Stop Wasting Time and Money With These 6 Productive Steps to Shopping Online

Shopping online is like looking for one bee in a hive full of buzzing bees.

Why?

Well, because it’s just so darn hard to find that one bee. And when you finally find it, you’d already be all grey and old.

As humans, we have wants and needs which cannot be fully satisfied; at least that’s according to High School Economics. This is what makes online shopping time consuming.

So what can be done to shop online and get what you want in a productive way that won't waste a lot of your time and money?

Imagine this scenario;

Your ultimate desire is to enjoy that relaxed feeling when having your bath. So you decide to go get a bathtub that meets your needs. With credit card in hand, you start up your PC, type in “cool bath tubs for sale” into Google and then smile to yourself, knowing you’re about to get what you want.

The search results pop up and with ten different websites offering you almost the same thing, you click on the first. After a few minutes of going through the E-store, you spot a cool bathtub with all the specs you want. Then something by the side catches your eye; it’s an ad that’s asking you to get bathroom slippers to go with the bathtub. Your mind convinces you and you click the link.

30 minutes later, you’re on a site that’s selling skin toning machines. You suddenly snap back to your senses and ask, “hey, where’s my bathtub?” That’s 30 minutes gone and the only thing to do is start over.

That’s the power of online shopping! But all this can be avoided with the following 6 productive steps to getting what you want, when you want it.

1. Keep a Journal to List All Your Needs and Wants

You have the choice of keeping a shopping journal on a numerous number of products. This is so because you can easily move from one online store to another if you don’t find what you want. It pays a great deal to develop the habit of keeping journals about what you want to shop for online and why. This way you are able to keep record of your observations about products you like. Doing this will also prevent you from losing the information of what you intended to shop for and help in your decision making process.

2. Determine what is Important and What Isn’t

No sane person clicks on an online store and decides to buy up all that the store has to offer. The best thing to do is to only purchase the highest priority wants on your list. After you have kept a journal about all the products you have seen online, you are now armed with lots prices, product descriptions, as well as information about the various manufacturers. This, no doubt, goes a long way in helping you draw a scale of preference over what is important and what isn’t.

This priority list saves you the stress of frivolous spending that could arise if you do not decipher what is important or not. Thus the elimination process comes in handy for you to get what you really want; only except if you have intentions of purchasing all that you see, which sounds pretty crazy.

3. Say No So You Can Focus Only On Your Wants and Needs

Remember the journal you kept was for the items you wanted. Now that you have a priority list, it is important that you focus only on the wants topping the list. Sticking to this rule means that you would have satisfied the need of purchasing the high priority wants instead of overshooting your budget.

It’s pretty tempting not to go for those other items at the bottom of your list. If you did step two right, then you’ll be confident that the items with the least priority don’t need to be purchased now. Set your mind to focus only at the top and then gradually work your way down.

4. Make a List of Online Stores That Sell What You Want

Do thorough research and come up with online stores that sell just what you want. Doing this will give you time to compare the products by different manufacturers, and come up with the one you want to settle for. This saves you the time of just searching endlessly, or being distracted without result. You also will avoid being enticed by other unwanted products, since you already are working with a priority list.

Checking out reviews about some of these stores would go a long way in helping you make your final decision. Do the needed research and select stores that keep to their word.

5. Create a Wish List

One other step to shopping productively online is to create a wish list. At this point, you must have chosen the online store you want to purchase from. The next step is to check for those items at the top of your list and add them to a wish list. The wish list can serve as a reminder for you just in case you don’t remember the name of a particular product seen on a website.

There are apps and stores that actually do this. The wish list takes you one step further from having your desired products on paper to having them online. It comes in handy at any time because you can easily refer to it without hassle.

6. Make the Purchase

Now that you know what your top priority is, shopping then becomes easy because you have taken the right step in the right direction. Shopping is made easy for you because you do not have wander about in different online stores. You already have enough information as it were about the kind of products you are settling for, products that suit your budget, and products that will give you optimum satisfaction. At this point, you’ll be confident enough to get your credit card and get that bathtub you want (if it’s a bathtub anyway).

Shopping online has grown in leaps and bounds over the years. Products like shoes, groceries, spas, and a whole lot more can be purchased online. And with these productive steps, I bet that now you see how advantageous shopping online can be because you have the ability to compare prices from an avalanche of online vendors. This isn’t the same when you visit offline stores because most times, you settle for whatever price tag you see.

Using these productive steps, you can have everything you want at the snap of your fingers, without overshooting your budget. And the best part is that you wouldn’t need to think twice when you’re about to make payment. Why? Well, because you’ve got it all figured out!

Written on 7/19/2013 by Steve Witt. Steve Witt is an online shopper himself and the founder of CheekyWishList. Shop online and get what you want, the productive way, by using his Wish List App at CheekyWishList.co.uk.

Photo Credit: StormKatt