Shopper friends with paper bags on shopping spree at shopping mall.

Online Shopping? How To Get The Best Price

Thanks to dynamic surge pricing, retailers have made online shopping more complicated for shoppers. It used to be easy – practically any online shopping purchase was less expensive than one made at a brick and mortar store. With dynamic pricing – businesses set prices based on market demand and user browsing – online shopping requires creative tactics. Follow the tactics below and I guarantee you’ll get the best prices for anything.

Abandon Your Cart

This is the online shopping way of playing hard to get, but sometimes it really pays off. If you’re not in a hurry to order something, leaving items in your cart may prompt retailers to email you a discount code after a couple of days. “Did you forget something?, their emails might say. “Here’s 25% off!” Just make sure you’re logged in while you’re shopping or else they won’t have an email address on file to send a code to.

Open A Chat Window

Take advantage of any ecommerce site that has chat support. Many of these chat tech support people have the ability to offer you discounts or offer you items that are in stock but not yet on the website. This works particularly well for big companies. I’ve used this online shopping strategy with success on the Dell Outlet site many times.

Use Wikibuy

Wikibuy is a web-brower extension. With Wikibuy, customers browse Amazon while the extension searches through hundreds of sellers for better prices and coupons.

Shop on Mondays

Optimal shopping times and days vary depending on what you’re buying. Prices change based on the day of the week or month, and different retailers operate on different markdown schedules. In general, however, you can score the best deals shopping online on Mondays, especially if you’re looking to buy consumer electronics.

Set Up Alerts

There are ways to alert yourself about price drops and also to predict when prices may drop in the future. CamelCamelCamel lets users monitor price fluctuations for any item on Amazon.

Go Under Cover

Believe it or not, but much of the pricing that you see on Amazon is based on your own browser and purchase history. If you go incognito and eliminate some of the information that retailers have on you, you might find that prices are lower. One easy way of doing this is to browser in a different browser from the browser you’ll use to make your final purchase.

Be A Brand Evangelist

If you show interest in a brand by signing up for email lists, you will often get exclusive offers and early sale access. You also get a lot more junk email so there’s a clear trade-off.