The way we shop certainly has changed with the Internet. We may not always agree on whether it’s a better or a worse way to shop, but we should all admit: nowadays it’s way easier to shop than it used to be.
Shopping Patterns
A decade ago if we wanted to buy a piece of clothing or electronics we had to plan it in our daily schedule, either rushing to the store after work or sacrificing precious free time on the weekends. Now – we just go online. Anytime and anywhere we want. Even the biggest e-shopping skeptics have to admit that it can save hours of our time.
With the still growing demand for online services it is not surprising that the variety of errands you can run online is getting wider and wider. Companies are doing their best to keep up with the digital times.
This way, just over 20 years after founding the first e-commerce platform, we can get pretty much anything online: clothes, food, furniture, electronics or even pets! More than that, we can order services as well – from pizza delivery to babysitting.
Transportation is a big part of internet services. It often helps to increase sales – online stores offer free delivery for their customers to convince them to make a purchase. But – as all the users of customer-to-customer selling platforms know – the delivery can also be an additional source of income for the sellers, if they set the delivery cost high enough. Is there any way we can lower this cost when shopping online?
First of all we should always check and compare with different websites not only the product price but also the delivery cost, as it can be a significant part of the final price. A lot of e-commerce platforms show the delivery costs only in the shopping cart, knowing that it’s much harder to decline buying a product you’ve just spend an hour deciding upon, even if the delivery cost is higher than you’ve expected.
What can you do, when the only online store selling the product you need has much too high delivery cost? Do you have to pay it?
If the store has an offline shop, you can pick the product up by yourself (this way you won’t pay any delivery costs at all). This will certainly work if you are buying books or clothes – but what about all the heavy items (e.g. furniture)?
Those you can either transport yourself or hire a transport company. Does it have to be costly? Thankfully, no.
To help customers looking for cheaper and easier ways to transport their stuff, online transport marketplaces were created. It’s a place, where you can book a transport provider, who will ship whatever you need moved – even really big items, like car or contents of an entire storage unit. The money is saved by reducing empty runs – the transport provider ships additional load (found on the marketplace) on the route which he will be travelling anyway.
A good example of such marketplace is Clicktrans. Customers can place a listing in order to get quotes from transport providers (there are 30,000 registered transport companies to choose from). The transport providers make an offer and the customer can choose the best one. For a customer it is an easy way to save money – you can save up to 60% on transport, without leaving your couch! And for the transport providers it is an opportunity to earn extra money.