Ecommerce Life-Hacks That Save You Time and Money

No matter whether you’re in the market for a new car, some moisturizer, or even a specialized service, knowing how to make the most out of your eCommerce explorations can result in meaningful savings of time and money.

But we’re not all online aficionados and it can often be confusing knowing both where to start, and what to prioritize. In light of this, we’ve brought together a list of the top tips and life-hacks that will keep you in good stead next time you’re browsing for something online.

Try Some Honey

Honey is a Chrome Extension developed by PayPal that has been quietly revolutionizing the way people shop online. What’s a Chrome Extension, you may reasonably ask? Think of it like an app, but for your Chrome-based web browser. This means it can be used not only with https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/chrome/, but Microsoft Windows’ new default browser, Edge.

Honey works in the background when you’re shopping, and once you get to the checkout, it scans the internet for any and all valid coupons for the products you’re buying.

If it finds any, it’ll automatically apply the ones that result in the biggest saving. Honey is in collaboration with over 50,000 eCommerce merchants and counting, and has been found to deliver to users an average saving of some 17.5% percent – not too shabby.

What’s more, https://www.joinhoney.com/ is completely free of charge, making it a no-brainer for the budget conscious retail therapist.

Get on the OCP Train

We are all more than familiar with the many online comparison platforms that flood the UK marketplace and our ad-breaks, with Alexander Orlov and Gio Compario ranking among the most instantly recognisable brand mascots of the 21st century.

Yet it bears noting that comparison platforms such as these really do help in making meaningful savings on everything from car insurance to loans. However due to the level of market saturation insurance-oriented comparison platforms enjoy, many don’t actually realize there are online comparison platforms out there offering compelling discounts for a huge number of product sectors.

Take https://www.casinoreviews.net.nz/ for example, which serves up a comprehensive directory of online casinos for our Antipodean chums. In much the same way that the likes of MoneySupermarket transfers special deals and promotions to their patrons through affiliate relationships, this platform provides competitive sign-up bonuses and welcome offers to Kiwis in the market for a flutter.

OCP’s are also commonplace in the realm of travel, with LastMinute, HolidayPirates and Skyscanner all vying to serve up the latest budget-prices on flights and all-inclusive packages to UK holiday-makers.

Suffice to say, a cursory search to see whether an online comparison platform exists for the sector you’re shopping in can be a fast-track way to find deals and recommendations you won’t get anywhere else.

Go Incognito To Beat the Trackers

This next one comes straight from the ninja school of online shopping. You may not know this already, but many websites actively track your browsing activity as you’re moving around their site. This is generally for a good reason, as it enables websites to keep track of what you’ve put in your shopping basket, for example.

However, these trackers can also be employed to more nefarious ends. Certain sites are known to mark-up prices of products that you view repeatedly, relying on the psychology of scarcity to encourage you to impulse buy them before they either (1) run out or (2) get any more expensive.

Some of the more egregious examples of this can be seen with big ticket items like the cost of international flights, with prices fluctuating by sometimes hundreds of pounds. Fortunately, there is a way to circumvent this shady practice – by going incognito.

Incognito mode, or private browsing, is a feature common to all modern web browsers. It prevents your browser from recording your browsing history, and also makes you invisible to most web trackers online. Due to this, it can be a very effective means of saving money, especially in circumstances when you think you’re falling prey to this mark-up ploy.

Simply browse around as normal, and then, when it comes time to pay, switch to incognito mode in order to get the real-world best price offered by a company, and not their artificially inflated quote.