With your busy schedule, a trip to the mall can often seem like an absolute nightmare. Who’s got the time to fight long lines and merciless crowds? I know I sure can’t without popping a few trusty Valium.

Fortunately, I have some great sites to let you know about, so that you can be a smart and comfortable shopper right in your own home. Here are three different ways you can tackle online shopping: bargain sites, coupon aggregators, and shopping bots.

For general bargains, you can’t go wrong with Overstock.com, which is the leader in bargain sites, due to the wide variety of brand name merchandise at discounted prices. They specialize in hawking excess products from other retailers, so their inventory has a high turn-over rate. It’s definitely worth checking out if you are unsure of what to buy, like a gift for your picky Uncle Fred. Another great reason to shop at Overstock is that they are constantly expanding their product categories, and now carry handcrafted products from all around the world. They currently sell cruise packages and intend on selling deals on flights, rental cars, and hotels in the future. The only drawback is that you have to act fast, because the merchandise goes quickly.

Besides bargain sites, there are aggregators/coupon sites, which act as homepages for a wide variety of coupons (also called promotional codes) and discounts across the Internet. These sites will lead you to the retailers, instead of acting as the middleman and selling the merchandise directly to you.

Wow-Coupons focuses on providing both online coupons, as well as printable discounts that you can use in person at a retail store. The site is also great because it offers food and restaurant coupons, though the selection can be considered limited.

Also check out FatWallet, which lists deals and coupons from all over the web and makes them easy to find by separating them by category, retailer, popularity, and by expiration date. The best feature they offer is the active user forum, which allows users to post coupons they have found. The only drawback to these sites is that coupons in general aren’t necessarily that relevant in today’s shopping world.

The last type of online shopping technique we’re going to profile are Shopping bots, which allow you to quickly search for merchandise across a wide variety of sites. They are an effective way to quickly feel out available deals. Shopzilla (formerly Bizrate) has been a longtime leader by offering user ratings and feedback within the search results. It serves two purposes by surfacing great deals, while providing customers with information on the merchants offering the deals. Like bots in general, you will never be buying anything directly from Shopzilla, but rather using it as a way to find sites that have what you need at a the price you want to pay.

So before you get in the car and face the mall and your pill box, take some time to peruse the net and see if any of these sites can help you. If they can’t, then you’re probably a lost cause.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 8th, 2007 at 10:54 pm and is filed under Who Doesn't Love a Makeover?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.