CheapTweet Blog

Whether you still have holiday shopping to do or you’ve been done for weeks, Thursday, December 17 is a great day to do some online shopping. December 17 is Free Shipping Day, and it’s one of the best days of the year to stock up on things you need (and maybe even things you don’t). You already know you can avoid the crowds, the lines, and the stress of stores by shopping online, and on December 17 you can also avoid paying for shipping.

Hundreds of online retailers are participating in Free Shipping Day by offering free shipping at their sites. And most of them will guarantee delivery by Christmas. We’re keeping track of all the free shipping offers on CheapTweet. com. And we’ll be posting some of favorite free shipping deals to Twitter from @CheapTweet.

So stay tuned for the best Free Shipping Day deals. And as always, happy shopping and happy saving!

Shop.org published a report yesterday about their expectations for the holiday shopping season.

There’s good news for those of us looking for deals – it looks like we’ll see tons of free shipping deals this holiday season (more than 79% of retailers plan to offer free shipping at some point this season).

The report also says they expect shoppers will do more of their shopping online this year. And, shoppers will be using social sites like Twitter and Facebook more, to assist with their shopping. The reasons they cited for the increase in online shopping are interesting (emphasis mine):

Reasons behind why people will spend more online range from the ability to shop at all hours of the day (41.9%) to shoppers feeling it is easier to compare prices (34.0%) to Americans’ insatiable appetite for free shipping (33.1%). Others said they will spend more online because it’s simply more convenient for them (32.4%), they don’t want to fight crowds in stores (24.9%) or because it’s easier to find items (16.7%).

In addition, the reasons people don’t – won’t – shop online are interesting for other reasons:

The small percentage of people (5.7%) who plan to spend less of their holiday budget online said that they’ll pull back due to expensive shipping charges (22.8%), because they like to see or handle items before they buy (12.5%) or because they prefer a store experience (10.8%). A fraction of shoppers said they hesitated to shop online due to concerns about security (1.1%), credit card theft (0.6%), privacy (0.1%) or concerns about retailers tracking online activity (0.1%).

What do you think – will you do most of your shopping online or in stores? Why do you choose one or the other?