shopping

Sell your old stuff on Quick

Open up Quick and you'll see two paths you can take: Sell or Search & Buy. Selling an item using Quick is totally straightforward. Just hit List an Item and input all of the vital info, like Title, Price, Category, Description, Payment Options, Delivery Options, and Photos. You can snap a few new pics or import existing ones from your Gallery. If you're selling a fairly common item, there's a nice feature that lets you use Quick to search for it (either by keyword or scanned bar code), in order to autopopulate the item fields. Lastly, at … Read more

Fab raises $105 million in funding round

Design-focused shopping site Fab hopes to expand its global footprint and increase its warehouses and inventory with the $105 million its secured in a third round of funding, Fab CEO Jason Goldberg said in the company's blog post today.

The new round of financing was led by investment firm Atomico, which is also helping Fab expand its site globally, starting with London, Tokyo, Beijing, Sao Paulo, and Istanbul. Atomico's other investments include Skype and Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds.

"We believe that we have a special opportunity to create one of the world's next great … Read more

Foursquare gets a face-lift

Foursquare offers a new interface in version 5 that has been completely reworked to a much cleaner design so you can get to what you want quickly using only three tabs across the bottom of the screen (the former design had five buttons across the bottom). The Friends tab (which used to be only about checking in) now offers big photos you can swipe to browse along with tips, lists, and places your friends have saved. From here you can "Like" or comment on activity by touching a button for each. The new layout seems much better organized … Read more

Google lends name to its trusted online merchants

Google is opening up its Google Trusted Stores program -- which comes with the company's backing and an optional satisfaction guarantee for customers -- to any U.S merchant, the search giant turned marketplace announced today.

Then program, which gives out badges and customer service scorecards to merchants, lets Google assure customers that when they shop online, Google's got their back.

"We help customers feel confident, knowing that they're going to be having a great experience and knowing that Google stands behind them if anything goes wrong," said Tom Fallows, Google Shopping's group product … Read more

IBM partners with Honeywell to create mobile shopping app

IBM is introducing its own in-store shopping companion app.

Dubbed the "digital shopping assistant," this mobile app allows consumers to scan items they want to purchase at retail stores with their smartphone and then use an IBM self-checkout station to pay.

"Retailers can now deliver a more personalized shopping experience that is less of a chore and more of a convenience for consumers," IBM Retail Store Solutions vice president John Gaydac said in a statement. "By enabling consumers to scan and check-out a wide variety of products at their own pace, retailers can not only … Read more

Google tries, tries again with online shopping

Amazon may not exactly be quaking quite yet, but Google is taking another stab at revamping its lackluster online-shopping business by forging closer commercial links with online merchants and improving its product-related search function.

The Web giant rolled out a new initiative today that renames its fornerly uninspiring "Google Product Search" service as "Google Shopping" while also changing the ground rules:

First, by requiring merchants to pay for listings (Google calls them "product-listing ads") that were formerly free; Second, by inserting these paid product placements into general search results more obviously and with bigger … Read more

Pinterest users twice as likely to buy stuff than Facebook users

Are you more apt to buy an item you see pop up on Pinterest or Facebook?

Most of the Pinterest and Facebook users polled by marketing firm SteelHouse said that the sites play a key role in their online buying. But Pinterest users are twice as likely to buy items they see on the site than are Facebook users.

Drilling further the results of the 309 online shoppers polled, 59 percent of Pinterest users said they've already bought something they saw pinned on Pinterest. In comparison, 33 percent of Facebook folks said they've bought a product or service … Read more

Seven tips for smarter shopping on Amazon

Amazon.com is a wonderfully convenient e-tailer to shop at. Where else can you order an LCD TV, stand mixer, diapers, and pet food on the same order, then have them all delivered to your front door within two days? It's a shopper's paradise, all right.

To help you get the most out of shopping on Amazon.com, here are seven tips to consider:

Price tracking Amazon.com already has some of the most competitive prices anywhere, but their prices can fluctuate on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. If you're not in a hurry, you can track … Read more

Ebates offers 13 percent cash back from over 100 stores

I'm increasingly fond of cash-back Web sites like BeFrugal, Ebates, and FatWallet, which refund you a percentage of your purchase just for shopping via their portals. It's easy money (back).

Granted, those percentages tend to be fairly small: 2 percent here, 4 percent there, maybe the occasional 7 or 8 percent.

Here's your chance to get a much bigger refund. To celebrate its 13th birthday, Ebates is offering 13 percent cash back from 132 stores.

For example, you can get 13 percent back on anything you buy from Accessory Geeks or Cell Phone Shop, which offer inexpensive … Read more