5 tips for smart sale shopping - Is that bargain really a bargain?

For those looking for tips and advice on Sale shopping this year, Brian Trevaskiss of MoreComputers.com provides some shopping savvy tips to ensure you get the most out of the January Sales;

1. The 'guidelines' that govern 'was' and 'now only' prices in stores have become less clear in recent years. At one time a store had to have offered a product at the higher price for 28 days prior to showing a new lower price with a saving. These days many retailers interpret things differently and items that are half price may never have been sold at a higher price. So you need to check the 'current market price' and not be fooled by a huge saving that isn't real.

2. Owners of 'smart phones' like the Apple iphone have an advantage when it comes to checking the 'current market price'. There's a clever 'app' for that - when you're out and about in the sales and spot something that looks like a bargain, you can check the price there and then. Take a photo of the barcode and the 'app' will automatically look for search results on Google and comparison shopping sites and deliver the results to your phone instantly. You'll then know if the product in your hand is a true sale bargain or not.

3. Look out for 'loss leaders', most stores are prepared to lose money on one or two genuine reductions, just to pull in the crowds. Sign up to email newsletters and check voucher/coupon sites ahead of the sale start date to be sure you know what these are. You may also get advanced notice of sales and be able to beat the queues by shopping online. A lot of stores prefer to clear stock online than ship it around their actual shops.

4. If you miss out on the 'loss leaders' it might be worth waiting for the end of the sale when stores reduce prices further to clear stock. Don't be afraid to ask when a sale is due to end, most assistants will be able to tell you. This can also give you a chance to check online prices.

5. Don't be distracted by 'sale blindness' ask yourself would I still want this if it wasn't reduced? If you feel the urge - remind yourself that the reason the majority of products are in the sale is because no-one wanted to buy them at full price. It may be old stock or a piece of technology that simply doesn't work very well.

More news in the news

Great start to the day today, my in box had three separate bits of More news coverage waiting for me to look at. The first one I looked at was my online shopping tips for Christmas in The Yorkshire Post that can be read below

Then both the Sheffield Star and the Creative Sheffield websites have featured our round up of the year and the launch of our new MoreFrom.co.uk website.

Here's the links:
In the Sheffield Star:
Online retailer taps into new markets

On the Creative Sheffield website:
More from MoreComputers.com

It's nice to look back on what's been a fantastic year for More and to look forward to an exciting 2010.

Click on this image to enlarge.

Sony L11S1E/S - The Future is Here!

There is one product in particular which is selling like 'hot cakes' at the moment, many of our customers may have this in mind for the perfect Christmas gift or just upgrading their current set-up- I am taking ofcourse about the Sony L11S1E/S all in one desktop PC.

Enjoy a new family entertainment experience with multi-touch screen and it's Slim and stylish design saves space and can fit in any room. Not only is this product one of our best sellers, but it is on the PC Pro A-List and is great value for money. Along with a 500GB Hard Drive, 4GM of memory, Blu-Ray Drive and 3.0GHz Intel processor, the Sony L11S1E holds massive entertainment and work-related potential.

5/5 for me.

Danny at More

Apprenticeship program

We're welcoming a couple of new recruits here in Sheffield this week. Emily and Anna have joined us on our new apprenticeship program. Both 17 years old and in their first 'real' jobs they'll be working on everything from sales and order processing to customer service and admin. It's great to be expanding the team and we're hoping these guys will be the first of many to join our apprentice program. Just don't mention Alan Sugar.

Business Yorkshire 2009

I've spent the last two days at Doncaster racecourse at the Business Yorkshire conference and exhibition. I was there to speak at the Google University seminars as mentioned in earlier blog post. This is just a quick post to let you know how it all went.

The event itself saw around 3,000 people attend over the two days, with the mornings being more popular than the afternoons. I did my presentation four times in total and it all seemed to go down well. It's always interesting to chat to business owners after presenting and I've met businesses as diverse as make-up sales, canoe accessories, power tools and speed dating for over 50s. Plus a chef with a secret recipe Jamaican marinade!

All these businesses said they gained some extra knowledge from listening to how we do things and that it gave them something to think about applying to their business websites. Of particular interest is how we go about promoting 60,000 products and managing our extensive adwords campaign. People are relived to hear there are ways and means to automate the process.

I'm looking forward to doing more of the same and just to prove as was there there's a quick video below.

Online retail secrets

I had some great news this week, following on from my presentation at the Sheffield Google event the other week. I volenteered to do a similar thing at the Business Yorkshire exhibition and conference. I'm pleased to say Google thought it was a good idea and I'll be speaking alongside Satyan Joshi who is delivering the Introduction to Google AdWords at the event.

Google have asked if I could talk about some of the business challenges I've overcome using our website & online promotion. They don't want me to talk exclusively about my experiences of Google products in particular, but if they have contributed then obviously they would like me to explain how.

I see it as demonstrating the practical 'real world' use of Google Adwords after people have been introduced to the 'theory' from Google.

There are three main challenges I'll be talking about:

• Being successful in a very competitive market - there are hundreds of electrical retailers online.
• Promoting a huge range of 60,000 low margin products with a miniscule marketing budget.
• The limitations of being perceived as a 'computer' supplier and how we need to broaden our appeal.

Here’s a link to more information about the event
Brian Trevaskiss at Business Yorkshire
Be sure and say hello if you go along.

Here’s a link to a Sheffield Star newspaper story other day.
Online retailer set to share secrets

New Specification filter

The latest addition to the MoreComputers.com site is our new Specification filter. Now when you're browsing our site and you select a sub category, 'Notebooks' for example you have the option to look at just the notebooks with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. You could then pick just notebooks with a 15.4 inch screen. Get the idea?

Basically the new Specification filter lets you filter out the products you want to look at. It's not just on notebooks either, it works on all the sub categories that have specifications to select from.

Shopping for external hard drives is another good example. You can now just pick the disk capacity, say 1000GB and just look at the one you want to consider.

We're still labelling this new feature as 'Beta' because we know there will be improvements to make, so be sure and send us some feedback.

Google Event

I was speaking at a Google seminar in Sheffield last week, the event was held at the new Electric Works building in the city and attended by 150 or so business people from the area.

The evening kicked off with an introduction from James Wilson of Creative Sheffield (the organisers of the event) who introduced Paul Scriven leader of Sheffield Council. Who must have one of the best email addresses I've ever seen - leader at sheffield .gov .uk. Then came the team from Google who talked about trends in online advertising, searching and how to create a good website in general.

Next it was my turn to get up and speak. I was there to talk about the business challenges we come across running MoreComputers.com and how we use our website and Google to overcome them. We use a lot of Google services including search, shopping and adwords. I was keen to help people see how we use them so they could relate to the theory from Google.

To round off the evening it was time for questions, some of which where aimed at me, so it was good to expand on what we do and how we do it. all in all it was a good evening and I'm hopeful we'll do something similar with Google soon.

Here's a link to the Google Event page on the Creative Sheffield site

Sheffield Award Winners

The local newspapers and BBC Radio Sheffield have been in touch to ask about our PC Pro award win. Our MD Chris Wheater was invited on to the Gareth Evans radio show to chat about the big win, online shopping and they even got on to Sinclair Spectrums and Manic Miner at one point.

Our local papers The Star and The Telegraph have printed the news, with headlines 'Logging on for award - computer firms key to success' and 'IT firm scoops on-line award'. One paper described me an an 'Internet Diamond', I'm thinking about getting that printed on a T-shirt or at least my business cards.

Here's one of the PC Pro Awards articles that made it online.

Windows 7 versions

I spent a couple of hours yesterday trying to make sense of all the new Windows 7 products. When I started we had 18 different Windows 7 products listed on the site. Half of them were Microsoft's N versions, these are the same price but with Media Player removed. Apparently Microsoft have to produce this version due to a European Commission fine back when XP was launched.

So I've removed the N versions. I then went on to divide up the other options into three categories. The full version for clean installs, the upgrade version for when you already have older Windows and the anytime upgrade for upgrading from one version of Windows 7 to another.

Within all these categories you get to choose from Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate versions.

Here's a few links you may find helpful when choosing which version is right for you:

MoreComputers Windows 7 page
PC Pro's everything you need to know about Windows 7 pages
Cnet's Crave blog about Windows 7 N versions page

I would post some links to the Microsoft site but I can't get on it today - must be a busy day for them. Will update this post when I can get access to their site.

Windows 7 upgrades

If you have purchased a new PC or Laptop after June 26th 2009 (or are planning to purchase - up to January 31st 2010) with Windows Vista (Home Premium, Business or Ultimate), then you may be entitled to the ´FREE´ Windows 7 Upgrade Option.

Windows 7 becomes available on October 22nd 2009 so any upgrade will be available after this date. Please note that some models may not be eligible for the upgrade offer, please check with the manufacturer before purchase. You can order your Windows 7 Upgrade kit from the manufacturers.

Here's a list of links to the right pages on the manufacturers websites:

Lenovo Windows 7 upgrade
Samsung Windows 7 upgrade
Sony Vaio Windows 7 upgrade
Toshiba Windows 7 upgrade
HP Windows 7 upgrade
Fujitsu Windows 7 upgrade
Asus Windows 7 upgrade
Acer Windows 7 upgrade

More products from more suppliers

We've been actively looking to expand our range of products and find alternative suppliers for existing stuff. We're now working with several new UK distributors and our range has grown from 40,000 to 60,000 items.

In terms of new products we've added brands like Cables To Go, Corsair, Freecom, Monster, OCZ, and Swann just to name a few.

The other reason to look for new suppliers is to improve the pricing and stock availability on products we already sell. It's especially relevent at the moment with the recession still making things tough for everyone, all of the UK distributors have been running their stock down, which has a knock on effect for retailers.

The good news is stock availability is starting to improve and I think it's fair to say our suppliers are feeling a little more optimistic.

New look MoreComputers.com

Our site has had some major 'look and feel' developments and feedback so far has been very positive. We decided to do something different from the normal formula for online shops which all seem to follow a very similar format. In our new site we're trying to introduce our own graphical look, to hopefully make us a bit more memorable

At this stage in the development we've kept the features and functions of the previous site and tried to lay them out in a more logical way, whilst introducing the new design elements. Apologies if you find something has moved and it takes you a bit longer to find it again.

We do have a list of things to improve within the new design, not least making it more compatible with the older versions of Internet Explorer. The new design does work much better than past designs on Mac Safari.

It would be great to get your feedback on the new look or simple anything about the site. Please leave a comment here and I'll be sure to discuss it with the team.

PC Pro Awards 2009 Winner

A big thank you to everyone who took part in the 2009 PC Pro service and reliability survey. I'm thrilled to say we won the 'best online retailer' category and maintained our 6 out of 6 stars for customer service for the forth year in a row. Well done to the customer service team!

We beat off some big household names like Amazon, Argos, Dixons and 27 other retailers to win. PC Pro had this to say:
'The online vendors category has more competition than any other, with over 30 companies rated here. To stand out takes something special, and Morecomputers clearly has it, with customer service being key to its success: it scored a 94% satisfaction rating, compared to the industry average of 85%, and it was universally praised for its delivery accuracy and punctuality too'.

It's always nice to win awards, but it's the customer voted for awards that mean the most to us and with 14,000 people taking part in the survey these are the biggest in the IT industry.

You can see more details on the PC Pro Awards 2009 site

Chris Wheater MD at More accepts the award for Best Online Retailer from comedian Hugh Dennis