Five tips for buying clothing online

In 2012 consumers spent more than ever before online, with Britain coming in top of the list with an estimated 60% of the population spending online. With more of us spending online it comes as no surprise more and more of us are falling victim to online scams, product disappointment and generally feeling bad about our online purchases. When buying clothes online you need to be particularly vigilante, good photography, poor shipping companies and fake items are all rife on the internet, so here are five great tips to help prevent you becoming the next online victim.

Explore different images

When buying clothes online you are naturally drawn in by the great images and models wearing your desired piece of clothing. Companies will spend thousands of pounds ensuring their clothing looks as good as it possibly can, but sometimes you can get a nasty shock when you realise that your new jumper isn’t quite how it was on the model image. To get beyond this problem there a number of steps you can take. Start by finding the name of your potential purchase, e.g. Ralph Lauren Jumper, then within Google search for the product in an image search. Google will return a number of images of your product and give a potentially different perspective of your product. Another option is to simply use the zoom in and out tools that normally come alongside the image.

Check shipping details

The internet has made shopping truly global, enabling us to buy clothes from anywhere in the world. Before purchasing clothes from a foreign website, be sure to check they are using freight international services  to ensure your product is safe in transit. Foreign companies are notoriously difficult to communicate with (language/time barriers) and often will not provide you with a refund if products are lost in transit. Another consideration you should make when purchasing clothes from any website is their returns policy, if the site in question does not provide free postage for returns you could potentially be lumbered with a large bill for foreign postage.

Shop around

The beauty of online shopping is the simplicity of price comparison. Often the initial price you get online will not reflect the true price. A great tip when doing price comparison is to use Google shopping tool, this way Google will bring back results of your piece of clothing in question. To find Google shopping, go to Google.com then click on the “more” tab, on the drop down menu you will see the option “Shopping” then click through to this. With the Google shopping tool you can sort products out by price and details of the site selling your potential purchase at the lowest price.

Security

Security is one of biggest issues facing online consumers today. When shopping online make sure you only buy from reputable online stores and sellers, a great way to measure reputation is to look out for the better business bureau stamp of approval on their site. A webpage selling items should always have an address-bar padlock, this padlock is demonstrating that the site is Secure Sockets Layer encrypted, which prevents crimes like credit card fraud etc. Most importantly use your common sense, if a deal seems too good to be true online, it probably is.

Ask for assistance

Don’t be afraid to email the website owners with questions surrounding your purchase. Asking for size details, colours, return policies and other queries is a great way to gage the nature of the site you are buying from. If a site owner is not all responsive it should ring some alarm bells. Many new websites have the option of live chat, where you can speak directly to the site owners in real time. One more tip, if the site doesn’t have contact details and an address on, do not purchase anything from their site.