Online Holiday Shopping Tips

(CBS)  Now that Black Friday is behind us, it's time for Internet merchants to hear the sweet sound of ringing cash registers, even if only virtually.

Just as the day after Thanksgiving kicks off the brick and mortar holiday season, the first Monday after Turkey Day is Cyber Monday - the unofficial start of the online buying season. One reason is that lots of people shop from the office.

Until recently that was because many people who didn't have broadband at home had high-speed connections at work but even many people with home DSL or cable modems still prefer shopping on the boss's time.

Whether that's the right thing to do, I suppose, is between the workers and their bosses, but I have heard some people argue that they're putting in so much extra time at the office that they feel justified using a little of it to do their holiday shopping.

And, just as Thursday was a big sale day for retailers, Monday is expected to see a lot e-tailers offer online promotions. The only difference is that you won't have to hunt for parking spaces, wait in long lines or risk getting into scuffles with fellow shoppers hunting for the same bargains.

Of course, the Internet does have its own version of a traffic jam. If sites get too busy the servers can become congested and slow down. And while you can't get into fisticuffs with other shoppers, there is still the risk that the item you want will be out of stock when you try to order it.

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Click here to listen to Larry Magid's
podcast assessment of online holiday shopping.

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A survey conducted on behalf of the National Retail Federation estimates that about 52 million people (37% of consumers) will browse or shop online from work this holiday season. Forrester Research estimates that holiday online shopping will top $18 billion. That's still a small percentage of overall shopping but it's growing fast.

The reasons: more people are online, more people have high-speed broadband lines and, perhaps most important, people are starting to become comfortable that shopping online is not only easy and convenient, but relatively safe.

On that note, here are some safety tips that are worth mentioning.

First, you should only deal with reputable merchants. If you land on a site operated by someone you don't recognize, there is a small risk that you could be a on rogue site which could take your money and fail to deliver the goods or, worse, misuse the information you enter. Obviously you don't need to worry about this if you're dealing with major e-tailers like Amazon.com or the online sites offered by major retailers like Walmart, Sears or Target.

You also get some extra assurance if you locate the merchant through Yahoo Shopping, MSN Shopping, eBay's Shopping.com or ShopZilla as these organizations make some effort to check out or rate the merchants they refer you to. Yahoo Shopping, for example, handles the credit card information and passes the money – not your card number – over to the merchants.

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