The Internet has changed the face of retail forever. No longer do we need to run out to a physical, bricks and mortar store every time we need something. With a few clicks of a mouse, we can have it delivered to our doorsteps, with limited effort and time expended. What's more, the Internet provides us as consumers with many more shopping opportunities than we would otherwise have. Rather than being limited to just those retail establishments within walking or driving distance, the stores of the whole world are right at our fingertips, making more products at better prices readily available in mere seconds. Clothing, shoes, health and beauty items, music, books, movies and more – if you can Google it, you can buy it online. You can even get your groceries online, too!
Businesses are well aware of the opportunities online shopping affords them. They can reach a wider range of potential customers much more easily than they ever could before, and the amount of websites with stores attached to them reflects that knowledge. Online shopping affords businesses a way to do more for less – less overhead and less money spent on advertising. This allows them to pass more savings on to you. Often, you will find that a store has an item for a lower price on its website, and carries that same item in its physical store for more.
Though online shopping is, in many respects, the ultimate in convenience, it does have its drawbacks. Perhaps the biggest is a flooded market, too much choice with not enough information. Because retailers are so keen to get in on the online shopping phenomenon, that means there are tons of stores online selling the same things, and you will likely never see the vast majority of them face to face. You can't swing a cat without hitting a web store anymore, and in your pursuit of getting the best deal possible, you might find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer number of stores to choose from, endlessly clicking around to find the best price with the fastest shipping and trying to determine if an online retailer is reputable or not.
So what's the solution? Online shopping portals! Shopping portals are websites that do a lot of the dirty work so you don't have to. These sites gather together the links of other online retail establishments and put them in one convenient place, often organizing them by product type. So next time you are in the market for some new socks, rather than visit 50 separate sock stores, you need only visit one website to view the socks of those 50 separate stores and make your purchasing decision from there. In this way, online shopping portal websites make the ultimate convenience even more convenient, letting you get back to living your life that much sooner, without being bogged down in the endless hunt for the best online deal.
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