Shopping online has quickly become the preferred method of shopping for consumers worldwide and it’s hard to argue against the reasons. With so much going on, people love the convenience and they love choice. This makes it become such an important part of the shopping process, and it compounds the fact that retail is slowly becoming outdated.

Shopping in stores used to be the number one way to buy things. You’d go down to the store or go down to the mall to buy things in person, but as technology changes, so do our habits, as exhibited by the ability to simply whip out your credit card to make a purchase. A lot of people still like to go to stores, but it’s dwindling as time goes on.

Whether you agree that online shopping is better, it’s impossible to deny that it’s easier. Here are some of the ways that shopping online has objectively made our lives easier in this regard.

Limited Our Travel Expenses

You don’t need to gas up the car or get on the subway or bus to go shopping anymore, you can just as easily do it from home. Knowing that you aren’t going to be paying for bus fare, subway tokens, or even worse, gas mileage, you can be assured that your shopping is done in a much more economical way. Travel expenses too and from the mall or store don’t seem all that big, it’s only a couple of minutes, right? Well, over time this starts to add up, especially if you’re someone that is an avid shopper. Then couple that with all your other traveling expenses and you’re suddenly spending more than you thought.

Gives Us An Advantage in Finding Deals

Shopping online for deals is as skillful as finding the right product. You need to search high and low to find sales in person because many stores don’t release flyers or you only find out about the deal until you’re actually in the store. Now that people shop online, coupons and announcements of sales are more readily available and easy to see. Going even further, if you check out DontPayFull, you can see how coupons are becoming a more integral part of the online shopping experience. Entire sites and services are set up to help you find coupons or apply savings when you checkout, something that is much harder in person.

More Ways to Pay

When you shop in person, you admittedly have some options to pay. If you lost your card, pay cash, if you have no cash, pay by hard. Some people decline to bring cards or cash and use their phone apps to pay, but the fact is that those are the options, and that’s only three. Buying products online allows for a much greater expansion of payment options. You can use credit, debit, prepaid, PayPal, Stripe, Square, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and some ecommerce stores even allow people to pay by way of cryptocurrencies which is unheard of. This flexibility to pay how you like online is making it much easier to get products in a way that works best for you.

Easier Time Searching for Things We Want

Everything online is easier to find information. The worldwide web was intended as a research tool, and it still is, whether you consciously think of it or not. You might be looking up the dates for a music festival and when to buy tickets, or answering a question that a friend asks, or searching for someone’s handle on social media, but whatever it is, the internet provides. Online shopping works in the same way by providing more opportunities to find products you want, you need, and ones you have never heard of. It takes less time to explore 100 stores online than it would ever take to go into each shop in a mall.

Online Stores Never Close

The convenience factor is unheard of when comparing online shopping to traditional retail shopping. The fact that you can purchase a furniture set from an online retailer at 1 am is nothing you could do in-store. Retail spaces have to close, by law, because employees need to go home at some point but the internet doesn’t just close for the night and you have to wait to purchase in the morning. The online stores never close, barring some outage or maintenance.

Shopping Can Be Done in Comfort on Your Couch

If you’re someone that hates going into stores, you’re not alone at all. Many people hate going into stores for a number of reasons that stretch from social anxiety to hating the interaction with cashiers, to disliking lines and crowds, to simply not liking the store atmosphere. When you shop online you can do it on your couch, in your underwear, in your pajamas, while you’re eating breakfast, it doesn’t matter because you are able to do it in the most comfortable environment for you imaginable which is your home. This is a major reason why people love online shopping so much and why it dominates traditional retail.

Mobile Shopping Provides Flexible Options

If all of the payment options or the convenience of shopping in your underwear aren’t enough, you can take your shopping on the go wherever you are. Just like window shopping at a department store, people love to endlessly scroll through the catalog of goods from an online retailer to pass the time, which is possible considering that you can shop on your phone or your tablet. At work, school, waiting for a plane, on the bus, walking down the street, at a friend’s house, no matter where you are, you can conceivably shop online.

Shopping online is rapidly approaching the point where it becomes the overwhelmingly favorite form of commerce. Plenty of people love to still go into stores, and there are valid reasons for it, but it would be impossible to argue that it is easier than online shopping.