Online shopping tips
Shopping online is fun and convenient but how do you know if your purchase is going to be safe or that the product will be a good one? Here are some tips to help you get started.
Where are you shopping? Just like when you go shopping in person it’s important to have a degree of trust in the company from which you are purchasing a product. If you buy from Amazon.com or Walmart.com or even Alibaba.com you know these companies are established and have a reputation they want to protect. For this reason, you know that if you have a problem that there is a good chance that the seller will do their best to make things right. Sometimes you may respond to an advertisement on social media for a cool product that is being sold direct from a company you’ve not heard of. Obviously there is more risk when you do this but sometimes the benefits you expect from the purchase have enough value that you’re willing to take that risk. If the seller is advertising using a paid Facebook link you always have the recourse of complaining to Facebook if the sale goes bad in some way. This is not as good as dealing with a reputable seller but it does give you some pressure you can apply to try to get your issues resolved at the major advertiser level but do know there is more risk when you buy from an unknown seller.
How do you choose which product to buy? Many times when you want to buy something you don’t really have a particular brand or model in mind. When you do a search for a product there may be dozens or even hundreds of options so how do you choose which to purchase? The most effective way is to use filters in your search to narrow the search. When I’m searching for a toaster, for example I’m going to search “toaster” and then use the Filter button to specify that I only want to see items rated by buyers as 4-star or higher. This will also rank the products from high star counts to low. You can also use the Filter function to specify certain features thfoster important to you. Note that if you click too many items on the Filter page you may eliminate many products that are suitable but that just didn’t have enough info in their keywords to fit your Filter criteria.
What about product reviews? Product reviews can be very useful when they are valid honest reviews from real users and not fake reviews (almost always positive) posted by people with an interest in sales of the product or purchased by the seller. I make it a habit to always ignore the first 10 or so reviews as odds are much higher that these will be less reliable than reviews farther down the list. Also, looking for products with lots of reviews sometimes gives you a good idea as to how popular the product really is - ie a product with 10,000 reviews might be a better buy than one with 12 reviews. Real reviews are good because they not only address the quality of the product but can also explain particular benefits or problems that may be relevant to your situation.
5/31/2022