Take Advantage Of Cyber Monday

E-tailers Offer Extra Discounts, Free Shipping -- If You Know How To Find It

(CBS)  Anyone who came within a mile of a shopping mall this past weekend will be happy to know that there are more compelling reasons than ever to shop online this year. Forget wasting gas circling the lot to find a parking space - some sites are offering free shipping as an incentive, while others offer significant discounts and bonuses.

AOL Consumer advisor Regina Lewis dropped by The Early Show to explain how to get the best online deals possible.

According to Lewis, "A Shop.org survey shows nearly 75 percent of online retailers are planning special one day, 'online only' promotions for Cyber Monday."

She added, "Most of the big e-tailers -- Walmart, Best Buy, JCrew, Restoration Hardware -- are the big retailers too. They're running a 2- or 3-prong business with stores, catalogs and/or websites. What happened over the Thanksgiving weekend was most e-tailers offered Black Friday deals all the way through Sunday. And while many of these deals were "leaked" (sometimes intentionally by the retailers) in advance, Cyber Monday deals were kept largely under wraps until late Sunday afternoon and in some cases, until midnight this morning, because retailers didn't want to show their next hand -- they wanted the weekend promotions to play out."

And while some people shopped up a storm this weekend, still others were engaged in window-shopping - checking out potential gifts, keeping track of prices and getting ready to find the same items online - for less.

Retailers refer to the Monday after Thanksgiving as "cyber-Monday," but it won't likely be the heaviest online shopping day of the year - Dec. 10 through 14 are generally considered the heaviest holiday shopping days. But Black Friday and Cyber Monday signify the start of the shopping season, when

"In a soft economy, we're all very price sensitive," Lewis explained. She suggests before making any purchases, online or in bricks and mortar stores, you take the time to visit a price comparison website.

"That's what the Internet is all about," said Lewis. "So if I type in the name of an item on sites like pricegrabber.Com, it searches 11,000 e-tailers, gives me the list of the best prices." And, she added, if you type in your zip code, "it will then add in shipping and tax if applicable. Sometimes tax extends, sometimes it doesn't. So you want to compare apples and oranges, meaning I could undercut you on the price of an item, but the net cost could be higher."

Another way to increase your savings online is to check for any additional discounts the site might be offering; often there's a place to enter a discount code during check-out from an online shopping site.

"If they're asking for it, it means it exists," said Lewis. "There are sites - www.couponcabin.com is one of them - or go to any search engine, type in the name of the retailer, the plus sign, coupon codes (ie, "Target + coupon codes"). You'll find a site where you can get the code, then check out" with an extra discount.