Tag Archives: online shopping

I’m not the biggest online shopping fan in the world, but one site really makes me want to buy something every time I visit! I came across Lulus a few months back and was hooked immediately.  Their stock, aimed for a 20-something, is vibrant, fresh and not overly trendy. Best of all it is crazy affordable! Dresses for $30, shoes for $20, Belts for $10 – I’ll take one of each please!

After scanning through their stock, it’s always fun to see how items are styled together. Lulus does that in their lookbook section.  Styles are created for themes like Free Spirit, Set to Sail, Little Lolita and Pattern Play.  Since I am pretty much in love with anything nautical, the Set to Sail is my cup of tea and gave me some great ideas for new summer outfits, even if they’re not worn on a Yacht!

I became a fan of Lulus on Facebook and was introduced to their daily contests that range from riddles or mystery photos of their latest items. Just find the answer in the name of one of their new stock items, enter and you can win $50 at Lulus! I enter daily and haven’t won yet… but keep your fingers crossed, and maybe I will soon!

Fashionistas around the globe have probably already stumbled across the wonder that is Moxsie.com. I’m a casual shopper and frequent online deal finder but a fashionista, I am not. Imagine my excitement when I stumbled across an ad on PerezHilton for a bag that I instantly fell in love with (yes, I just admitted my guilty pleasures, bags and celebrity gossip).

The ad directed me to Moxsie.com, a Palo Alto based shopping site that helps visitors discover independent fashion designers. The products available are well priced, well made and most are wearable. I selected my bag and quickly purchased it and I learned something even more exciting than the opportunity to find unique products. I discovered that with each purchase, a portion of the proceeds are donated to a charity that the shopper can select from a preset list. There is no additional cost to the consumer and the charities are close the the heart of the designers and Moxsie team. What a great way to enjoy your shopping and give back at the same time.

If you click through the ad on Perezhilton, you get 15% off your purchase instantly. Happy Shopping!

PriceAdvance launched its browser add-on well over a year ago as a way to track prices of items while you surf the web. The concept is simple and highly functional as a shopping tool. PricAdvance has since undergone a major update in order to include the more than 1 million vendors it now tracks in order to provide you the best comparison tool straight from your browser.

Below is an excerpt of an interview I had with Roddy Richards, who talks about PriceAdvance’s growth, the major upgrade, and the service’s future.

Kristen Nicole: What exactly is PriceAdvance all about? How did you come up with the idea?

Roddy Richards: PriceAdvance is a free, no registration required, FireFox AddOn (and Internet Explorer plugin) that makes it easy to find better prices for products you’re already shopping for online.

I saw the potential for it while running RefreshThing – a Nintendo Wii tracker. RefreshThing made it easy to see where a Wii was in stock without visiting 15 sites. Imagine being able to meta-shop; to see prices for what you’re shopping for without going to those other sites. Knowing you’re not missing out on a great deal without actually having to go through 10 sites to find that deal. It seemed like easy comparison shopping.

Adam Gotterer, Co-Founder of MediaNext and I started working on PriceAdvance in earnest in the Fall of 2007. His incredible talent and enthusiasm has made it possible to realize the vision for PriceAdvance. We rallied around an application to a seed stage funding group, were asked to interview but ultimately weren’t funded. We used the check they gave us to fly out to interview when incorporating Media Next, Inc. and we released a beta that December.

Kristen Nicole: In terms of online shopping, how does PriceAdvance fit into this rather regular web-based activity?

Roddy Richards: PriceAdvance scans its database while you’re shopping. When it finds a match for a product you’re browsing it’ll show you prices at other retailers. You don’t need to even visit the vendor to know how much it’d cost there. The ‘net is great for providing perfect information to consumers if you have the patience and experience to be able to sift through all relevant data. This brings it to you automatically.

Kristen Nicole: Has the down-turned economy affected PriceAdvance as a product at all? Has the economic circumstances been able to shift your company’s focus or ability to market/recruit new users?

Roddy Richards: The world has shifted, certainly. Consumer spending is off, consumer debt is rising. We still have to buy things – we just need to be smarter about how we go about it. The 240,000 consumers who’ve downloaded PriceAdvance since November have enjoyed saving time while saving money and we attribute most of that growth to word of mouth after our media exposure in November.

Kristen Nicole: Since launching, what type of success have you seen?

Roddy Richards: We’re just about to cross the 250,000 install mark. We were written up in Consumer Reports Money Adviser and covered on local TV news in 10+ cities around the country because of it.

Kristen Nicole: What type of feedback have you received from your users?
Roddy Richards: People seem to love PriceAdvance. It’s “lazy comparison shopping” at its best. Our biggest complaint is that it doesn’t pop up enough! That problem is about to be solved.

Kristen Nicole: You mentioned that you’re gearing up for a major database upgrade in the coming week. What are the details surrounding this push?

Roddy Richards: We’ve partnered with a new data provider to expand the number of vendors we support (from 25 to 160) and expand the number of products we track (from 1.5 million to around 15 million). We’re really excited about improved results, greater product coverage and the added value we’ll be able to provide to anyone with PriceAdvance installed.

Kristen Nicole: What are you hoping to see with PriceAdvance once the upgrade has gone through?

Roddy Richards: Faster loading times, more and better results.

Kristen Nicole: What are the next steps for PriceAdvance, and how do you see your tool shaping the world of online consumer activity?

Roddy Richards: We’ll be improving the user experience further, adding new features that have been requested (or just make sense). We want to continue to make the entire purchasing process easier for anyone using PriceAdvance. Knowing you’re not paying more than you need to is a big part of that, especially these days. We like to think it’s even better when you can know effortlessly.