So your wallet’s feeling a little light after Christmas? We’ve all got to save where we can in this dismal financial climate, and freeshipping.org is intended to help do just what it says in the URL: save you money on buying consumer goods by finding offers that save you the shipping and other costs when you make a purchase. They seem essentially to be ferreting out links and deals as they are announced online and posting them on their homepage – there’s no rhyme or reason to who is making offers at any given moment, but they have the coupons and deals organised by store, so if you’re considering a purchase from a particular shop or band you might do well to click over there and check if there’s a deal on.
They are also running a price comparison program, but it’s a little clunky and hard to navigate, and doesn’t give you a lot of information about the sources they’re searching to bring you the They do have a lot of products listed by category, from iPhones to Plasma TV’s by the way of glow-in-the-dark paintballs, but I certainly wouldn’t reccomend making a purchase based solely on what you find here – instead click around the other big sites and use them as a benchmark (yes, I know I’m teaching my granny to suck eggs here). If you happen to be based in the UK, another useful website that holds a lot of consumer information, particularly on financial products, and that mails out lists of deals and freebies from time to time is moneysavingexpert.com, from the same team that put together music price comparison site http://tunechecker.com/, a site designed to save you money on buying .mp3′s.
Shopping around for the best price will now normally mean going online. A flaw in this plan is that people will almost immediately go to either eBay or Amazon – assuming that they offer the lowest prices. While that may be true for some items – it’s cod’s wallop for others. Often, sellers on eBay know that buyers rush to the site for a bargain so the price will go up: supply and demand my friends.
SortPrice is a price comparison site that is completely free to use and it compares the leading retailers and online firms from across America. I found that the sections for clothes and books were compared really well – as were the technology categories although these can be a bit sparse when you’re looking for a particular model.
The layout and design are done in a very simplistic way which is what you want from a purposeful website that is there for one reason and one reason only – to save you money.
I think it’s better than other price comparison sites because it has both online and offline stores listed while others simply assume that online is always the way to go.
Advertisements on the TV and in newspapers from supermarkets are constantly telling us that they’re cheaper than the next guy offering “1,000 cheapest prices” etc… However, how do you really know that you’re getting a bargain on the whole shopping list all together. Well, very soon you’ll be able to find out using Grocio.
It launched a Beta on Monday in Tulsa in which supermarkets and shops submitted pricelists and coupons to the site. When users enter in their shopping list the grocery search engine does its magic and gives you the cheapest store for your shopping list. On top of that money saving idea, they will also give you coupons that you can print out and use in the store.
I can see this being a hit nationwide so long as the big stores keep submitting their price lists. Some see it a healthy competition, others see it as promotion while others see it as the end to small businesses. If the pricelists stop coming then Grocio will go down the tubes.
Gerard Buckley owns the site and is hopeful for its future. He couldn’t have picked a better time to launch such a site as people look to buy in bulk, shop around and ultimately save money.
There are a lot of companies out there doing amazing things with emerging social media opportunities. It seems that this opportunities are not industry specific. Currently new ideas and applications for these ideas span across all industries, and all it takes is some innovative thinking to make it happen. Being a start-up is no longer a requirement. There are a lot of existing ideas and companies out there that are reinventing themselves with social media, and the “now” generation when it comes to getting information on the spot.
Mobile technology does not make it any easier on companies either. With so many applications out there, you can do everything from making payments to ordering pizza, even shopping for groceries for a quick quick up at the store. The speed of technology is forcing companies to think faster and smarter, probably moreso now than ever before. This is the business world we stand in today; social media, mobile apps, instant connectivity, instant gratification, the world moves faster, so businesess have to move faster.
This is where Booksprice comes in. Here is a company with a solid business model of providing cheap books for users looking for the best deals. Their site is amazingly easy to navigate but offers more than just books, it offers music, DVD’s, and more. What’s the “more”? Think of it like a mashup of Amazon and MySimon, or any other similar combination. I’ve been using the site for searches over the past week and have found it very useful.
This is definitely a college student’s dream when it comes to finding affordable textbooks!
Pricing Books At Your Fingertips
Booksprice announced at the beginning of the month that their company was now offering instant lookup via Twitter, called Price Tweet. Twitter has been the micro-blogging application that has simply taken the social media world by storm as the ultimate way to connect with users worldwide. This life tracking application has been integrated into a number of companies as a way of connecting with the customer, announcing specials, and offering coupon codes, and now Booksprice has joined those ranks.
Via your mobile device, a user can now send a direct message to Booksprice (d booksprice) and after that input the ISBN/UPC number and click “SEND.” In a matter of seconds your mobile device will receive a reply with price comparisons for more affordable options. The idea is to provide the user with information on the fly, saving them the hassle of searching for prices across all the sites they would normally have searched through.
Lucy Orbach, co-founder of Booksprice states, “With this new tool, Booksprice goes beyond the online market. In a fast and easy way, it will help the shoppers compare the price of the items from the store where they are to their prices online. Since online shopping involves a shipping cost, the prices shown on our messages will include standard shipping to the US, making it even easier to compare. Now, that the Holiday shopping are here , our direct quote tweets can help shoppers make sure they don’t overpay for their books/DVDs at store.”
To further impress upon its users the usefulness of the Twitter client, users can set up alerts for a certain time frame to announce when the price drops. If you are still unhappy with the prices offered by various vendors, and you’re waiting for another price drop, simply fill out some information and alerts will be sent either to your mobile or desktop Twitter client as soon as it records a drop. When the end date comes, the updates stop, without the users need to go back into the site to stop it. It’s very innovative and useful no doubt for seasonal shopping whether it is for books, DVD’s, music or other items of interest.
I highly recommend this site as an option for your bargain shopping. Chances are you may not go back to your old price hunting sites again!
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