Online Shopping Tips

  Should you  shop online?

  Here's a list of the advantages and drawbacks of shopping online:

Advantages

• Save time.  There's no trip to the store, no walking, no waiting in line.   It's easy to use a shopping agent to comparison-shop at many online stores in a few minutes.
• Save money.  Online stores have lower expenses, and can pass the savings on to you (usually with no sales tax.)  You'll also save on gasoline and car mileage (about 25 cents per mile.)
• Buy securely.  Buying online is less vulnerable to fraud. Consumer experts preach that paying online with a credit card is much safer than paying at a retail store.  If you're worried about it, get a Nextcard Internet Visa, which will compensate you for any losses due to online fraud. 
• Buy safely.  Avoid traffic accidents and fatalities, hit animals, and street crime.
• Greater product selection.  Online stores often sell hundreds of thousands of products.
• Environmentally friendly. Forget smog emissions and mail-order catalogs that waste paper.
• More pleasant. Avoid bad weather, and enjoy music and family while you shop.
• More informative.   Most online stores have complete product descriptions, and many will let you sign up for e-mail newsletters that are filled with news and special bargains.

  The iMarvel Mall Wizard gives you some added advantages:

• Fast, easy searches.  Just type in what you want to buy, and you'll get results in seconds.  Keeping your Mall Wizard  on your hard disk will make it load fast and save time.
• All-star stores.  The stores in this mall are top-rated by consumer's sites like BizRate.com and Gomez Advisors.  Just click on the Info  button on any store, to get a report from BizRate.
• Money-saving shopping agents.  The mall offers two popular shopping agents, Bottom Dollar  and MySimon.  They'll find you a great price for almost any product you're looking for.
• Daily shopping news.  Every day, a different banner tips you off to a great online shopping opportunity.  Click on the banner to read about it, and see more great deals from iMarvel.

Drawbacks

  Of course, there had to be some drawbacks!

• You can't touch the product.  You can  see pictures of the product at some sites.
• It's slower. It can take anywhere from 1-2 days for express orlocal deliveries, to 10 days for some cross-country UPS ground shipments.  Returning a defective product is less easy.

Myths

  Some of the fears you may have heard expressed about online shopping are just myths:

• Loss of privacy:  Any fears of "hacker" spies are typically groundless.  You may want to check out the store's privacy policy, to make sure your name won't be sold.
• You'll get "spammed": Online stores almost never send spam, or sell your name to spammers.
• Customer service will be inferior.  Customer service may actually be faster and easier, using the power of instant online research and communication.

  Shopping Safe

  To make sure your online buying experience is safe, take the following steps:

• Know who you're buying from. Try to buy from reputable stores. Every online store should have a page describing its policies. The Bizrate shopping guide also keeps tabs on policies for many online stores. The policies for returns and warranties are especially important, because you'll be ordering products without testing them first.
• Use a credit card for all purchases. If you later have a dispute with the online retailer, you can call up the credit-card company and have them mediate the dispute on your behalf.
• Use a secure server. Make sure that the online store has a secure server, which encrypts everything you type to make sure it can't be spied upon. Most browsers will inform you when you enter a page that uses a secure server: a little key or padlock icon will appear at the bottom of the screen. You can click this icon to get more information about the company you're dealing with.
• Use the Better Busines Bureau. If you're still not sure about the company, check the Better Business Bureau. They keep reliability reports that record customer dissatisfaction problems.
• Read Product Reviews. You won't be able to handle or test the products before you buy, so take a good look at product reviews first.  Some online stores have product descriptions, and there are also product guide sites (some are listed further down on this page.)

  Comparing Shopping Sites

  The following guides compare online shopping sites:

• BizRate compares many different kinds of online stores, including books and computer products.  Their home page has about 15 different categories of stores (bookstores, music stores, etc.)  You can click on a category to get a list that ranks the overall quality of the stores.  Then you can get a detailed description of any store, by clicking on an icon that looks like a little magnifying glass.  There you'll see the store's return policies, the available methods of ordering, paying and shipping, and other features.
• E-Smarts is an all-purpose independent shopping guide, really a great site.  They really look to help you make good shopping decisions, not just to make a sale.  It's the kind of site we're creating at 7 Heavens.
• NetGuide has guides on almost everything in the Internet world, including lists of the best places to shop.  It's a fun and well-written site, but the lists of best sites are incomplete.
• Gomez Advisors has top-notch guides for online banks, brokers, bookstores, auctions, auto sites and travel sites.
• E-Marketer has a series of guides that examine online stores, including bookstore and music sites.  It's mostly done from a marketer's perspective.
• Yahoo Internet Life is an online magazine that gives you one-paragraph summaries of all the best sites online.
• PC Magazine Online has some good analysis of online shopping sites.  This site gives you the PC Magazine Editor's Choice for superstores, computer hardware and software, books and music sites.

  Comparing Products

  The following web sites help you research product features and make good buying decisions:

• CompareNet is a Buyer's Guide that gives you side-by-side comparisons of many consumer products, so you can look at both features and prices.
• Visa Shopping Guide by Yahoo!  has product categories covering almost all consumer items.
• Lycos Decision Guides is very good at helping you decide which products will best fit your lifestyle.  Guides include such items as bikes, camcorders, cities, colleges, cruises, dogs and new cars.
• Consumer Reports Online gives you good guides on cars and trucks, appliances, electronics, house & home products, home office products, health, food, leisure, personal products and financial advice.
• Consumer World  is a directory of over 1700 of the most useful consumer resources on the Internet, well categorized.  It's truly a tremendous all-purpose site, but there's so much here that it's a little hard to navigate.