Experience of online-shopping

Nowadays, online-shopping becomes more and more popular. You can view all kinds of products and buy whatever you like just by clicking your mouse other than going from one store to another. My online-shopping begins last year. Now I would like to share some experience with you.

Picture:
The biggest shortcoming of online-shopping is that you can’t see the real object. The only way to get the visual image of the product is to seeing the picture. You’d better choose the products which have details pictures and they must come with watermarks and be taken by the seller himself instead of downloading from the internet to avoid the difference between the thing you actually get and what is showed in the picture.
When I was a green hand, I was cheated by the pictures many times. The product in the picture looks really very nice, but when I get them in my hand I was totally upset. The product is far from what I expected.

The number and the range of the products.
If an online shop has many kinds of products, you are easily to find what you want in one store, which is a good way to save freight. However, I have to remind you not to buy too many useless things with the hope of saving freight. Remember don’t buy more than 3 products from one store if:
1. you are not badly needed those products;
2. this is the first time you purchase in this store.

Price:
Usually, one item can be found in many stores. You can compare the prices and choose the lowest one. But don’t believe those goods with unrealistically low prices, especially those world-famous brands. nearly all of them are fake. You’d better go to the mall if you want to get the original.

Tips:
You can go to some B2B website, let’s say Alibaba.com. even if this kind of website is for the bulk orders, you can also take advantage from it. You pretend to be a purchase manager who is going to place an big order and you want samples first. In this way, you can get the goods at wholesale price. I have bought many good items at very low prices from this website: www.trait-tech.com . You can have a try and find more good products and companies.

Service:
Service is a very important factor. I would rather choose a litter higher price with good service than low price with bad service, which is a waste of time and money.
Every time before I buy, I talk to their customer service or salesman, ask them about the details of the goods, the return policy, and the warranty. Some seller claims they offer “3 days free of charge for replacement”, you have to ask them how it works. Most of the time, they don’t work exactly that way. And during the process of communicating, you can feel their attitude and recognize if they enjoy talking big. I’ll not doing business with the one who has bad attitude.
Not all the goods are suitable for online-shopping, especially the household appliance. The after sale service is difficult to guaranteed.

Payment:
Don’t choose bank-transferring even you are very familiar with the seller. The third party payment platform can protect the buyers’ interests well.

That’s all what I can think of. Hope it will be of use to you.

Sarina Zhou