How to be better at online shopping
Hitting page 470 on SSENSE, using searching operators to save time, becoming an effective online shopper, and more.
It’s no secret that shopping for clothes online has become the favorable choice for pretty much everyone—although the in-person experience is by far the superior choice when copping new garments in my opinion.
If you’re someone who isn’t able to participate in the physical option because you simply don’t live in an area that has many stores, then online shopping is going to be probably your main way of buying clothes. But with so many shopping options available right at our fingertips, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and even confused at where you should start when you shop online.
There is, however, a way you can make this experience much more streamlined, faster and more effective for yourself. This will hopefully lead you to spending less money, because you’re finding stuff that you really like—which hopefully means you wear it for longer.
To get to this point, I’ve created a short guide that bring new ideas and tricks on how to become better at online shopping.
IS ONLINE SHOPPING COOKED?
At some point or another we’ve all experienced that one SSENSE session, where we end up on page 470 of their massive online catalog without purchasing a single item. You’ve seen clothes that you liked, but you continued to dig deeper with the hope of finding exactly what you’ve been looking for. But it doesn’t happen.
The way I look at it, if you are not looking for a particular garment, and are simply browsing the site to see what’s out there, then places like SSENSE, END, Mr. Porter, or any other massive retailer, might not be the ideal place to start with.
They have an overwhelming amount of product, so it’s easy to spend a terrifying amount of time on those sites without realizing. Most of the time when that happens I don’t even buy anything. Then I’m just annoyed at myself for wasting all of that time when I could have been doing anything else.
I try to shop more consciously to avoid that vibe. Having a specific garment in mind helps me stay focused on my mission, which helps me shop faster, and ultimitely spending less time on online shopping.
The stores I mentioned earlier aren’t my favorite to shop at, but they are helpful when you have a specific item in mind. I try to go directly to the brands these days because to be honest, more money goes to them, and I think it’s very important to support our favorites at this moment.
We also have the smaller shops that tend to be more dialed in on their product selection—also important to support them as well. These shops are all over the world, and while most of them have online stores, the real experience is found at their flagship locations. This is where you don’t feel overburdened by product but instead have a smaller, highly curated selection of clothing to pick from—there are speciality stores like The Real McCoy’s in Shibuya that has so much product at their store to the point where you might not know where to start. But in their case, they are curating a specific experience that warrants an exception.
If you’re looking for new stores to add to your list be sure to not forget about the exclusive SNL Store List—a list of amazing stores as well as City Shopping Guides featuring my favorite stores I’ve shopped at in places like Tokyo, New York, Paris, Copenhagen, and more.
HOW TO BE A BETTER SHOPPER
In my opinion a good online shopper is someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time doing it. They tend to spend less money over time because they are so dialed in on the pieces they buy. Making a purchase that lasts is the name of the game. If you’re buying less products then you can spend a little bit more to buy better.
Everyone has their own methods of online shopping. Mine are simple. Ideally the goal here is to make you a better shopper, and you can do that by adopting a few tricks that should make you much more effective at shopping.