Picking
up a bargain online is a buzz any time of year, but as the holiday season approaches
it's particularly important to get your shopping game on point-whether you want to
find the perfect gifts for the family or you're chasing the biggest Black
Friday discounts, these are the mobile apps and browser extensions to have installed as you enter the fray.
Chances are your
favorite retailer has an app, so seek it out and get it installed first of
all-you've got Amazon ( Android , iOS ), Best Buy (Android , iOS ), Target ( Android , iOS ), and Walmart
( Android , iOS ) for starters,
and there are many more.
Admittedly you maybe don't want to clutter up your phone
with too many of these dedicated apps, but for the stores you use most
frequently, they're worth installing. You (usually) get fast, intuitive access
to the virtual shelves, instant alerts about deals and potential savings, live
stock updates, and a smooth checkout and shipping process.
The Amazon app, to take one example, lets you scan
barcodes on items in the real world to see the product's price and extra
details on the Amazon site, which can be very handy when you're trying to find
the best deals.
The oddly named CamelCamelCamel does one job and does it
well: Tracking prices on Amazon. If an item you're interested in gets a
discount, then this browser extension means you'll be among the first to know
about it.
We're not privy to the decision-making and algorithms that
lie behind the prices on Amazon, but we do know that they fluctuate a lot on
certain goods, so having something like CamelCamelCamel on hand can be very
useful in catching a deal-especially during holidays and sales.
As well as push alerts if there's a price drop worth
knowing about, the extension lets you track prices over time (up to a year in
the past), helping you pick the right moment to pull the trigger on your purchase.
RetailMeNot works like an aggregator for online and
in-store deals, so you can get all of your discount coupons and offer codes in
one place for easy access. From fast food to garden chairs, you've got a
comprehensive selection of stores to pick from.
The likes of Kohl's, Amazon, JCPenney, Macy's, Target,
Papa John's, and Domino's are supported inside the app, and codes can be
brought up on screen ready for scanning or printed out before you leave the
house.
You can set up the app to alert you as soon as deals go
live, in case you want to be first in line, and another neat trick is the way
it can use your phone's location to flag up special offers and sales in your
current area on a map.
Wish brings together a ton of products and special deals
in one app so you can jump straight to what you're looking for more easily.
That makes it a good antidote if you're feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of
your holiday shopping.
The app's tagline is "shopping made fun", and
while that might be a bit of a stretch for some, it's certainly got the
potential to make the whole experience less frustrating. A host of categories
are covered, from health and beauty to tech and clothing, and you can score
discounts of between 50-80 percent across the board-though some categories have
better deals than others.
There is a catch. Those
discounts are often possible because you're buying from lesser-known or
international retailers-double-check the details inside the app, especially
regarding shipping times and user reviews. You'll also need to register an
account (Wish is available on the web too)
before you do any browsing.
Smart price comparisons are key to a smart shopping
experience and few do this better than BuyVia: It's essentially a slick deals
aggregator, pulling in data from stores such as Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart,
Target, Best Buy, and more.
Instead of crawling around each of those stores (or their
respective apps), you can use BuyVia to stay on top of the offers you need to
know about. In addition to claiming coupons through the app, it's possible to
compare prices on just about anything.
Set up your own personalized shopping wish lists and the
app will ping you if there's a price drop, or if there's a special discount
deal worth following up in your local area, so you can brave the crowds and
head to the store.
Groupon's had its ups and downs over the years, but the
app is still worth installing for the eager shopper and bargain hunter-it
doesn't always deliver the goods in terms of useful discounts, but you should
still find more hits than misses.
Of course it stretches beyond retail shopping to vacation
offers, gym memberships, and so on, but if you're in the market for something
in particular then it's worth firing up the Groupon app to see if any savings
are available.
It certainly makes tracking and redeeming offers very
straightforward, right from your phone, and you can configure push alerts if
you want to be pinged whenever there's a deal available in your areas of
interest.
Hintd is basically an extended wish list manager-you set
up lists of the stuff that you're interested in buying, and then Hintd lets you
compare prices and look up special offers available across the web.
The Chrome extension
doesn't do anything except let you bookmark items you want to save for later,
so you do the actual list management and price comparisons through the Hintd website or
the accompanying iOS app .
If you're stuck for inspiration then Hintd also provides
lists of desirable goods curated by the experts, as well as lists of what's
trending in particular categories, so you can see if the tastes of everyone
else align with your own.
Well-known for being one of the most comprehensive deal
finders out there, Honey sits at the top of your browser and takes the hassle
out of looking for coupons-you just click the extension button at checkout and
any relevant discounts are applied.
That does mean you're putting a lot of trust in Honey to
find you the best special offers and cashback codes, but at the same time
you're going to save yourself a whole lot of searching and coupon clipping. If
Honey can't find anything applicable then the worst that can happen is you're
going to pay the same price you were anyways.
Piggy works along very similar lines to Honey, sitting
quietly in your browser until you reach a particular checkout and then
searching the internet to find whatever discount codes are relevant to your
purchase.
Get both this and Honey installed and you should be sure
of getting any available discounts applied before you part with your cash, and
again it saves you the trouble of having to hunt around the web for offers
yourself, or sift through your inbox for any relevant coupon codes.
A host of stores are
supported, including Walmart, Macy's, Target, Kohl's, and Walgreens, and as an
added bonus, Piggy also works on Android and iOS , so you can still take advantage of the savings if
you're shopping on mobile.
Know for sure if you're about to overpay for a particular
item with InvisibleHand, which tracks prices across more than 20,000 retailers
and will warn you if there's a cheaper price available on something you're in
the process of buying.
Just like Honey, InvisibleHand can also scour the web for
coupon codes and discount offers on the site you're currently shopping on, so
you've got to ways of saving money as you do your browsing. The plug-in can't
apply codes automatically in the way that Honey does, but it's still simple and
intuitive to use.
InvisibleHand is also worth installing for tracking
flights, hotels, and rental cars too, if you feel like spending all the money
you've saved while shopping on a vacation.
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