internet

http://uk.shopping.com

Times are hard in the UK and you need to wring every last bit of purchasing power from the money you have so what better way than to use a shopping comparison site that has links to just about everything you could ever need!

Shopping.com - open the UK site from the url above - has a good pedigree. It's a big company with websites in various countries, including the USA and Australia, and is owned now by auction giant eBay.

It's basically a comparison shopping site, that is, it has the same product from a variety of retailers and allows you to search for the best possible price thus making your money go further. But it's also useful for browsing if you're not sure exactly what you want or for comparing the current deals offered by different retailers.

The best way to see how to use it is to follow me while I checkout a tumble dryer in case I soon have to replace our old and well-used current model.

We're buying a tumble dryer

Open the main page above and note that this is the UK site. If you want a different country go straightaway to the bottom of the page and choose from the flags in the centre of the bottom navigation.

There is a search box at the top of the page and down the left hand side are the various shopping categories for you to choose. Apart from some quick links at the centre top there is very little else on the page to get in the way, making this an easy and intuitive site to navigate.

Look down the left hand side and note the category called 'Appliances' which has within it 'washing machines' but not tumble dryers.

The 'none search box' way

What I would do is click on 'Appliances' and hope to find tumble dryers on the page that opens.

In fact, rather than clutter up a page with a whole list of appliances to scroll through, the website sensibly has a further selection of 'Home Appliances' before I can get to the tumble dryer category.

Click on 'Home Appliances' and then 'Tumble Dryers' in the resulting page to reveal a list of appliances from which to choose. I can now sort these into various categories from the boxes at the top and also choose how many to show on each page.

The alternative 'Search Box' way

Either from the main page or from any other page you can type in the name of a product and have the database return all the products that answer that description. In fact, I want a 'Bosch tumble dryer' so I enter these words into the box and press 'search'.

From whichever page I do this I get the same list of all tumble dryers made by Bosch. Obviously, this will work for any other product and is a good and very quick way to find what you want.

Suppose, however, rather than a specific item, I wanted just a 'small portable radio' but I don't know what sort of model. I can enter those words in the search box and the database will do it's best to match these to products. Try it and you will see that it gives a good selection to choose from.

From this list of products I realise that what I want is a 'DAB' radio. I just add that word to the words that are still in the search box at the top of the page and press 'search' again to modify the list.

What we thought

We do a lot of shopping online and are always on the lookout for an easy way to either search for the cheapest item or browse for presents and this site seemed to be one of the easiest and most intuitive that we had found. We, therefore, have no hesitation in giving it a recommendation for a bookmark.

Tags: gifts, review, shopping