Online Shopping - The purchase of products and services on the Internet. Online shopping has become increasingly popular, due to convenience (and often lower prices). Especially in the holiday season, online shopping saves an individual the hassle of searching several stores and then waiting in long queues to buy a particular item.
Advantages of Online Shopping
• Save Time – Do you have the specific list that you want to buy? With just a couple of clicks of the mouse, you can purchase your shopping orders and instantly move to other important things, which can save time.
• Save Fuel – The market of fuel industries battles from increasing and decreasing its cost every now and again, but no matter how much the cost of fuel are it does not affect your shopping errands. One of the advantages of shopping online is that there is no need for vehicles, so no purchase of fuel necessary.
• Save Energy – Admit it, it is tiresome to shop from one location and transfer to another location. What is worse is that there are no available stocks for the merchandise you want to buy. In online shopping, you do not need to waste your precious energy when buying.
• Comparison of Prices – The advanced innovation of search engine allows you to easily check prices and compare with just a few clicks. It is very straightforward to conduct price comparisons from one online shopping website to another. This gives you the freedom to determine which online store offers the most affordable item you are going to buy.
• 24/7 Availability – Online shopping stores are open round the clock of 24/7, 7 days a week and 365 days. It is very rare to find any conventional retail stores that are open 24/7. The availability of online stores give you the freedom to shop at your own pace and convenience.
Tips for Safe Online Shopping -
Shop from a comfortable site - Start at a trusted site rather than shopping with a search engine. Search results can be rigged to lead you astray, especially when you drift past the first few pages of links. Also, comparing products on sites like Bizrate can give you confidence that you're getting a fair price
Double check pricing - Be suspicious of prices that are too good to be true. Also consider carefully whether you may be paying too much for an item, particularly if you're bidding through an auction site. You may want to comparison shop, online or offline, before you buy. Make sure there are not extra shipping or handling costs
Make sure you are on the correct site - Once you arrive at a site, you need to make sure that it is legitimate and not a fake or spoofed version.
Share payment information only with known or reputable vendors - The single best thing you can to do protect yourself is to be careful about who you’re giving your payment details to. If you’re not entirely sure whether the retailer you’re visiting is reliable, do some research to verify its authenticity and security.
Use online payment services such as PayPal - Services like PayPal, Bill Me Later, and PaySimple keep your credit-card information stored on a secure server, and then let you make purchases online without revealing your credit details to retailers.
Use strong passwords - Choose passwords that are difficult to guess and are at least 10 characters long consisting of a combination of numbers, letters, and symbols. Remember to keep your passwords private and don't set your computer to remember your credit card number or password when you create an account on an online shopping site. 
