Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Shopping

The internet has altered the way we do our shopping. Online shopping is the act of buying products or services over the internet. Shopping online has become very popular in recent times. It has become possible because of the availability of different shopping sites on internet. In online shopping, a customer can directly shop over the internet. Flipkart, Snap deal, eBay, Amazon, etc. are some of the popular and trusted shopping website available on the internet. Thousands of brand new products are sold through these sites.

Today, many people prefer to shop online. Searching an online product is very easy than looking for it in the local store. It relatively saves time. One can search any product easily by using the search engine feature of an online shopping website. However, in store we have to look for the product until we find it. Online shopping saves our time going to a crowded store. Many people hate to search their product and stand in a long queue for paying the price.

If we do not find a product of our choice, we can switch to a new shopping website without any delay. On the other hand, while shopping in a store, we have to go to other store if we do not find the product of our choice. This becomes more laborious and time consuming. Sometime we are forced to buy inferior quality goods. Moreover, online shopping helps us to shop 24 hours a day. We get cheaper deals and better prices. We even have the advantage of discount coupons, exchanges and refunds. Customers can read reviews of previous buyers and make their purchase worthy with additional information from satisfied customers. The photographs of the product help us to purchase the product confidently.

However, besides advantages, shopping online has certain disadvantages as well. Sometimes online shoppers may face fraud and security threats. Hackers manage to find a way to steal the data. The majority of online shoppers are unaware of these attacks. Moreover, some stores may be a fraud and gather credit card data and social security numbers of the customers.

Before purchase, one cannot feel the quality of the product or try its size. Shoppers believe in the description provided for the product. Sometimes, descriptions are cleverly mentioned by online stores to make the product interesting and attractive to the customers.

Some of the online shops do not always list the other additional charges. Hidden costs including handling fees, packaging costs, shipping costs, replacement costs, return costs, etc. can add up to quite big amount. There are many other online issues like time zone differences, slow online connectivity and viruses infecting computers.

To conclude we can say that to get benefits from online shopping, one has to be an intelligent and experienced internet user and online shopper.