Here’s something about me you might not know – I’m a huge sales fiend. I love clothes and I love accessories, but as a poor full-time author (still squealing inside every time I say that!) and recent graduate, I don’t love the fact that I don’t have enough money to get all the goodies I want. Therefore, over the years I’ve become obsessed with shopping the sales, and I’d say about three quarters of my wardrobe was bought during sales! So when Voucher Codes challenged me to shopping the online sales with a budget of £70, I had to accept!
They want to see how bloggers find shopping the Great British high street’s online sales as part of a wider research project called The Most Wanted Summer of Smarter Spending, where they’ll publish the findings to help their readers navigate high street online shopping better. I think this is a fantastic initiative that couldn’t come at a better time for UK customers, and as an advocate of both sale shopping and online shopping, this challenge is right up my street.
These are the items I bought with my £70:
1. Zara jacket – £59.99
2. River Island via ASOS necklace – £2.50
3. ASOS Coin Chains Shoulder Harness – £7.50
The Zara jacket was only reduced by a tenner (it’s gone down even further now!), but it was something I tried on in a Zara in Seville and fell in love with, though I thought for a white jacket (which is just begging to get dirty) it was a bit too much for me to get. Then – hurrah – it went on sale, and that tenner made all the difference. I also bought two jewellery items with the remaining £10 I had to get two more items I can mix and match with the rest of my wardrobe.
Here’s how I styled two of the items with a leather skirt and my super-cool London skyling tights from M&S (perfect for being patriotic this summer!) …
jacket: Zara (c/o Voucher Codes), top: Forever 21, skirt: c/o Nelly, tights: c/o Marks and Spencer, shoes: Hush Puppies, necklace: River Island via ASOS (c/o Voucher Codes)
My top six tips for shopping the online high street sales:
1. Sign up to an online code site such as Voucher Codes to keep informed of all the latest sales news. Online sales can sell out very fast, and there are sometimes flash sales which are just a day or so long, so being subscribed to these sites will make sure you don’t miss any gems!
2. Take advantage of the slashed prices and find an investment piece for less. You know those pieces you just love, but they’re a little too expensive to justify? Sales are the time to hunt them down.
3. Similarly, expensive items such as coats, jackets, bags, leathers, silks, knitwears etc are good things to look out for in the sales.
4. Think about postage prices. Especially if an item is not reduced by a large amount, postage and returns costs can actually mean you don’t save that much money. I love buying from ASOS because of their amazing free postage, free returns policy, but plenty of other high street stores do similar offers.
5. Give yourself a budget. Otherwise it’s so tempting to go crazy and get a tonne of reduced stuff. It won’t save you that much money in the end if you end up buying more than you really need.
6. Also use the search criteria to narrow down your results. This is one of the best things about online shopping in general – you can be more focused as you’re not distracted by all the clutter, and especially in sales where the physical shops can be chaotic, take advantage of the search criteria to find what you want quickly.
I hope those tips come in handy! Do leave your own tips for shopping the high street sales online 🙂 I’m interested to hear them!
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