Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Advantages to Shopping for your Next Camera Online

By Christina VanGinkel

I am an avid online shopper, doing as much if not most of my major purchases shopping online. I have different favorites for different products, but one that I find myself going back to often is Dell. The only problem with that is their site can sometimes be awkward to maneuver. For example, I purchased both my first and my most recent digital camera from them. Both times, I did an enormous amount of research before actually placing the orders, plus quite a bit of price checking across the whole Internet. With the first camera, I would go to Dell's home page and from there, click my way to the cameras. Because I was often checking various sites, bookmarks would have worked, yet I was forever forgetting which site I had just been too. With my most recent purchase, I tried a new tactic that ended up working very well.

I began my search at CamerasAndCameras.com. From their well put together site, I was able to step directly to Dell's camera section, go back to CamerasAndCameras.com, and step directly to a handful of other shopping site's camera sections including Amazon, Best Buy, Camera World, Circuit City, CompUSA, Ebay Cameras, Exposures, Gateway, Overstock, Ritz Cameras, Smart Bargains, Toshiba, Wal-Mart, and Wolf Camera.

By them having a single page that already organized the best camera shopping sites, I was able to do my search over a several day span, and not have to worry about finding my bookmarks. If you are new to online shopping, you may discover a tactic that works extremely well in comparison to the given 'normal' that you will hear others discuss, such as I did here. That is one of the best things about shopping online, and one of the greatest things to remember when you are making a major decision on a possible purchase, that the Internet should make the purchase easy.

There can be downfalls to shopping exclusively online, especially if you are shopping for something very unfamiliar. Even then, if you approach the online shopping experience in much the same way you would at a regular brick and mortar type store, those downfalls will disappear. For example, when shopping online, take full advantage of the customer support offered by a store before you place an order. Ask a question. Request some info. By doing this you will not only get your question answered, you will be able to test how their customer service department works. Was the email or phone support information easy to find online, and were they quick to respond? These things do matter the same as the customer service received locally, and you want to know the response before you buy.

As there are downfalls, so are there advantages. One of the biggest advantages to shopping online is the selection of product, as at no other time through history, as one single shopper been able to have access to such a wide variety of products, even within one genre, such as cameras. Even the most prolific store could never carry the quantity of products that you can find online in one evening of browsing. When you are ready to make your next purchase, be sure to give the Internet a chance. Remember though that after you buy online, you will find it hard to go back to a regular store. You will have become a tried and true Web shopper.

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