Shopping is always an exciting and refreshing experience is what any woman will tell anyone. And when it comes to shopping online too, women beat men by huge numbers in terms of the usage and frequency. But on introspection, we find that there is good number of reasons for the same, which are listed below:

•    Maximization of the shopping experience: It gives her a sense of satisfaction for she can spend that time shopping for herself and not for her family or spouse.

•    The availability of products preferred by women:  A variety of goods are available online for shopping but we find that a greater number of these goods (products or services) are preferred by women rather than men. Surveys reveal that men shop online for the newest technologies like mobile phones or for sports and work-out equipment and goods, whereas women shop online for goods like handbags, shoes, home décor, furniture, CLOTHES, kids stuff and most importantly personal grooming items. And also the growing number of online shopping portals has attracted many more women to do their shopping online.

•    Quick and Easy: With more number of shopping portals coming up, better deals and each competing with the other to give the best service, the women get their products delivered real quick. Also shopping online makes it all the more easier to choose from the various offers, pay through credit card/ debit card/ or online personal banking and receive products real quick.

•    Various offers/ options: Due to the high level of competition among various shopping portals, each one tries to provide its customers with real unique offers and innovative things. Now women can also make an online makeover of herself to check how she will look if she undergoes a certain hair-coloring or hair-straightening or facial or any such beauty parlor make-over. She can then decide which option makes her look beautiful and undergo the process she chooses.

•    Avoids Thieves: A lot of thefts are reported by women, most involving chain snatching or hand bag robbery or such things that could be avoided if she chooses to buy online. She can avoid those petty thieves who stand outside the big shops waiting for non-suspecting shoppers emerging right out of the shops to unburden them of their newest bought items.

•    Lack of disturbance while shopping:  Women love to shop and what more can they ask if they can do so in the comfort of their home without their kids disturbing her. She can shop late night or in the time she gets when she has sent them to school.

•    High level of anonymity: women would love the level of anonymity in offer by shopping online. They can buy things like lingerie and night dresses without any hassles or being intimidated by other customers or the perverted salesmen in the store.

•    Research facilities: Women generally take time to decide which product to buy and internet shopping portals provide them just that. They can research about the site or the product and the supplier well and thoroughly before making payment for the product.

Every individual who shops online always has fears that his or her card/bank details should not fall into the wrong hands.  And there are few who plainly refuse to shop online fearing abuse by hackers once they hack into their bank account or credit card details. But given below are few tips that should be followed to shop online in a secure and safe way. These tips involve more common sense than technical precautions.

Tips to be followed for safe and secure online transactions:
•    Avoid storing private data in the system: be it a laptop, palmtop or a desktop, one must refrain from storing data like credit card details or personal banking details in their system. The very first place hackers look into for such valuable data is in the mechanical memory of the system.   Private data like house address, telephone numbers etc. too must not be stored in the system.

•    Creativity:  When joining certain online web galleries or gaming or data transfer forum, keep in mind that the details like house address and phone numbers are of no use to them. And these are the places where the hackers first look into as these websites are not that secure. So next time you join such online forums avoid data that have been specified as optional and fill in only the compulsory data required. Besides, every website requires a user id and password. The user id can be the same you are using for your personal emails or can be a name that you specifically like. But it is recommended that the password you use for each of these websites differ. Have a unique password for each of the forum you are registering so that if even one account gets hacked the others are pretty well protected. The password must also be creative. Do not use your birth date or first name or spouse’s name or dogs name as password. Make the passwords as unique as possible with the liberal use of numbers and/or (if allowed) special characters and capital letters. An example of a very strong password is egGs33pinK242524. Now if you use passwords such as these for even your personal email accounts it would become very tough for the hackers to get into it.

•    Store information such as user-ids and passwords carefully: now when you begin to use unique ids and passwords for various forums, you may have difficulty remembering the individual user ids and passwords. So make use of a rolodex or a small diary and enter the user-ids and passwords in that along with the name of the website for which they are the specific ones. Also keep these data safe and do not allow access to these to anybody that you do not trust.

•    Internet and Online Shopping: keep records of all the transactions that you make so that you can catch mismatch very easily. There are times when credit card companies try to fool you and make payment for certain thing that you would not have used your credit cards. Avoid such mishandling by credit card companies. Try and use debit cards and avoid usage of credit cards as far as possible. This way you also avoid over-extension of your shopping and can restrict yourself to the money that you have in your account, as shopping can be very addictive! Also prefer shopping from major players like Amazon or EBay and avoid the smaller, private shopping portals.

By following these tips meticulously, you can keep your online transactions safe, secure and hassle-free.

Nowadays style beats substance, even when life seems hectic and busy. And then it becomes difficult for people to make new style statements because they find it hard to find time to pay a visit to the nearby marketplace. Thus steps in INTERNET SHOPPING. Its growing demands have ushered many budding entrepreneurs to step into the world of online shopping portals which becomes a win-win situation for all. An online shopping portal can be briefly summed up as a website where different suppliers for the same product or service display or explain their product/service, in the same website, where the customer or the shopper can decide which supplier to choose.

Shopping online the newest mantra and is fast become ‘the’ way to shop as it offers a variety of benefits for the shoppers, viz:

•    Saves time for the shopper: the shopper need not drag himself/herself to the marketplace now to shop. At the comfort of his or her home the shopper can get the product they want. Also the shopper gets to browse through various suppliers’ products before they can choose which one to buy.

•    Simplicity and ease of shopping: shopping has never been simpler. Now the shopper need not bargain as all the bargaining would have been done by the online shopping portal itself to give the shopper the best price- at a price lower than what other shopping portals are giving away the same stuff.

•    Offers and discounts: for the same reason mentioned above, the shopper gets great variety of offers and discounts from the various online shopping portals which are trying to compete with each other and establish more demand in terms of online customers.

•    Genuine Shopping spree:  In most countries, various website gives you a detailed list or the directory for online shopping that ensures that the website you are buying things from is genuine and the payment is safe and secure.

•     Comments and Feedback: one great benefit of the online shopping portal is that previous customers of a particular product or supplier leave comments in the web shopping portal about the quality of the product or service or the supplier and therefore they tend to indicate all the negatives as well as positives of the same. Thus the shopper can choose the product based on the comments that his/ her fellow shoppers have left in the web portal!

•    Gifts: There are some web portals that provide the facility of sending gifts to the loved ones. The person intending to send a gift on any given special occasion chooses the gift; makes payment and specifies the address and the web portal delivers the gift on the specified date and time!

But customers/online shoppers feel that that is a lack of awareness about the various shopping portals as well as the quality of the supplier or product. But faster access to internet services, good rapport of the shopping portals with shipping or logistic companies and good advertisements by the shopping portals has started to attract more customers. Thus, we find that many customers shop the smarter way which is the lazier way, in the comfort of your home, in front of a computer!