Recently, WhatsApp added a “Shopping Button” on the messaging platform. It directs the user straight to the list of items on sale. Now, the company has added an “ADD TO CART” feature.

A support page on the WhatsApp website(via Gadgets360) explains the ways to use the new feature. Accordingly, the new update will show a CART button when browsing through the catalog.  Users can personally add many items of a seller to their Cart and make shopping on WhatsApp easier. As you browse through a business catalog, you can select a product and inside you will find two options- ADD TO CART and MESSAGE BUSINESS. On Selecting the first, the item will get added to your cart.

After adding the items, you can continue to browse and add more items to the cart. Now, if you visit the same item again, the ADD TO CART will now change as VIEW CART. You can press that or a CART BUTTON at the top right of a catalog to see your list of items. Once you are finished with your list, you can share the entire list with your seller in one message.

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In case you have a doubt regarding the products, you can edit and send an inquiry message along with the added items. WhatsApp says that a product purchase isn’t complete unless confirmed by a seller. After the seller’s confirmation, you can pay via supported methods including WhatsApp Pay.

In case you don’t know, WhatsApp Pay is an in-chat payment feature that allows users to make transactions via WhatsApp to their contact list. It is a UPI-based payment service to send and receive money online. The company recently rolled out the feature in countries like India where it nearly has a 400 million user base.

Anyway, the CART feature, which is rolling out globally to enable businesses to process orders seamlessly, is just an icing on the cake for the business catalogs. For the unaware, WhatsApp rolled a new Catalog feature for WhatsApp business last year. It allows companies who run a business account to create a catalog of products with prices and information.

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Social media platform Instagram has announced that the platform’s IGTV and Reels section is getting support for the Instagram Shopping Service. With this, users can now watch a video and then check out a product in a few steps.

This is not a surprising move given that e-commerce has been a part of the company’s growth strategy. The expansion of shopping services across the Instagram platform comes at a time when holiday season shopping is about to begin in the United States.

Commenting on this development, Instagram Chief Operating Officer Justin Osofsky said: “By bringing shopping to IGTV and Reels, we’re making it easy to shop directly from videos. And in turn, helping sellers share their story, reach customers, and make a living.”

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In the year 2018, Instagram added a personalized Shopping channel in the Explore section, which was later expanded to Shopping tags to Stories. Last year, the company introduced another feature called Checkout, which enables users to directly transact within the app. Recently, the Shop section on Instagram has been redesigned and the service is powered by Facebook Pay.

Instagram saw the potential for shopping in this short-form video content market and it seems that Walmart is also seeing the potential in “social commerce” as it is acquiring a minor stake in TikTok along with Oracle.

While shopping features are now available for IGTV on the Instagram platform, the company says that Reels will get support for the feature “later this year” but as of now, there’s no specific timeline for it.

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These days shopping has become quite easy due to the advent of smart devices and internet penetration across wider areas. The online e-commerce has become the business of billions and is playing a vital role in the economy building of each country. The ease of shopping has paved the way for a better shopping experience, new marketing ideas, and affiliate services. The consumer is on the receiving end for all the benefits propped out of increased competition among online and offline retailers.

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Many new services, including coupons, affiliates, and money-saving programs, are allowing the consumer to save a few bucks while shopping. The e-commerce giants also commence big sales on the eve of festivals to garner more sales by offering groundbreaking deals to consumers. The Black Friday Deals, Festival Season Sale, and Diwali offers are some prime occasions for these kinds of deals. The big giants, including Amazon, Best Buy, Flipkart, Myntra, and others, offer deals to garner more sales and churn out better profits. Surprisingly, there are some tools and services that allow users to save money while shopping.

We have listed some of the best services to reduce your shopping bills. These apps will directly bring offers and discounts or will guide you to save money in other ways.

List of best apps to save money while shopping

PriceGrabber

The Price Grabber is an aggregator service that helps the consumer to compare the price across all the major online retailers. It even carries the capability to notify the user of any particular product via ‘Price Alerts.’ The Barcode Scanner, including bottom-line price with taxes, is another useful feature of the PriceGrabber.

Unfortunately, both the Android and iOS apps have been dismantled now, and the users need to visit the Price Grabber website to get discounts. The users can add the website addresses to screen on Android and can bookmark on iOS devices.

Visit

Honey

It is a useful browser extension that helps to find the best coupons. It eases a lot of shoppers who often search for coupons. It helps you to save time and money at the same time. It helps to find the best discount coupons.

The user needs to tap or click the extension to get the best discount on the item automatically. Most of the online e-commerce platforms, including the food retailers, are compatible with the Honey app. The feature of Droplist allows users to keep track of price drops on specific items. It even notifies if there’s a considerable price drop.

It is a popular coupon service with users 147k users, 30K+ merchants, and 17.9% average discount. You can add the Honey Chrome extension by clicking the link below.

Download Honey Extension

DesiDime

It is the best service to track offers, discounts, and coupons. The users can also participate by offering discounts and coupons for users. It is divided into five different sections, including deals, coupons, discussions, groups, and MyZone.

The user has to select the desired deal, and the website will either redirect to the host or will give you a coupon code. DesiDime offers a forum-like experience that provides users with the ability to participate in the discussion. It allows us to verify whether the deal or coupon is legible.

However, the user interface is not up to the mark. It can be accessed over the web or via the Android App.

Download

Visit

Coupons.com

Coupons.com is home to a lot of manufacturer and retailer based coupons. It offers coupons in digital form with one click Coupon clippers. The user can quickly get a discount on almost every retailer with just a few taps. Apart from the website, the users can download the iOS or Android app for respective smartphones.

Coupons.com host deals for every type of service, product including groceries, clothing, and household items. Several advanced features such as sharing, web clippers help users to get the discount quite quickly. The inbuilt search and navigation also make it more useful.

Download

Android | iOS

Rakuten Ebates

Ebates is a popular cashback, coupons, and promo code service that offers impressive rewards on shopping from popular stores such as Walmart, Groupon, KOHL’s, Lyft, Sephora, and others. It even gives $10 Welcome Bonus for the users who shop via Ebates.

Ebates awards cash backs, rewards, and coupons to save money across 2500+ brand stores and retailers. It’s even a favorite choice while dining with cashback on 10K+ restaurants. The app helps to shop smart and save money with over 40% cashback. There are certain Cashback stores and rewards on brands like Nike, Samsung, Sephora, and others.

It is a sole companion for the users who often go on shopping, eat food at restaurants, travel a lot, and watch movies. The user can also earn a $25 referral commission for every friend who signs up and shops on Rautken.

Download

Android | iOS 

ShopSavvy

The app becomes handy while shopping online and offline. It allows users to scan barcode and compare the price of the item in different stores. It even brings navigation to the nearest stores offering the best price.

The users can save a lot if used accurately, and the user has some spare time. ShopSavvy also carries the ability to keep the deals that are found online for purchase later. The user can also manually enter the UPC or keyword to find any product. The app is claiming to host the largest database of retailers, products, and prices, including Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and Walmart.

Download 

Android | iOS

Cashback Monitor

It is a one shop stop before purchasing anything online. The Cashback Monitor tracks cashback rates and miles for all the major programs. It helps the users to choose the best retailer to maximize savings and rewards.

It is a single-window to check the cashback, miles, and credit card points for every retailer present.

Visit

Amazon Assistant

It’s a nifty browser extension, aka shopping tool from Amazon. It helps the users to save products from any website, compare them, and discover new products across the web. It even supports a 30-day price tracker to compare the pricing.

Amazon Assitant also keeps a tab on Orders and shipments from Amazon. It also helps to access shortcuts such as order history, exclusive offers, and more. Amazon’s exclusive Today’s Deals are also visible via the Amazon Assistant.

Download

These are specific tools and services that will help the shoppers to save some money. Some of the apps might be useful for a particular region. There are many services and apps, and if we missed an essential app or service, then let us know via the comments below.

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AliExpress is one of the biggest shopping sites in the world. You can find a large percentage of the things you are looking for there ranging from electronics to clothes to shoes to furniture and to car parts. To sum it up, if China makes what you are looking for, AliExpress has it.

However, even though AliExpress is quite popular, some folks have never shopped on the site, probably because they are scared of losing their money or they don’t know how things work on the site. You have noting to fear as shopping on AliExpress is safe and secure. I will provide a guide below on how to shop on AliExpress without any worries.

What You Need to Shop on AliExpress

• An AliExpress account
• AliExpress App
• An accepted payment option (MasterCard, Visa, Maestro, Western Union, QIWI)

First thing to do is to create an account on AliExpress. You can do this on the AliExpress website here or download the app and sign up there. Once you are done, you can sign in and start shopping.

I will advise that you use the AliExpress app as you get better prices on it. Yes, shopping via the app is cheaper than shopping on the main site as there is usually a difference in price from even if it is just a few cents.

One you login on the app, you can go ahead and add other things you will need such as your shipping address and your preference. The latter is so that the AliExpress app only shows recommendations of things you like. So if you are interested in furniture (home decor) and car parts, the app recommends products related to only those two.

Making Your First Purchase

Now, it is time to make your first purchase. Let’s say you want to buy a new Android TV Box, we can narrow it down as that search query is still pretty vague, we can search for Xiaomi Mi Box instead. Once the results are shown, you can go on to customize the search results to make the search easier. By pressing the filter tab you can select a price range for the product you want or if you want items that ship for free. Once you are done apply your changes and your search results should be different. You can also customize how the results are presented: from highest price to lowest or vice-versa; based on the number of orders sold; or seller’s ratings.

Select one of the search results and you’ll get presented with a brief description of the item. Scroll down and you can see a full description, user feedback, store info and even a way to contact the seller in case you have any questions about the product that have not been properly clarified in the description.

How to Know A Good Seller From A Bad One

Spotting a good seller is not difficult. First, their user reviews usually contain images of the product. It is not a criteria but stores that have them are better. Second, when you scroll down to check the store, their feedback rating, feedback count and follower count are usually pretty high. You can tap on the feedback rating to see a full breakdown of the score.

Some stores don’t have a high feedback count and follower count probably because they sell small items like phone cases, tempered glass and the likes which usually don’t have high orders like phones. Since these items are usually priced under $5, you can take the risk and purchase from them. All you have to do is check their feedback rating. Once it is above 80%, they are good.

Secret Tip: You can even ask the seller if he can offer you a discount. If he agrees to do that, all you have to do is try and purchase the item but when you are asked to enter payment details, cancel the purchase. The order moves to a section called “Orders awaiting payment”. The seller can adjust the price from there and you can go ahead to complete the purchase later.

You can proceed to add the item to your cart or buy straight away if it is what you are looking for. Do note that the store with the highest number of orders is not usually the one with the best price. The key is patience. Keep checking and you will find a seller that offers the same item for a lower price and still has good reviews.

Another thing you should take advantage of is coupons. AliExpress offers coupons on certain stores if you spend a certain amount. If what you are buying meets the criteria for a coupon, the coupon’s value will be deducted from your final balance.

Coupons are different from seller discount. A seller’s discount is applied automatically but you have to get the coupon yourself.

The image below is an example. If you are buying something worth $79, you can save $7 by grabbing the $3 coupon and combining it with the seller discount of $4 which you qualify for if your order is up to $79.

Once you get to checkout, double check that your address and phone number are correct. Select “Pay Now” and you will be asked to enter your card details. Once payment has been accepted, your order moves to a new tab: “Payment Awaiting Confirmation”. Confirmation doesn’t take more than 24 hours before moving to Orders Awaiting Shipment. Once your order has been shipped, you will get a notification. Shipped orders will be classified under the “Goods Awaiting Confirmation” tab. All these tabs can be accessed when you swipe from the left side of the screen and select “My Account”.

Depending on the shipment method used, your order should arrive between 10 to 60 days. A tracking number will be provided for you though and you can also communicate with the seller between the period of payment (in case you want to change something about the order before it is shipped) and after your order arrives.

AliExpress Disputes

AliExpress is not a perfect site but it takes customer satisfaction really seriously. If there is an issue with your order such as it being wrong or partially damaged or not arriving at all, you can open a dispute.  When you open a dispute, you can decide to request for a full or partial refund.

Some sellers might tell you to message them privately if there is an issue and they will resolve it for you. You can decide to settle for that and not open a dispute.

AliExpress strives to make sure only original and quality items are listed on the site, so if you get a fake or substandard item, endeavor to leave an honest feedback so that other buyers can steer clear of the seller.

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In case you have an issue with payment or a bad seller that is probably not responding to your dispute, you can reach out to the AliExpress team on the desktop site by clicking on the Help Tab and selecting and selecting customer service. Just choose a category related to your issue and it will be resolved for you.

And that is all there is to shopping on AliExpress.

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