Tips for Online Shopping

With the emerging use of e-commerce websites in India, people tend to buy products online. From clothes to home appliances, from grocery to eye wears, everything has an online destination. The e-commerce websites are also coping up with the requirement of their customers.

As buyers often prefer buying products only after viewing and trying them, ecommerce websites introduced the try before buy option. Buyers do not wish to disclose their debit or credit card information to any website, so online buying websites have the Cash-on-Delivery option. Buyers are most of the time unsure about a product before buying as they haven’t physically seen or touched the product. So ecommerce websites have return policy. Shipping duration is another issue faced by the customers. But the online shopping portals now offer next day delivery too.

And the list goes on.. The websites have tried solving every problem of buyers to introduce this online buying technology in India.

But.. Are you still doubtful about this approach of buying products online? Here are few tips for online shopping:

• Secured checkout page: Ensure the checkout page, payment gateway page or the page where you insert your credit card/bank account details are secured. This can check with the URL. The URL should start with “https://” and not “http://” - ‘s’ stands for ‘secure’. There should be a lock sign near the URL.


• Return policy: There are high chances of you returning a product when it arrives at your home. The reason could be anything – wrong size, wrongly delivered product, damaged product etc. So always check the return policy of the website before hitting the Buy button.


• Hunt for discounts: Ecommerce websites are known for discounts. No matter how hard it is, the least discount you will find is 5%. So do not skip the deals and coupons websites. There are websites which will even give you the lowest price for the product you require.


• Shipping charges: Almost every ecommerce websites now charge for shipping the product. To elemiate it you can go for bulk purchase. The minimum buying amount to waive off the shipping charges can be found on the FAQs page of the ecommerce website.


• Lookup for reviews of the website: Before buying the product, no matter how low the cost is, always check reviews of the website. Often, there are websites which do not deliver the products due to lack of inventory, poor management of orders etc. Any issue of the website will be visible easily with a few searches on the web.


• Keep a note of purchases: If you have bought multiple products through multiple online shopping portals and waiting for their delivery, do keep a record of them. So that even if the ecommerce website has neglected your purchase, you can remind them in case the product is not delivered within the specified period.


• Keep the bill and box safely: After we receive the delivery, we tend to tear the box and packing in an ill-mannered way! To minimize the losses, retain the box even after opening the package and safely remove the bill while tearing off the wraps.

Do drop your line in the comments below if you have opted for online shopping and things you do before and after your buy a product.

Happy shopping!

How to save paper?

Source:rlandkabaena.blogspot.com 

Did you know that 17 trees make 1 ton of paper? So saving paper ultimately helps in saving trees. But do we really do our bit to save the green creatures in our environment? It would be easier by simply following 2 steps: Recycling and Using paper only if required.

Recycling is a small way for us to show to our world and community that we care. Recycling helps us give back to nature what we take from it. Did you know that up to 80% of waste generated in your workplace is recyclable paper? If not disposed correctly this paper is wasted and cannot be recycled. Proper segregation is the answer to ensuring this does not happen.

Ensure when you dispose waste paper you dispose it in the correct manner. This not only helps in keeping your environment clean and tidy but also reduces your carbon footprint, decreases pollution and also decreases the load on landfills.

Landfills are an increasingly pressing problem. Less and less land is available to deposit waste, but the volume of waste is forever increasing. As a result, segregating waste is not just of environmental importance, but of economic concern, too. Use the dedicated waste paper disposal units and increase the recovery of waste paper and reduce associated carbon emissions.

Use paper only if really required. Here’s how:

• Opt for electronic options for you telephone bills, credit cards and bank statements, invoices etc.

• Use the back of paper by making a notepad out of such papers which have empty backside.

Source:flickr.com/photos/amitvermaseo/7095470301/

• Go for free paper saving software like Printfriendly, PrintEco etc. These softwares makes it easier for you to remove unwanted content before printing your document. Also, before printing you could preview the document and optimize the font size to reduce the paper being used for printing.

• Adjust your printer settings such that it gets printed on both sides of the paper.

Source: thinkbeforeprinting.org

Update your email signature and include a note to remind your email receivers to not print your email unless it’s extremely necessary. In addition to preventing the email receiver from printing it, this signature might even bring in a realization to the email readers that paper wastage is an issue to be looked upon.

• School students need to use a lot of paper. So why not buy recycled paper for your school going kids.
• The least an organization can do to save paper is by emailing the payslips in PDF format to it’s employees, instead of printing them and distributing it.

Useful websites

There are great websites which can be our daily utility tools while on work. But we are least informed about them.

What if you have a shortened URL and want to make sure about the URL befind it without actually opening it – unfurl.com

You are asked to create flowchart, wireframe, network diagram and your are all lost: lovelycharts.com

Take screenshot of an entire web page? Ctrlq.org/screenshots

A website you can dive into to get hundreds of such online tools: dailytekk.com

Here are a bunch of useful websites I found on Quora:
http://www.quora.com/Best-Of-X/What-is-the-best-web-site-very-few-people-know-about

Photo Cakes

Photo cakes are becoming increasingly popular nowadays. While many of us never knew about this technology, it's provided by many cake shops from Monginis, Brownie Point to The Chocolate Room.

Source: yummycakesindia.com

How is photo cake made?

1 would wonder how is the edible photograph actually put on the cake. Well, this is actually because of 2 food materials – edible icing paper and food coloring products. The scanned image is printed on the icing paper which is made from rice/potato/cornstarch and the food coloring is used as ink to print the picture on the cake.

How to order a photo cake?

A picture cake has to be ordered at most 3 days prior to the day you want the cake to be ready. Some of them allow 2 days and some even 1 day. But cake shops do not usually agree for 1 day time. So if you are planning for a photo cake, well, plan in much advance.

The photograph to be printed on the cake has to be given as a soft copy - by email/pen drive etc. Better the quality of the picture, better would be the print on the cake. Hence make sure the photograph you are giving to the cake shop is of the best quality.

Different cake shops offer different flavors for photocakes. It could be blackforest, dutch chocolate cake, pineapple cake etc. Also some of the shops provide choice for the shape of the cake – rectangular, round, heart shape etc.

Cost for photocakes usually range between Rs. 700 and Rs. 1500 for 1 Kg. Photo cakes weight starts from 1Kg.

Some personal experience:

I had to order 2 photo cakes in the last month for celebrating 2 wedding occasions in the family.

1^st one was from The Chocolate Room, Kandivali, Mumbai. We needed the cake on the next day of ordering, so we were quite worried about which cake shop would do that customization for us within 1 day. After contacting multiple cake shops, The Chocolate Room agreed to deliver the cake in 1 day. We emailed them the picture and visited the store to choose the cake flavor and shape. The Chocolate Room offered heart shape and rectangular shaped photocakes in flavors of Blackforest and Chocolate. After discussions and suggestions from the seller, we settled on a 1.5Kg heart shaped blackforest cake. It costed us Rs. 1800 - much more than what other cake shops charged. We were advised that the picture be framed with white icing for greater impact of the photograph. With big holes in our pockets we walked out of the store. On the next day, we got the cake at the time decided.

On the 2^nd occasion, we ordered a photo cake from Monginis, Mulund, Mumbai. This time we called the cake shop 3 days prior to the occasion day. As it was not possible for us to visit the store, the flavor, shape, weight selection etc was done on the phone. Monginis offers photo cakes in only rectangular shape and flavors of dutch chocolate and Swiss chocolate. And charged Rs. 800 for 1 Kg cake. So we ordered a 1 Kg rectangular shaped Swiss Chocolate cake. Payment was done through online bank transfer. And I collected the cake from the shop on the day of the occasion.