A whole new shopping world

With a few points and clicks of the mouse, shopping online is a popular way to get holiday shopping done this year

Like a hurricane of frantic shopping and frenzied activity, the holiday season rapidly is approaching. Have you gotten all of your loved ones the gifts you think they deserve? Chances are, if you're like the typical college student, you haven't even thought about it yet. If that's the case, you probably have a lot of long lines and empty shelves to look forward to. Or do you?

These days, thanks to the Internet, you can buy almost anything you want with a few clicks of your mouse from the comfort of your own home. Even better, you can comparison shop, easily find consumer reviews and take advantage of coupons, discounts and other deals without moving from your chair. Sounds like the perfect way to shop, doesn't it?

Many JMU students have embraced online shopping.

Senior Karen DuPuis shops online often for clothes and DVDs. "You can get things online from stores that aren't in Harrisonburg," she said. "Even though you might have to wait a few days for things to come in the mail, I still think it's a convienent way to shop."

Tom Guaraldo has similar feelings about shopping online.

"I like it, I trust it and I do it a lot," he said. "Customer service is normally even better than most stores. It's the basis of the business so the customer means something to them."

Others, however, prefer the traditional store experience. Senior Brooke Hansell prefers shopping in traditional stores over online stores because she "likes to take the time to pick things out, try things on and to feel things."

Senior Tim Price said, "I don't shop online because I don't like dealing with shipping. I don't like shipping charges, and I don't want to wait."

Regardless, many students will be shopping online this holiday season. Here are a few tips to help the shopping experience.

Comparison Shopping

With so many options for products to buy and places to buy them, how are you supposed to know what to get and where to get it? Well, there's no need to fret, comparison shopping on the Web is relatively simple if you know where to look.

First you'll want to figure out what products you're interested in and see how they stack up against each other. There are several great Web sites for this, especially if you're looking for electronics or computer equipment. The first useful site you'll want to check out is www.reviewfinder.com. This site is an online database of reviews of all sorts of products, mostly of the electronic type though they also feature reviews of music CDs and games.

If you can't find the products you're looking for here, you might then head over to www.buybuddy.com. You can find reviews of movies, books, music, electronics, computers and video games by searching specifically for them by title or keywords or browse to see the top-rated products of different categories.

If you're still not satisfied with the reviews you've read, another great source is www.amazon.com. Here you can read thousands of customer reviews about nearly every product imaginable. You also can view similar products in customer lists that might complement the gifts you're considering.

Now that you know which product you want, you'll probably want to figure out where to buy it, and there are two major considerations to determine that — price and vendor dependability.

First, you'll probably want to know which vendor offers your chosen product at the best price. There are a few great Web sites that handle this quite easily: www.pricescan.com and www.bizrate.com. You can search quickly for prices on a number of products, and these sites will list the best prices and the vendors offering these prices. BizRate.com adds the extra feature of providing ratings for each vendor. These ratings are gathered from customers who have had experience with the vendor, and they rate a wide variety of vendor services such as price, on-time delivery and support.

Finally, once you've found a vendor with the right price for the product you want, you might want to check out how that vendor compares to others. There are two good web sites for doing this. They are www.bizrate.com and www.resellerratings.com.

An additional place to check if you're looking specifically for the best price on DVDs is www.dvdpricesearch.com. Here, you can search through most of the larger and most reliable online DVD vendors for the best price. This site also includes ratings for each vendor based on consumer experiences.

Coupons and Rebates

Finally, now that you know what you want and where you want to get it, there's a chance you can get it for even cheaper than you expected. A lot of vendors offer coupons or rebates for various reasons, often to entice new customers into buying from them.

How are you supposed to find out what vendors are offering coupons or rebates? Just visit www.flamingoworld.com and see if the vendor you're buying from has any coupons or deals listed. You can search by store or by category so finding coupons for what you want is quick and easy.

Many manufacturers offer product rebates, especially for more expensive electronics and computer products. Sometimes it can be a hassle checking manufacturer Web sites to find out whether they are offering rebates for their products. It's much easier to check a Web site like www.rebatecatcher.com which lists rebates from a number of different manufacturers, including all the information you'll need to start saving money.

Finally...

Once you've figured out what you want to buy, where you want to buy it and looked for coupons or rebates to save money, there are a few more things you'll want to do to ensure the best results.

First of all, you'll need a credit card for most major online vendors. A debit card with a credit company logo should suffice in most cases. Second, you need to decide how soon you need your product to arrive. Most vendors offer several shipping options ranging from one to two weeks to overnight delivery. You could end up paying a lot more if you want overnight delivery and it might be better to buy at a local store instead.

Finally, and most importantly, be sure that your transaction is secure before you give any of your personal information and especially before you give your credit card number. You can check this in Internet Explorer by looking at the right part of your status bar at the bottom — if there's an icon that looks like a lock, then your transaction will be secure. In Netscape, there will be a similar icon in the bottom left corner of your browser window. You can also check the location. if it starts with https (note the "s" — that means secure), then you're safe.

There are a lot of advantages to shopping online. Now that you've seen how easy it can be, get started on that holiday shopping and save a bundle of time and money by doing it online.