Features Galore: Shopping Online Has Never Been More Enjoyable

If you haven’t been online shopping for women’s clothing recently, we recommend taking some time to rediscover it again, as there are some fantastic new features that stores are putting on their sites, making the quintessential online shopping experience all the more unique versus your standard in-person shopping.

Exclusive Online Sales and Clearances

One of the most attractive things about shopping online are all the sales, clearance items and overstock specials that can be found (and that are not available at their brick and mortar stores). While at first glance it may seem like any shipping costs would likely overtake any value you may be getting, that’s actually not the case. Many stores nowadays (Overstock.com most notably, offering $2.95 shipping on all orders) offer extreme discounts on shipping, taking the breath out of the “shipping is too expensive” excuse for hesitant online shoppers.

- Lands' End’s huge overstock section sells clothing up to 65% off, as well as additional discounts on their “Not Quite Perfect” items.

- Old Navy’s OldNavyWeekly.com sale site informs shoppers of all the specials Old Navy is offering for the week.

- JCPenney offers ongoing sales on items in nearly every item category. Their clearance section is even bigger, with hundreds of in-season women’s items available at discounted prices.

- J. Crew’s “Final Sale” section sells hundreds of discounted women’s clothing items.

Community Features

One of the coolest things to hit the online women’s scene recently is social networking. We all know social networking enables us to stay connected to our friends and family, but it can also be utilized in the shopping world. Millions of shoppers are signing up with their favorite stores to follow their sales, interact with other customers, win contests and more. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, women’s clothing sites are jumping on the social networking bandwagon faster than that cousin you haven‘t heard from in years who just added you on Facebook.

- One of the main reason Sears, winner of our Gold Award, won that title is because of their amazing MySears community, a newly added section of their site that has some of the best interactive features - including polls, user blogs, user discussions and a user-based product review system - you’ll find among any of our top ten sites.

- Every one of our top ten stores have Twitter accounts, informing followers of (upcoming) sales and clearances. You can even follow Bluefly’s CEO via her own public Twitter account. Target was the only exception to having a Twitter account.

- Victoria’s Secret’s YouTube channel is a fine example of a store utilizing informative, and fun, videos to their advantage. Want to hear about how much a model loves her body, flaws and all? Want to hear Heidi Klum’s two-cents on buying a bra? Vickie’s YouTube channel is where it’s at.

- Target’s Facebook page (with 500,000 fans and counting) is a great place to rant and rave with other customers and watch funny Target-produced videos that are only available on their page.

- Bluefly’s blog—Flypaper—is one of the best store-based fashion blogs you’ll find anywhere. It’s updated 5–10 times daily (M–F)

“My Virtual Model” Application

Many of our top ten stores offer the incredibly fun My Virtual Model application—a cool feature that lets shoppers create an exact avatar of themselves that they can then import and use as a model to try on clothing. Can you can more exact when online shopping than this? We don’t think so.

Discount Designer Lines

Back in the day (the pre-internet day), it was unheard of to walk into a boutique and snag, say a Gucci dress, at 50% off the tagged price. But thanks to the far-reaching arms of the internet, getting huge discounts on designer labels is now common practice for online shoppers everywhere. Bluefly, Overstock.com, Target, JCPenney and J. Crew are some of our top ten stores that offer the most notable discounts on designer clothing.

We love shopping for women’s clothing online. From the advent of community features to exclusive online sales, we hope you’ll agree with us too.