With the increasing popularity of online shopping has come a variety of new opportunities for online shoppers. The wide variety of options available to online shoppers makes shopping for all types of products incredibly convenient. Consumers can now purchase everything from groceries to clothing and electronics and appliances to automobiles.Even items such as jewellery and rare collectibles can be purchased online. With so many online shopping opportunities available, consumers might be confused about which options are the best for them.

This article will discuss some of the online shopping venues including traditional stores offering online shopping, online retailers who operate exclusively on the Internet and auction websites.

Traditional Stores Offering Online Shopping

Many of the traditional stores shoppers patronize on a daily basis also have an online presence. This includes retailers of all types of products such as grocery stores selling food and convenience items, popular clothing retailers, retailers of electronics and appliance and general merchandise stores offering a wide array of products for consumer purchase.

Examples of these types of stores include Albertson’s, Nordstrom’s, Best Buy and Target. Most of these stores offer all of the items available in the traditional store as well as items which are available exclusively at the online store.

While the obvious advantage of shopping at a traditional store is the ability to see, try on, test or otherwise examine the products before making the purchase there are also obvious advantages to shopping at the online versions of these same stores. As previously mentioned, there are often items offered for sale which are exclusive to the online store. This gives the consumer a greater selection of products from which to choose. Another obvious advantage is the convenience shopping online offers to consumers.

Online stores are open 24 hours a day and seven days a week which gives the online shopper the flexibility to do his shopping when it is convenient for him. It also eliminates the time required to travel to a store. Still another advantage of shopping in online stores over traditional stores is consumers can patronize online stores which do not have a traditional store located near their residence.

Online Retailers who Operate Exclusively on the Internet

There are also online retailers who operate exclusively on the Internet and do not have a traditional store where shoppers can examine the products available for sale. Here consumers will have to rely on images and product descriptions to select products. However, there are some advantages to patronizing these retailers. One advantage is the prices are often favourable. This is because operating an online store is considerably less expensive than operating a traditional store. This is because there is no need to own or lease a large retail space.

The owners of the online store only have to have a facility large enough to store their inventory and an office space large enough to operate the online store. Some online retailers do not even have a storage facility because they have items shipped from the consumer directly from the distributor. This cost savings enables the online retailer to pass along considerable savings to the consumer.

Auction Websites

Still another option available to online shoppers is the ability to shop at auction websites. This is a different type of shopping experience because although consumers can browse through available items and read product descriptions the shopper is not guaranteed to be able to purchase an item unless they win the auction.

Some auction websites do allow sellers to place items for sale instead of up for bid but the vast majority of items available on these websites are available via the auction process. Again there are certain advantages to this type of online shopping. One obvious advantage is the consumer can set a price they are willing to pay for a particular item and do not have to exceed this price.

Additionally, they may win the auction with this price resulting in a considerable cost savings. Another advantage to online auction websites is consumers can often find rare items which are hard to find at these websites.