Online shopping creates a personal experience among shoppers.
Students find it convenient to shop from the comfort of their own homes, rather than the hustle and bustle of stores.
Austin Farnsworth, a freshman general education major from West Valley, said he prefers shopping online.
“I don’t like dealing with crowds or pushy salesman,” Farnsworth said. “I will avoid it at all costs.”
Farnsworth said he buys all of his books online to get a better deal.
“Amazon is always the first place I look,” Farnsworth said. “It’s always a good place to start, so you can establish price points. Then I move on to Bookbyte.”
Bookbyte is a website for buying, renting and selling new and used books.
He advises students to start looking at books as soon as they have registered for classes in order to receive books before classes start.
“It’s frustrating when classes have started and you are not prepared at all,” He said. “I always make sure to track my package to see how much longer it will take before it gets to my place.”
Rebecca Wright, a junior nursing major from West Jordan, said she shops for all of her clothes online.
“There are so many more options online than there are in store, and if you factor in the money you spend on gas just to get the mall, it’s cheaper to just pay for shipping,” Wright said.
Wright said shopping online is more personable and accessible.
“Websites will do anything to cater to getting you whatever you want, and they make it easy,” Wright said. “They always have the search bar so you can look up specific items.”
Wright said there are always much better deals online.
“Online stores make sure to update you on their deals, and more often then not, they have better deals than the ones in the store,” Wright said. “I think sometimes it’s just easier for companies to sort out and tell you exactly what is on sale, whereas in the messiness of the stores, you can’t always tell what is on sale.”
Wright said the easiest website for her to navigate and get great deals is eBay.
“You can get things new and old for awesome prices,” Wright said.
Joe Francom, assistant professor of computer science, nominated Google to be the best website to shop from.
“There is a shopping feature that Google has that will list price comparisons on an item for you and give you ratings about that particular seller,” Francom said. “Amazon has great prices, but they are not always the best. The Google search feature will compare Amazon and many other websites.”
Francom said he found its accessibility to be the answer to everything.
“Being able to search within a given site for categories of items makes it so easy,” Francom said.
Francom gets bothered by websites that state, “You must place this item in your cart to see our discounted price.”
Issues with shipping also bother Francom.
“The amount of taxes and shipping that a site charges [is frustrating],” Francom said. “Sometimes those make the cheaper price insignificant if you have to pay an absurd shipping cost.”
When shopping online, you need to find your way around the ropes. Tell us your online shopping tricks on our Facebook page, and watch Calvin Smith’s video at dixiesunnews.com
