Christmas is one of the best times of the year, seeing your family, filling up on roast Turkey, playing charades and having a cheeky glass or two of some nice wine. It really is one of the best days of the year, however, there is one part of Christmas that puts a bit of fear in us: Christmas shopping.
While Christmas is all fun and games, shopping for presents can be expensive and with all that’s gone on this year, budgets are tight for a lot of people. Also, due to Coronavirus, the high-street isn’t at full capacity, so with budgets tight and the high-street struggling, we’ll look at some ways you can save money when doing your Christmas shopping online this year!
Tip 1 – Online Shopping Is Cheaper Most of The Time
Starting with a really simple tip, as a general rule, no matter what you want to buy, you can find it cheaper online than in a real shop. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is that online business have less general overheads than in person stores as they don’t need to pay for shopfront rent or retail staff.
So, online businesses can be a lot cheaper for you as they don’t need to cover as many costs, but how much can you really save? Well according to DotcomBlinds, they make blinds that are comparable with John Lewis blinds, but as they’re an online only company, DotcomBlinds can sell their blinds for up to 90% cheaper than John Lewis do. 90% cheaper! That is a deal if ever there was one.
Tip 2 – Find What You Want And Shop Around
Shopping around and comparing prices is incredibly easy when shopping online, whilst it may take a whole day to visit 10 different shops to check their price of an item, on the internet you can visit 10 shops and compare their prices in less than 5 minutes.
The easiest way to shop around online is to first know what you want, for an example, we’ll say you’re shopping for an XL Marcus Rashford Manchester United shirt, all you’ll need to do is open up Google and type in ‘buy XL Marcus Rashford Manchester United shirt’ and Google will pull up all the stores that sell the item you want and from there you can quickly open up and check through the shops to find the cheapest price.
Tip 3 – Look For Discount Codes
Finding discount codes when you’re shopping online is really easy and you can easily end up with a significant discount on your order just from having a quick look online. It seems too good to be true, but it’s not, across the internet there are hundreds of sites that collect discount codes for online shops.
It’s really simple to find a discount code for an online shop, for example, if you’re shopping on ASOS for a Christmas present, all you need to do is Google ‘ASOS Discount Codes’ and then Google will bring up some websites that have lists of discount codes for you to try.
Another way to get discount codes is from sign up bonuses, when you first open a shopping website, a lot of the time you’ll get a pop up offering you a discount if you sign up to their email newsletter. So when you see these popups on online stores, simply just sign yourself up to get your discount!
Tip 4 – Hunt For Massive Online Sales
In the run up to Christmas there are hundreds of different sales that happen online that you can take advantage of to buy some excellent presents without breaking the bank. So you’ll want to align when you shop with some of the big sales that occur each year when you can get products for cut prices.
Some big sales to look out for on the run up to Christmas would be Black Friday Sales (Friday 27th November 2020), Cyber Monday Sales (Monday 30th November 2020), Amazon Prime Day (13th-14th of October) and any last minute Christmas sales you see pop up in Mid-December. Some stores will have their own set sales in between all these events so keep your eyes peeled for them!
Tip 5 – Check Facebook Marketplace
If you’ve never bought anything from Facebook marketplace you’re missing out, whilst there is a lot of rubbish on there, there are also plenty of things you can get on Facebook Marketplace that come well under the retail value of what the product is actually worth.
While not everything on Facebook Marketplace is great, if you’re looking for some videogames as a Christmas present, you’re in luck. Things like Videogames can be found incredibly cheaply on Facebook Marketplace and still make excellent presents, so it’s well worth popping in and seeing what’s what!
Tip 6 – Install The Honey Browser Extension
If you’ll be doing your Christmas shopping online on your computer, then you’ll love the free Honey browser extension, simply visit the JoinHoney website and you can add this handy extension to whatever internet browser you use when shopping.
When you get to the checkout with Honey installed, it will automatically search for discount codes and apply the one that saves you the most money, which means that with no effort, you’ll be able to find an awesome discount to save you some money!
This is a collaborative post.