8 Brilliant Sale Shopping Life Hacks You Won't Want To Miss

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few days, you will have noticed that the sales have now started. Now’s the time to grab those bargains for low, low prices :)

Other than Black Friday, the January sales are the best time to snag those reduced items you’ve had your eye on all year. In fact, you will probably have a lot more choices available to you if we compare the sales to Black Friday. That’s because more retailers put items on sales during the January sales 

To ensure that you are ready and well equipped to deal with the latest January sale, we have written this short article with some great shopping life hacks you may find useful.

Plan Ahead

Before you are looking to get the very best deal in the sale, be sure to plan what you are going to do in advance. In fact, if your plan is to shop the sales after boxing day, your research should ideally start quite a few months beforehand. That way, you can see what things were selling for and what they are selling for now. 

Often times, retailers will place different colours and sizes on sale at different times, so be sure to set up a spreadsheet and track the prices.

If the vast majority of your research is being done online, then you could also bookmark any items for quick and easy access.

Get Online

Going out and shopping the sales is fine, but you will gain that first-mover advantage if you can do both your research and purchasing online. 

The retailers are pretty good because they will tell you in advance when a sale is about to launch. 

If it is quite a significant launch then your best bet is to go online as soon as it is launched. Not just for first-mover advantage but there’s a strong possibility that their website will be overwhelmed with the sheer level of traffic. 

It will be really slow, or worse, could actually go down. By ordering as soon as the sale launches, you have a great chance to miss all of the madness of websites going down, etc.

This is where your previous bookmarks come in. Instead of trying to search around looking for the website, you will have a nice list of all the websites you have visited previously. The only difference is, you can access them at the press of a button.

Sign Up For VIP Access

Do you know those annoying pop-ups you see when you go onto a retailer's website?

Even though they can be annoying and not the best customer experience there are benefits to adding your email to these types of lists. 

In essence, you are placed in an early bird list that allows you to receive regular updates from a retailer. Play your cards right and they will send you money-off coupons and coupon codes.

Pick Your Store Wisely

Depending on the type of shopping experience you want, you may want to visit a smaller store in your home town rather than a large out of town store. 

If you think about this logically, most large retailers will deliver a small batch of sale items to smaller stores which means you may not need to fight with other shoppers to get the sale items you want.

If you opt to do this, it means your shopping experience should be a lot better and less stressful.

When To Go In-store

Depending on how motivated and hungry you are for a sale item, a lot of stores open early (some 5 am or 6 am even) to allow keen shoppers to get in early. 

You generally find a lot of furniture and electrical retailers doing this. This is because the items are normally larger than most sale items you would normally buy and the store needs to keep replenishing them throughout the day. If items are in the sale then the likelihood of them selling out fast is pretty high.

Sometimes if you are shopping for clothes or shoes, it is often best to go in a few days after the sale launch. Oftentimes, retailers will receive returns (wrong size, wrong colour, etc) and will put them back onto the shelf at a discount. 

Cheekily Ask For More Discount

Asking for a discount is not very British and the vast majority of people wouldn’t even dream of asking. 

Did you know, a lot of retailers are willing to give further discounts if the packing has been damaged or there is a button missing from a top? No.

Next time, when you go out shopping in the sales, try this strategy out and see how much discount you can get on your items. The results will shock you.

Note: Trying this on the first day of the sale probably won’t work that well. We would recommend trying this 7 to 14 days into the sale once people start returning goods back to the store.

What to buy first 

If you are looking to purchase things for the home like furniture, it will likely get sold out in record time, so waiting to purchase it probably isn’t the best idea. 

You also find womenswear and childrenswear also sell quite quickly since trends change so quickly and stores are motivated to get rid of these lines as fast as possible. Also, the size of the item you want may not be available 7 days into the sale. Hence, why people go to the sale early for these items.

Be Prepared

Some of you that are eagle-eyed out there will probably notice that this heading is similar to the earlier “Plan Ahead.” However, they are slightly different.

If you know that you are going to spend all day going from shop to shop, then you should be prepared with both food, water and ensure you wear trainers or comfy shoes. Also, ladies, don’t carry a large handbag.

Depending on how serious you want to take the sales. You can always eat beforehand and then simply eat when you get back home or take