The Best Online Shopping Tools: Shopping Comparison Sites Explained
What to do
Here are four of the best shopping comparison sites on the web. You can use them when you want to find the lowest price for an item at online stores.
You can search at Shopzilla.com at this page:
You can also search at Shopping.com from this page:
| What are you shopping for? |
We also recommend you search at:
Pricegrabber.com and Nextag.com
A little more
Using shopping comparison sites intelligently can help you discover the cheapest place to buy an item in a very short amount of time. We recommend bookmarking this page, and coming back here every time you want to search for low prices on an item.
We’ve listed four of the best shopping comparison sites. You can search Shopzilla.com directly from our site, whereas for Pricegrabber.com, Nextag.com, Shopping.com you actually have to click through to their sites. Eventually, we hope to have all search boxes for all four shopping sites on this page.
What is a shopping comparison site? In essence, a shopping comparison site performs its namesake: It ‘compares’ the price of an item at a whole bunch of stores.
A shopping comparison site allow you to input an item you are interested in purchasing. The site quickly consults its database of stores and then displays the price of the item at each of the stores where it is available. You can easily compare prices amongst stores by scrolling down the list of search results.
One of the best features of the sites above is that they allow you to input your ZIP code into the searches to estimate sales tax and shipping costs. Hence, you get a much better understanding of the total cost of an item.
The power of shopping comparison sites is pretty incredible. Can you imagine walking into a mall and checking the price of a product at each store? With shopping comparison sites, you can price check an item at hundreds, maybe even thousands of places, very quickly.
Do you need to search all four sites above every time you want to shop? Probably not. We have found that all the sites above tend to be pretty good at what they do. Ultimately, it boils down to which sites you feel most comfortable with. (If our readers have any suggestions or comments, we would love to hear them). We recommend picking two (maybe three) that you like, and doing a quick search for what you want.
We recommend two or more sites mainly because these sites don’t have all the same stores in their databases - so checking more than one comparison site just enables you to price check an item at more places around the web.
Are there other simliar sites on the web? Yes. Here are some reasons why we don’t think you need to check some other familiar shopping sites:
- Froogle.com doesn’t estimate sales tax or shipping.
- MySimon.com is powered by Shopping.com (for non-tech listings) and Cnet (for tech) listings, so by doing a search at Shopping.com and one more shopping site should get you comparable (although admittedly not exactly equal) results.
- Bizrate.com and Shopzilla (which we’ve listed above) are powered by the same shopping engine. So you can save yourself some time by not checking both these essentially ‘duplicate’ sites.
Here are some tips for using shopping comparison sites effectively:
- The more specific the better - Shopping comparison sites are best used when you have a specific product you want to buy, as opposed to general categories of items. For example, these sites will probably be more useful to you if you search for ‘60 gb 5th generation black iPod’ than if you run a search for ‘blankets’.
- After you input your zipcode, click on ‘price’, ‘total price’ or the heading above the price column - Often when you run a search at these sites, the initial prices are not organized from lowest to highest. Just click on the word ‘price’, ‘total price’ or whatever else heads the price column, and the prices will be put into order (usually with the cheapest price at the top of the screen, going to the most expensive at the bottom of the screen).
- Check to see if the item is new or refurbished - A lot of times, especially with consumer electronics, these sites will clump refurbished items with new items in your search results. When you have decided on a price you like, do a quick check to see if the store is offering a ‘new’ or ‘refurbished’ version of the item at that price.
- Click through - Once you have found a result you like, make sure you click through to the store to verify that the information you see about the product is accurate. Clicking through is especially important for search results that claim there is a manufacturer’s rebate associated with the product - you should click through to make sure the rebate is still available. Clicking through can also help you make sure that claims such as ‘no sales tax’, ‘free shipping’, or other similar offers which could affect the final price, are accurate and actually offered by the store.
- Only shop at stores you feel safe at - Remember, these sites often search a lot of online stores. Chances are you haven’t heard of all of them. We often tell people: find the cheapest price at a retailor you are comfortable with.
- Once you have decided on a store, check cash back sites and coupon codes sites BEFORE you buy - So you’ve picked your item, and found a store you want to buy it at. Well, open a new window (or tab if you are using Firefox), and make sure you do a quick check at some cash back sites. Remember, you only get cash back when you click through a cash back site - if you are buying an expensive item, checking to see if you can get cash back can translate into substantial savings. Then, make sure you check for any coupon codes for your item. Visit some coupon code sites, and then type in the name of the store you are interested in making your purchase at to see if you can get any coupon codes applicable to your purchase. If you are looking at a popular name brand store, check out our How to Shop at… Section to see if we’ve developed a shopping strategy for that establishment.
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