Where are the sales? Sites point the way
For budget-minded shoppers, few feelings are more deflating than noticing a sale going on – and realizing that they’re missing out on it.
Happily, consumers who shop online stand to benefit from Web sites that list coupon or promotion codes for the taking. At any time, up to 75 percent of online retailers offer a place to log in a discount code before checkout, experts estimate. Several sites – Currentcodes.com, RetailMeNot.com, CouponCabin.com and BradsDeals.com, among them – help make sure you seldom have to pay without adding a discount first, if one exists.
A recent RetailMeNot survey of 4,000 site users found the average discounted purchase price was $151, and the average savings was $29, making the minute or so to search for a code well worth the effort.
Keep in mind that if a Web site includes a spot for a promotion code near the area where you pay, that doesn’t mean a discount is actually available. But it does signal that the retailer occasionally – or often – offers one. So it’s worth checking.
Brad Wilson, who founded Brad’s Deals while still a student at the University of North Carolina, says his staff’s searching power sets his site apart. Wilson, 27, and about eight employees comb the Internet for the best deals; about 2,400 codes were featured earlier this week. They use software that tracks Web price changes, raising the likelihood that they’ll flag them when stores such as Ann Taylor offer $50 off purchases of $100 or more, as the retailer did recently. Wilson’s staffers also do a free comprehensive Web search for consumers who want to be sure they’re getting the best deal possible on, say, a dishwasher. That’s essentially how Wilson got started in college: helping dorm mates buy computers as cheaply as he was able to.
The coupon sites don’t charge users; they support themselves in a variety of ways, ranging from selling ads to sharing revenue with companies whose codes appear on the site. Up to 20 percent of RetailMeNot’s coupons are offered through networks of businesses that grant commissions to the site for helping sell their products.
Wilson says his site receives a small cut of sales from about half the retailers whose codes are featured and hopes to earn a percentage of all sales eventually. (The site’s cut is about 1 percent on big-ticket items and maybe 3 percent or 4 percent on smaller ones.)
No matter where you get your codes, King says, the deals that come with online coupons are “an easy win.” But only if you do your homework. Here are some tips from the experts:
• Never go to online checkout without first visiting a coupon-code Website – or several – to see if there’s a deal to be had.
• Do price comparisons of the product you’re buying even if the deal already sounds good. Without a discount, it might not be the best price out there. Google’s Froogle is among many price-comparison sites.
• Factor in whether free shipping or a discount is more valuable before choosing one promotion over another if you’re allowed only one such discount.
• Try to “stack coupons” – that is, bundle several codes together for more savings. Many online stores allow this, so it’s “always worth trying,” King says.