When was the last time you went around hunting for a discount? I am sure a lot of us are familiar with the sight of someone in the family clipping out newspaper coupons and sifting through catalogues for some good deals. The search for saving money has always been around in different forms. After all, when it comes to saving a buck or two, everyone is interested.
Now, the Internet puts a new twist to the whole idea of discount shopping. As people become more and more comfortable with shopping online, they realize that they actually can search out products based on the budget they have for a certain product. It’s a rather easy process. There are numerous shopping comparison sites where you can search out what kind of offers retailers have and make a decision based on that information.
Shopping comparison sites, more popularly known as ‘shopping bots’, are appearing all over the Internet. The Internet has already taken the strain out of shopping and now shopping comparison sites are here to make the whole deal easier (though there are others who believe that shopping bots are not doing as well as one might think they are). Shopping bots take advantage of the fact that there is too much information on the Internet. If you want to buy, say for example, a mobile phone, simply searching the words “mobile phone” or “buying mobile phones” (or other variations of these search terms) will most probably give you a mind-boggling list of results. You couldn’t possibly go through all those sites without driving yourself crazy with information overload.
A better option might be to refer to a shopping bot. A shopping bot will give you prices that are available online based on your specifics. So you can actually choose the brand and model of the mobile phone you want and these sites will help you find the relevant information and usually the best prices.
It all comes down to the fact that everyone loves to save money. Previously, the obvious choice was to scurry in and out of stores, gathering information and then making your final decision. Shopping bots make it possible to do the same by sitting in front of your computer screen. Shopping bots are not necessarily used only as part of a high involvement purchase. Even if the product that a shopper is seeking to purchase costs only a few dollars, he or she might choose to refer to a shopping bot. This is mainly due to the convenience factor. Information can be found on a shopping comparison site within a matter of minutes, if not seconds.
One thing we all have got quite used to is the amount of choice we have when we buy something regardless of if it is online or offline. That is one major attraction that shopping bots have for consumers. As if the Internet didn’t already provide enough choices, shopping bots aim at bringing all these choices on to one page for you. Online shoppers also put in a fair amount of confidence into these bots and this is what these sites should aim to maintain.
The flipside of comparison shopping sites, on the other hand, is that they might not actually be giving you what they are saying they are giving you. There are sites on the Internet, which does a good job at finding the best that there is on offer, and there are other sites that don’t perform so well with the information gathering. Your task is to identify the good quality bots from the less efficient ones.
At the same time, it pays (no pun intended) to know how these shopping bots actually work. To the general population it might seem like shopping comparison sites rank products merely based on their prices. That does not always need to be the case. There are instances where retailers can pay for top ranking which means that those retailers who are willing to pay more will occupy the top slots on the site. This is a slightly sticky situation since consumers might not realize that a site appears on top, not because it has the cheapest offer, but because it has paid to be there.
Not all shoppers are all starry-eyed about shopping bots. There are plenty who are not really convinced that these comparison sites are as good as they claim to be. It could be the skepticism towards something that works so easily. After all, there are plenty of people who believe that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Then again, there is also that section of consumers who believe that they can do a better job at finding the best prices available and do not need to rely on a website for that.
It all comes down to your personal attitudes towards shopping comparison sites. There is no doubt that these sites make shopping online easier than it already is. It, of course, helps to know how these sites work so that you can be aware of where the information is coming from. After all, it is your hard earned money that is going to these retailers.
