Thursday, December 2, 2010

A BILLION REASONS!

Wow, is all I can say when I heard the news reporting sales on Cyber Monday rose 16% to $1.028 billion from $887 million on the same day in 2009, prompted by heavier promotions from retailers this year.

The Monday after Thanksgiving was dubbed Cyber Monday after retailers noticed spikes in their online sales that day after people returned to work. And nearly half, or 49% of dollars spent online Monday were from work computers. That is down by 3.8% from last year. [Detroit Free Press]

I've noticed in my own online shopping purchases, FREE Shipping is becoming more and more prevelant.  Websites are tauting FREE shipping as well, a welcomed trend!

Want Cyber Monday every day of the year?  MY SHOPPING GENIE, a web app gives you the power of  Cyber shopping 365 days a year!  In today's age, it's all about saving, so install MY SHOPPING GENIE today!










Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Be Safe this Holiday Season!

As fun and rewarding as shopping online is....it has it's pitfalls.  Here are a few links to help you be safe this Holiday Shopping season:

safeshopping.org

onguardonline.gov

antiphishing.org

FTC.org

HAPPY HOLIDAY SHOPPING ONLINE!

Monday, October 18, 2010

Guest Blogger on Frugal Fancy!

Check out my blog post over at Frugal Fancy!  See Blog Links to the right.  Oct 18, 2010 "Journey to Frugal Living"

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Simple Ways Websites / Online Stores Can Build Shopper Confidence

 MyShoppingGenie is the answer to consumer’s prayers!!



Intuitive Navigation

Whether they’re shopping to spend time or to save time, consumers expect to be able to navigate your website easily. With every page, the goal should be to establish a simple and seamless flow directly through to the shopping cart.



Accurate & Accessible Content

First-time visitors seeking information will decide within seconds whether your site is a good fit for their needs. Using clear language and terminologies familiar to consumers is important to instilling confidence with consumers. While being able to find information is important, it is equally important that they understand what is being said or sold. As a rule of thumb, estimate that a user spends about 30 minutes during a typical Web session, visiting approximately 50 pages from multiple websites. Since first-time visitors form impressions quickly, ensure that content is informative and illustrates product and company accessibility.



Communication Focus

The ability to respond and address consumer’s questions and concerns proves very useful in converting those that may be hesitant to make a purchase online. For this reason it is important to establish formal communication protocols and channels which are accessible to consumers including email, live chat, support ticket systems and toll-free phone numbers. The presence of these options alone provides consumers an additional level of confidence. Websites that do not focus on the importance of providing prospects access to this information perform worse than those that do. According to a survey from one live chat vendor, 65 percent of shoppers at hardware and home improvement sites indicated that live chat positively influences them to purchase. As you can see, focusing on communication and providing accessible channels are powerful customer service tools, at the same time they minimize sales barriers.



Creating Consumer Confidence: The Secret Ingredient of Internet Success. VeriSign, 2010.





What other improvements would you like to see in a website?

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Give us your reasons.......

Why do you shop online?


A survey during the 2009 holiday season was given to consumers. Asked to give their top 10 reasons why they shop online as opposed to enter stores personally, many of the responses are expected. For example, the #10 reason why consumer shop online is “wanting to avoid checkout lines”.

This one is a classic. I think this fits with avoiding crowds, but “not wanting to fight crowds” was the #5 reason to shop online. Who wants to fight crowds or stand in long lines?

What is your main reason for wanting to shop online?

Friday, August 13, 2010

PowerReviews Added to Google's Product Reviews Program

The importance for e-commerce merchants to utilize user-generated product reviews just increased even more as Google has added PowerReviews to its industry-leading partners in the category. PowerReviews’ ratings and review content will now be available to online shoppers in Google search results, Google Product Search and Google advertising programs, joining Bazaarvoice, which Google teamed up with three months ago when it announced the Google Product Reviews program.

Google Product Reviews allows retailers to engage online shoppers by featuring participating merchants' logos and linking back to the merchants' product pages. Subject to prior approval by Google, Google Product Reviews is immediately available to the more than 1,000 retailers and brands supported by PowerReviews on more than 3,500 websites.

http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2010/07/27/powerreviews-added-to-google-s-product-reviews-program.aspx?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

Friday, July 30, 2010

You Just Cannot Ignore This Data!

What a great time to be involved with MyShoppingGenie! Take a look at the following information:






Opportunities and Obstacles


In just a two-year period, undaunted by economic conditions, the online population that makes
purchases on the Web increased by nine percentage points. In research conducted for the Pew
Internet & American Life Project in 2007, results showed 66% of the online population had made a purchase online. In the same survey question repeated in April 2009, 75% of online adults reported having purchased a product online. This increase follows years of fairly steady increases since March 2000, when the Pew Internet research of online shopping began. At that time, about half of all online adults (48%) had ever purchased a product online. The opportunity is clear. As the percentage of adults online that visit websites applies to a larger number of people year after year, the percentage of shoppers buying online increases simultaneously.






79% of Internet users say they are confident they will “make the right purchase decision” while going online to look for information in buying a product.






78% of Internet users agree, “Shopping online is convenient.”

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

I Could Not Have Said It Better Myself . . .



While looking up some information on consumer confidence with online shopping, I came across some information that included this paragraph. I decided to include the entire paragraph because it struck a chord with me. What are your thoughts?

Guarantees and Credentials for Safe Shopping

Guarantees have a solid place in the history of commerce, one that e-commerce has adopted and adapted for the Web. Guarantees are useful when they present to the potential buyer the credibility of a company that’s ready and able to stand behind its products and services. The most effective Web-based vendors promote their relationships with well known partners, customer testimonials, the type of credit cards accepted, and the most familiar brands they do business with. Displaying the most useful and accepted credentials in a visible spot on every page improves the confidence factor throughout the website. Though credentials are often placed at the bottom of the page, more people will notice when they are placed prominently, that is, high enough on the page so that they are visible without scrolling.
Creating Consumer Confidence: The Secret Ingredient of Internet Success. VeriSign, 2010.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Moms Love Shopping!

I came across this site and I really like it.  Moms Love Shopping!  Not only does it give you great tips for shopping, one can advertise on their site with banner ads or Intext Links.  Intext Links is a new one for me.  You select an article on their website, search for a keyword, the match the keyword to a code.  A form is filled out with your information, your paypal account(the ads rates are pretty reasonable), then once approved, the keyword in that article, there will be a link to your website.  I think that's pretty ingenious actually!

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Printer Out of Ink?

My printer was running out of colored ink. No problem. I have an Office Max card (where I earn store credit the more money I spend). So, I hopped on the website to order more ink. The more I order, the shipping is free. But if I waited until Sunday ~ I could get a discount of 20%. Great! But I need the ink now. What do you do this situation?

I thought I would try the Shopping Genie ~ just to compare. I actually saved over $25 for the same, exact ink and still got Free Shipping ~ AND I could order it that day! I did not have to wait until Sunday! What a deal!!

Friday, July 9, 2010

The Grocery Game

Head on over to http://www.thegrocerygame.com/.  Teri compiles sales lists and matches coupons found in the Sunday paper so you don't have to clip and organize coupons like your mother did(remember the huge coupon wallet she used to carry around?!)  Love, love this service! 

How do you spend your money?

In dealing with financial difficulties, there is a need to have a budget. There is a need for us to completely understand the art of stretching our dollar.

From the beginning, it is important to develop a way to manage your money that fits your family. These would be points you could use in making or establishing good means to improve the way you budget your money.

• Make a list of your unwanted budgeting habits. This includes all those you think of being not useful or helpful for you and your financial needs and security.

• You plan on what to do in order to take the first steps in changing your old habits or acts in which they made your budget method a failure.

• Manage your income and the amount of money you spend by preparing a sort of tally sheet of such information.

• Prepare your spend plan. This must include your foreseen expenditures.

• Collect receipts and note bigger amount spent.

• Limit spending by looking for some alternatives to it.

If followed, you would clearly see the improvement in your budget techniques. It would surely result to better financial management for you.

Using My Shopping Genie regulary will help you get your budget in tip top shape in no time!  Keep track of your savings on each purchase and invest those savings for your financial future.

I'll be posting my Genie/coupon savings every 6 months. 


Thursday, July 8, 2010

How do you treat money?

I read this article the other day with the following quote: “It is always believed that money is the root of all evils.”

Yes, it could be, but does it have to be? We need money for our needs. If used well, it is the greatest material benefit you could have. But, if you let yourself get carried away with the things and the services money could buy, the result can be negative.

How do you prevent money from creating negative outcomes?


Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Your Coupons are now ready!

So I received this email which had “Your June Coupons Are Now Ready” as the subject line. Now I have signed up for coupons before, so I thought, “Wow, this is great!” Only to discover that when I opened the email I had 3 small boxes. I chose to click on one of them. When I did, it then asked me for my zip code to “Check For Availability”. What?!? The email just told me I had coupons ready ~ now I have to see if I really have any available?

This is email marketing at its finest. Thank goodness I use My Shopping Genie! Just search for what I want and the Genie finds the best price for me!  And an added bonus, I can download coupons from the Genie whenever I want!