10 Tips for Finding the Best Online Stores

Urban Prestige
Sep 19, 2016
3 min read

Shopping online can be one of the most stressful tasks if you're trying to find reputable stores to spend your money on. From Instagram boutiques to Etsy shops, what are the best tips for finding out if your money will be well spent? Below we have compiled 10 tips for finding the best online stores for women's clothes, or items for your household.

1. use a search engine

When trying to find cool online boutiques or stores to shop from, use search engines like Bing or Google to search for store's that have items you wish to buy. For example, when searching for Urban Prestige Clothing viewers can search "popular women's online fashion" and we would pop up. If you're looking for a store that sells jumpsuits or choker necklaces make sure to search for that and some online stores should come in the search results.

2. Use Social Media

If a store cannot be found using a search engine, try using social media! There are loads of cool boutiques and online stores that won't pop up on Google or Bing's first search result page, but they might show up on social media search. Popular platforms to do this is Instagram and Twitter while using hashtags to target shops that cater to what you're looking for.

3. Visit Their Social Media Profiles

After finding stores on the search engines, look through their sites to see if they have links to their social media. If not, try finding them by searching for them on popular social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. When looking at their social media platforms, you should be able to see if they are an active brand and see if other people are interacting with them.

4. look for reviews

Go through their website or social media and search for reviews, posts, or tags of customers who purchased items from them before to see if they are a positive company to shop from. Beware of sites and pages that have multiple people complaining about services or products, these should be taken into account when thinking about shopping from them.

5. price compare

Find items that you like from their store and compare them to other stores. Do they have a wide variety or a small amount products? Do they have a great selection, or a not-so-great selection? Using this information would help determine if you would shop there often.

6. Communicate With Owners

Some owners of online boutiques manage their social media pages, which is awesome as you'll be able to ask them questions and find out more about the company. Store owners that generally respond quickly to your questions is usually a good sign. However waiting between 1-3 days for a response from them is nice as most store owners are busy. Try communicating with them through their email, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Ask questions about product availability, special discounts, or items you see pictured on their social media.

7, Look At Clothing Descriptions/Dimensions

There is no option to try clothes on from online stores, so make sure to pay attention to the sizing and description information that they provide. Learn how to take measurements for a proper fit here. Using your measurement information, you'll be able to determine if you should buy a particular item or size.

8. Look At Product Descriptions

If you are shopping for edible items or cosmetic products, it's important to pay attention to the ingredients in the item you are considering to buy. Especially if you have high allergies to some items, this would help ensure you don't buy something you can't use.

9. Find out if they have special discounts

Often times online stores have special discounts for their shoppers! For example, shoppers can get 10% of their purchase when they use code Love2Shop on our website. Special discount codes help you save more, this can be an extra bonus especially if the stores you have found have great prices.

10. check out shipping costs and wait time

If they have an FAQ page, check it out to find out the average shipping cost and time you have to wait for your package to arrive. Sometimes shipping costs can be low, but wait time is high, so it depends on you as the shopper how long you're willing to wait for your items to get to you.