When it comes to shopping nowadays, more and more of us are letting our fingers do the walking. Online sales are expected to hit $500 billion by the year 2014 worldwide. In US alone it is estimated to reach $248.7 by the year 2014 according to Forrester Research. The growth is tremendous; it was just $100 billion in the year 2006. And this is a solid proof that nowadays people prefer online shopping more than offline shopping. About 71% of online population bought something online last year whereas it was just 35% in 2006. The options of product available online increased by 30% in the last two years and the three products that represented more than 44% of online sales are computers, apparel and consumer electronics. Here are some reasons and it makes sense to do online shopping.
1. Convenience. An online shop permits you to shop 24 x 7 days a week. So, you have the freedom to purchase at your leisure. It is very vital to those of us who are very hectic life and can’t make it to a brick and mortar shop. Parents to young children as well as elderly people can have a more hassle-free shopping experience in front of a computer through online shopping.
2. Saves time. A vast number of products and product information is easily available and searchable on the internet. Moreover, in online shopping there is no traveling, parking cars and walking involved.
3. Options. Online shopping stores have a staggering inventory to choose from. Plus, you can avoid the inconvenience of physically traveling from store to store to compare prices and find products.
4. Easy research. While online shopping it’s very easy to compare prices and products, so that you can be sure of what you purchase. Online retailers can issue much more information about their product on sites than they could affordably publish in other media. There are also price compression websites which helps customers to compare prices and products with even more ease. You can further share information and reviews with other shoppers who have firsthand experience with the product or store.
5. Lower prices. Online shopping can reduce costs in various ways. Since the online retailers don’t have to keep warehouses, stores and staffs the overall cost of the products comes down. There is no mediator in between the shop and end customer, so the benefit goes to the customer unlike in the normal system there is distributors, wholesalers and retailers and all of them have their cut before the end user gets the product.
6. More savings. While online shopping you can save even further with the help of discount coupons and promo codes which are easily available online.