Experience with the specific merchant or provider (whether personal or gleaned from other people's feedback - reviews, complaints, and opinions)

There is little that a merchant can do about the former. The latter is, expectedly, influenced

• Professionalism (as evident in Web site design, e-commerce facilities, user-friendliness, navigability, links to other relevant Web pages, links from other Web sites, ease and speed of download, updated content, proofreading, domain name which matches the company's name, availability, multilingualism, etc.)
• Trustworthiness (lack of bias, good intentions, truthfulness, thoroughness, objectivity, expertise and author credentials, knowledgeable sources and treatment, citations and bibliography), and what the authors of the research call "Real World Feel" (physical address, phone/fax numbers, non-Web e-mail address, photos of facilities and staff, audio recording, ownership by a not for profit organization, URL ending with ORG).
• Commercial Web sites are less trusted. Cluttered ads, paid subscriptions, e-commerce enabled forms - all reduce the site's credibility! This is especially true if the entire site is a one, big ad and when it is hard to distinguish ads from content.
• Track record (how veteran is the merchant, past financial performance, credit history, brand name recognition, lists of customers, etc.)
• Selection (how many products are carried, how often is inventory refreshed, etc.)
• Advertising (is the company's business sufficiently lucrative to support a campaign?)
• Service (good service indicates a reassuring readiness to sacrifice the bottom line to cater to the customer's legitimate concerns, feedback forms, live support, etc.)
• Full disclosure of rates, prices, privacy policy, security issues, etc.
• Feedback from other users (opinions, reviews, comments, FAQs, support groups, etc.)
• Site rating and certification by trustworthy agencies (like the Better Business Bureau - BBB, VeriSign, TRUSTe) - or awards won (from credible and reputable organizations). Links from other, well-known and believable Web sites.

The Credibility Web discovered that trust in e-commerce is also influenced by idiosyncratic factors. Certain domain names (org) are more trusted than others (com). Too many ads, broken links, typos, outdated or old content - all diminish trust. In the absence of proven markers and behavioral guidelines, people seem to resort to extrapolation ("if they can't maintain their own Web site ...") and stereotypes (e.g., NGO's are more trustworthy than corporations).

As Web sites proliferate (Google indexes well over 3 billion now) and Web authoring becomes a routine task - the noise to signal ratio of garbage to useful information is bound to deteriorate. Search engines already incorporate crude measures of credibility in their rankings (e.g., the number of links from external Web sites). But, to remain useful, search engines (and Web directories) would do well to rate Web content more comprehensively and thoroughly. They should rank Web sites by authoritativeness, reliability, and objectivity, for instance.

Research shows that 75% of all respondents resort to the Internet as a primary information provider. The inundation of irrelevant material caused most surfers to confine their surfing to 10 Web sites (the equivalent of "anchors" in shopping malls) which they deem reliable, timely, accurate, objective, authoritative, and credible. The rest of the Internet gets the leftovers. This worrying trend can be reversed only through the emergence of independent and commercially-viable rating agencies. Web sites (at least the business ones) should be willing to pay for credible rating to enhance their stickiness and attract monetizable "eyeballs". In the absence of such third party accreditation, the Internet risks both irrelevance and disrepute.

Jane is a value conscious shopper. She is always looking to compare prices before buying any product. One day, she walks into a local retailer pricing out digital cameras. She writes down several camera model numbers so she can go online later that evening to see if she can find it cheaper elsewhere. Later that evening, Jane spends two or three hours surfing the Internet before she finds the camera she likes at the price she is willing to pay.

Sound familiar?

Imagine if Jane could just call a phone number, punch in the UPC code of the camera, and wait a few seconds while a database searches the Internet to compare prices for her. Imagine if she could then buy the camera right there on the spot. Sounds like a future technological advancement, doesn’t it? Not quite the future; it’s already here.

Online shopping has made it easier for consumers to get what they want, whenever they want it at the prices they want. Every major brick and mortar retailer now has a presence online not including the smaller, more specialized retailers located around the world. However, the vast array of online retailers can make it difficult for consumers to find the products they are looking for at the most affordable price. In addition, consumers do not have time to spend hours in front of their computers scouring across Internet looking for products. Consumers are demanding a better, more efficient and less cumbersome way to compare and buy products online. Frucall has stepped up to the challenge and has introduced a new way to compare prices online.

Frucall is a new, innovative service that enables consumers to compare products online using their mobile phones. This alleviates the valuable time spent trying to accomplish the same thing in front of a computer. In today’s increasingly connected world, everyone has a mobile phone with them at all times which makes the Frucall service so attractive.

Here is how Frucall works. Customers first sign up online for their free account. In their profile, they store their mobile phone number and optional credit card information. Then, when they are shopping at the mall, they simply call the toll free phone number and type in the UPC code of the product of interest. In seconds, the Frucall service will return the results and customers can choose to buy the product right there on the spot, or add it to their shopping cart, or bookmark it for later review. It’s that easy.

At the present time Frucall’s service only queries Amazon.com because that’s currently the only service that allows Web Services queries. However, that will change as additional online retailers allow Web Services queries.

The ability to do online comparison shopping through a mobile phone is a captivating concept whose time has definitely come. In a world where so many of our daily activities are performed with a mobile phone, the Frucall service takes its capabilities one step further. If you are a busy consumer that values convenience and services that are helpful in saving you time, then Frucall is exactly what you need. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain from using the Frucall service.

People who are buying online have grown dramatically over the last few years. Consumers purchase a variety of different products, and with the trend as it is; elderly people are becoming more confident to pay for their products online as they understand money can be saved in comparison to prices in high street shops.

As any business would know, it is important to keep up to date with current market prices so products can remain competitive. The Help the Aged website seem to be selling mobility scooters at more than double the price of other online vendors. So why are the prices of the mobility scooters on the Help the Aged website so expensive?

The Help the Aged website have a section where people can come and ask questions and post answers to other peoples threads. One person challenged Help the Aged on how they justify their prices considering there are similar websites selling the same product and offering a similar service at half the price.

Peter Olsson: Help the Aged E -Commerce Marketing Manager, replied and said that Help the Aged started selling mobility scooters in February 2004 to counter act against the common “Unethical Sales Practices” of other sellers in the industry. Peter Olsson suggests that his own research shows that the prices Help the Aged sell their mobility scooters at are infact, “very competitive”. Mr Olsson states that he is aware, rock bottom rates are advertised in tabloids and other media. However, he encourages in his reply to remember “there’s a wide range of specifications available on the market so people get what they pay for”. He uses an example stating that some are sold as new although they have been refurbished.

Mr Olsson said Help the Aged would advise anyone only to deal with “Reputable vendors” in order to avoid deceptive sales tactics to prevent a disappointing purchase. “If something sounds too cheap to be true, it usually is.” Although we could agree with this statement in general, in some cases this may not be correct. So, are we understand from Mr Olsson, that the Help the Aged website is a reputable vendor to purchase Mobility Scooters but to be aware of commercial websites offering mobility scooters at cheaper prices?

Companies such as Factory Outlet Scooters, www.factoryoutletscooters.co.uk sell brand new mobility scooters at low cost prices. Are we to believe that this company is not reputable because their scooters are sold at, in some cases, half the price of Help the Aged? I don’t believe so.

In response to Mr Olsson, a gentleman posted a reply. He said he himself had worked in the industry selling mobility products for the last 15 years, and that he was “Very amused, yet saddened” at the reply Mr Olsson offered. He did not think it was appropriate for a well known charity to be involved in this commercial enterprise which by its inference gives backing to an associate company selling items for high prices which may lead a potential customer away from a competitor selling the same product at half the price. He agrees with Mr Olsson that there are bad companies around and added that they sell scooters and other aids at inflated prices, and suggests the role of Help the Aged as a charity should be to educate and guide the elderly to the best buys, the best prices and companies who are ethical.

The Office of Fair Trading have currently launched a campaign to help consumers, such as the elderly, to fend off doorstop sellers who are selling high price items, such as mobility scooters and mobility products, to deal with high-pressure sales tactics. The campaign is backed by a number of groups, including Help the Aged.

Help the Aged have their heart in the right place, and we know they do a lot of good work for the elderly, but in this case, they possibly need to be more aware of realistic prices that the elderly can make their purchases online and perhaps recognise genuine services offered by other online companies in the market industry.