The savvy online shopper

In less than four months, Christmas will be around. I heard a Christmas carol already being played on my car radio yesterday. Christmas bazaars are getting started and soon there will be so much hype from commercial establishments. Shopping for Christmas gifts will be all over the place — and traffic will be snarled.

In spite of all this, I love Christmas. But I really do not like shopping. It is really the women more than the men that are into shopping. I don’t think anyone will disagree with this statement. At least Oscar Wilde didn’t. He even said: “Trust not a woman who weeps for no reason in front of her man. She does not want him to be tender. She wants legal tender to go shop, shop, shop.”

In this day and age, the same is true as far as online shopping is concerned. Female online shoppers outnumber the males 8 to 1 (2006 statistic). When it comes to virtual shopping, however, we hear about the horror stories much more often than the good experiences, primarily of efficiency, speed, and actually security, so long as you are quite informed. The truth is that online shopping is as safe as offline shopping.

Online or virtual shopping is, of course, defined as shopping from the comfort of your home or office via the Internet. Consider this scenario: while cooking for her husband and kids with a maid assisting her, a middle-class mother has the TV on in the kitchen. A product being endorsed catches her eye; she listens intently, taking notes on how to access the product online.

This mother has the facility of using her credit card. The delivery of the item is accomplished and the virtual transaction finalized.

There is an e-commerce expert by the name of Fiore (whose first name I forgot), who has written a number of good treatises on e-commerce. What I remember most was the fact that the most common mistake online shoppers make is not using their credit cards. According to him, there is protection provided by your bank against scams and those sly merchants who either send you the wrong product or will not take it back for whatever reason.

In these cases, all you have to do is call your bank and dispute the charge. But if a check or money order is sent, you really have little or no recourse.

It is good to take a good look at the location of online businesses. Be a savvy online shopper. Does the business have its own domain name, which lends greater credibility than some product using free web space such as Tripod, etc.? Does the site look professional? Does it look business-efficient?

The basic information that should be included on the online business or service should include item description, price, product delivery methods, and return policy. Of course, we all need this fundamental information to make a positive buying decision. Depending on the type of product or service that is being offered, there is need for the business to determine what other services will be necessary to provide in order for the online shopper/buyer to be able to make an informed buying decision. That’s how the savvy online buyer should behave.

Some products have become familiar to online consumers/shoppers before they enter a web site. These customers are focused on price, availability, and quick access to the products. Some products, of course, are not yet known to the online visitor and so they enter a site to be more informed and familiar with the product. These products therefore have to be supported by instructions, descriptions, information, and education so that the online shopper can make a decision to buy sooner rather than later.

If an online shopper goes to a travel booking site or an airline’s own website to purchase a ticket or book a hotel, he or she needs little information other than the flight schedules and prices, and the site’s policies to help him make a decision.

How can one tell whether a site has a secure payment system? Some display a graphic or the logo “SSL” (Secure Sockets Layer) on their main page, which is a form of encryption that scrambles your credit card numbers and other information for a safe transmission and successful transaction.

The moment you have chosen all the items you want and now have a loaded shopping cart, clicking “pay now” or something similar should take you to a secure page, which will either have “https” at the beginning of your URL (Uniform Resource Locator), such as https://www.virtualvin.com, or a “lock” or “key” graphic that appears at the lower left or right-hand corner of your Web browser.

If the lock or key is closed or whole, meaning essentially locked, then, the site is secure. When you leave that page or the site, you will naturally notice that the lock is open or unlocked, or that the key is broken. Depending on which browser version you use, you may get a pop-up window letting you know you’re entering a “secure area.” This is the same as the lock or key graphic. Your payment information will remain secure so that no one can steal it.

If there’s something you just have to purchase online but the online business does not accept credit cards, consider using “escrow services.” They will hold your money until you have confirmed receiving the product or service. Then, they release payment to the nervous online merchant.

Have you become a savvy online shopper? Can you imagine the number of women who have become such?

Well, Oscar Wilde was right about “tender” and “legal tender.” During these days of difficulty, perhaps it’s better to be pragmatic rather than romantic.

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Thanks for your e-mails sent to jtl@pldtdsl.net.