Published February 18th, 2008
in Deal Site Reviews.
Having decided to review any heavily popular deal site, I used Yan’s recent update of popular deal sites to find the website I want to review. Wanting to review site among the top 10 in the list, a quick peruse of the list showed a weird number there, Deals2Buy which is in the 4th position has a Google rank of just 3, while every website in the top 10 has a Google rank of 5 or 6. To be more specific, except for deals2buy.com every other site in the top five has a Google rank of 6. Hunting for a reason, my best guess was that deals2buy.com was the only site without a forum while every other site in top 10 had a “forum”. It’s well known that Google ranks sites better for “original”/”new” content while penalizes for duplicate content. Given these reasons, I found it really impressive that deals2buy.com could be at the top 4th position, taking Amazon ranks at its face value. Forums for sure attract committed/dedicated users and can drive traffic really up. But with no forum nor any personalized feature (features requiring users to signup), driving traffic really requires something else. So here goes my review about deals2buy.com.
Before beginning to review lets list some items we would like to see in a daily deal website:
- Quickly be able to see the hottest deals for the day
- Provide methods to view deals selectively
- Every deal listed is expected to be best possible
- All possible rebates, coupons etc need to be clearly mentioned along with exact steps to make sure the deal is secured
- Methods to alert interested users about deals
Deals2Buy has a plain simple look to its home page (may be I should write Web 1.0 look) listing all the deals for the day paginated. Right above the list of deals there are options to sort the deals by clicking on links. However there is no mention whether the links are to sort or filter. I indeed expected it to be a filtering link, while it sorted. Sorting can be done based on whether tech deals appear on top or bottom, price, deals with no mail-in-rebates on top, category, merchant. Added to the set of links meant to sort is a link titled “text version”, which takes to a light weight version (only loads one liners for each deal and on clicking of an icon expands to load that particular deal from the server). The box which carries these links carries an image with the text “hot deals” on it. Clicking on it just resets the sorting you set (takes you to the home page), which was not the action I expected to happen. Could have just not made it a link!
Continue reading ‘Daily Deal Site - Deals2Buy Review’
Published February 16th, 2008
in Popular Sites Series.
This is January 2008 revision of the Popular Coupon sites list. You can find the last month revision of the list here.
The change in rating shows the difference compared to December results. This list currently has 29 sites which is two more than last month. I moved flamingoworld.com out of deal sites and into coupon sites list. Also, thanks to your comments I added one new coupon site: fabuloussavings.com.
There are 18 more coupon sites hiding in my database that didn’t meet the Alexa Rank < 250,000 requirement. Please, enjoy the list of those that made it below.
Published February 14th, 2008
in Shopping Bargains.
You might have noticed that I stopped posting shopping deals as of lately. One of the reasons is that most of the deals I find now go to Buxr since it is a much more convenient place for bargain hunting than my blog. Instead, starting today I will start making short weekly round-ups of the hottest deals my partner and I find and publish at Buxr. So here it goes…
This week’s hot shopping deals at Buxr
Guess total deals count and win a flash drive
One of the 4GB Kingston DataTraveler flash drives that we had bought for the Buxr launch promotion hasn’t found its owner and I decided to give it away in a small contest. The rules are very simple: the flash drive will go to the first person to guess the total number of deals my partner and I have posted on Buxr as of today, February 14, since its launch in December 2007.
If you know the number (or know how to find it) just leave your answer in a comment to this blog post. Please, US residents only (those few times I tried to send electronics outside the country were always unsuccessful).
Published February 13th, 2008
in Shopping Promotion.
Update 3/12: Your ticket must be processed at the Baltimore/Washington DC park when you use it for the first time. Thanks to the reader who clarified the terms of this promotion. Read the comments for more details
Any Six Flags fans out there? Never mind the winter weather. Now is the time to buy your annual pass for 2008 because the price will probably not get any lower. In fact the general admission is $49.99 for an adult when you pay at the gate so your pass will pay for itself in just one visit.
What you get with this offer is the pass for the entire 2008 year plus 5 free tickets for your friends to come along on select days which is kind of a trick because only one free ticket may be used per passholder per day.
Oh well, for our family the 4 tickets for $99 we had last spring would have worked better. The place is just too far to go more than once a season.
Published February 12th, 2008
in Shopping Bargains.
One of the few magazines I still subscribe to is Popular Mechanics. The latest issue had a very interesting comparison of contracts that cell phone companies make you sign when you subscribe to the service. What they compared is not the minutes or rates - things you typically pay attention to. Instead they looked at the less noticeable numbers, the ones however that can turn out to be just as important when you shop for the best plan. Here they are, listed for the major carriers.
|
AT&T |
Sprint |
T-Mobile |
Verizon |
| What is the early termination fee? |
$175/ prorated |
$200/not prorated |
$200/not prorated |
$175/ prorated |
| How long is the trial period? |
30 days |
30 days |
14 days |
30 days |
| Will changes to my plan extend the contract? |
No (*) |
Yes (**) |
No (*) |
No (*) |
| Any rollover minutes? |
Yes (***) |
No |
No |
No |
| Notes: |
(*) - No, unless switching to a promotional plan
(**) - Yes, after first six months
(***) - Yes, but they expire after one year
|
1)
1)
