It’s early December at your local town centre, you’ve popped in after work because it’s late night shopping and you’re determined to get Christmas presents sorted before December 24th this year. Unfortunately, the Christmas lights blind you, the hoards of people almost trample you completely and you can’t hear yourself think over the sound of seven different Christmas songs blaring from nearby stores.
It’s impossible to find truly heartfelt, sentimental Christmas gifts under these basically torturous conditions. That’s why we’re all so grateful for the world wide web - cheers for that, Tim Berners-Lee - and UK online shopping. Forget braving the mall this year, sit yourself down in your Christmas onesie and get all your gifts from the comfort of your own sofa.
If you’re at home (or let’s face it, on your lunch hour at work), here are seven great reasons to just get your gifting done here and now and swerve the city centre entirely.
1 - You can peruse slowly and carefully to your hearts content. There will be no loitering sales people working on commission asking you if you’d like “any help with anything” with a pleading look in their eye.
2 - You can be the picky person people loathe, agonising over every decision and detail, without anybody actually having to loathe you, because they won’t be there.
3 - You can compare items in two different shops by tab hopping, instead of hiding things underneath clothes racks and hoping they’ll still be there if you come back having decided to buy them.
4 - You can shop for your girlfriend, nephew or work BFF safe in the knowledge that you won’t bump into them and accidentally give the game away and let them see their present. It’s probably worth wiping your browser history after Internet gift shopping though, just a thought..
5 - You can support small, independent, UK based businesses (and therefore feel very smug and good deedy) and stop giving your hard earned cash to the big corporations. You can browse our shop for cheeky novelty socks, obviously. We’re guessing you don’t want to get toe- warmers for the whole family though, so make sure you check out our friends at Blog & Buy Sale or Glimt!
6 - The shops on the Internet never close. They are literally always open. You can think of the perfect present at 3am on Tuesday and order it then and there.
7 - You won’t wonder if you might have gotten a better deal elsewhere, because you can do a quick Google of price comparisons before hitting the checkout button. Every. Single. Time.
Admittedly, online shopping isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. People have concerns when shopping online, and rightly so. Using your credit card online can be a scary thing for example, but so long as you stick to trusted websites or use payment clients that are guaranteed to be safe like PayPal, you won’t go too far wrong.
Things getting lost in the post or items not looking quite the way you expected them to are another very occasional but unfortunate nonetheless mishap that can occur when shopping online. But really, all things considered, isn’t it worth the risk?
Have you done all your Christmas shopping yet? Let us know via the comments below.
