Get Holiday Deals Online

These sites will help you get the best gift at the best price.

By Cameron Huddleston

November 27, 2006

So you survived Black Friday (or avoided it altogether), and braved the malls on the Saturday and Sunday after Thanksgiving. Still got some holiday shopping left? Not to worry, there still are plenty of deals to be found -- and you don't have to brave the stores again to find them. The Internet has plenty of Web sites geared toward helping you get a bargain.

To get the best deals, though, you probably will have to check more than one site. Take the time to do some comparison shopping so you won't be among the many consumers who don't get the lowest price on their gifts because they don't do their homework. "No matter what information is made available to shoppers, most people still engage in surprisingly little search behavior before making a purchase," says University of Colorado at Boulder Leeds School of Business Professor Donald Lichtenstein. "They have the Internet at their fingertips, and yet they're just as likely to buy from the first merchant they go to."

To make your life a little easier this hectic time of year, we've done the searching for you. This is an update of a story we provided before Thanksgiving. We scoured the Web for sites that help you get deals and have found the ones we think are user friendly and sure to help you save money. Check out our recommendations.

Find the lowest price

If you really want to score a great buy, use a price-comparison site. PriceGrabber.com , Shopping.com and Shopzilla all are great options because they give you a lot of results for your searches with the range of prices listed, product descriptions, and store and product ratings. The sites also are good places to go if you are looking for gift ideas, especially Shopzilla, which even has a link on the homepage to help you find deals on holiday décor.

Be sure to check out Pronto.com because it fetches prices on 45 million products from almost 50,000 merchants, a larger retail search than rival sites offer. Pronto.com is also the quickest and easiest to use, covering everything from books to consumer electronics.

If you know exactly what you want and need just a bare bones price comparison site, try Google's shopping search engine, Froogle. What you'll get are lots of results for your search, product reviews, seller ratings and a Local Shopping option to help you find products at stores near you. What you won't see is a home page full of hot products, shopping guides, product categories and colorful images you'll find on sites such as PriceGrabber and Shopzilla.

Another site worth checking out is Dealio.com, which shows eBay prices along with prices from traditional retailers. What we really like about this site, though, is the downloadable toolbar that lets you know if there's a better deal someplace else for the item you're viewing.

Hot deals!

If you're not exactly sure what to get that certain person on your gift list, check out online deal sites, which post loads of discounted items. You're bound to find the right gift at the right price.

Our favorite in this category is DealsOfAmerica, which updates deals every hour. Every item it lists on the home page has a picture, a description, the store that's offering the deal and, best of all, the list price so you'll know just how much of a bargain you're getting. The site also has coupons, price comparison tool, a list of products or services available for free after rebate or coupon and a hot deal e-mail alert you can sign up to receive. Deals are from top online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores with nationwide presence.

Two other distinctive sites: AbleShoppers and Slickdeals.net. They list deals by date so you know new items are being added every day. Both also offer online coupons. AbleShoppers also offers shopping tips and an e-mail newsletter.

Dealtaker.com lists some deals on its home page, but you'll find hundreds more listed in forums. So if you're willing to take the time to troll through the forums, you'll probably find deals here you won't find other places. There are more than 60,000 forum members who post deals, and you don't have to register to view the ones listed. The site also offers coupons for about 1,500 online stores, a price search engine and e-mail notification of deals.

If you don't like the idea of shopping online, Shoplocal.com can help you find deals at stores near you. You can shop by categories and by price range. Just don't expect to find every store in your town (or even some major ones) listed on this site.

Shop with Cyber-coupons

Put away the scissors -- you don't have to clip these coupons. Plenty of sites offer coupon codes (and printable coupons) for online and brick-and-mortar retailers. The nice thing about our picks is that you don't have to register on these sites to gain access to the coupons. CouponCabin, CoolSavings and Keycode post featured coupons on their homepages and let you search for coupons by category and merchant. You also can sign up to receive coupons by e-mail from all three of these sites.

CouponMountain.com focuses on coupons for Dell, HP, Buy.com and Amazon.com, but also has coupons for stores such as Old Navy and Target. You can search by category or store. It also has a list of the most popular coupons lists deals of the day. And Coupon Craze has coupon codes and printable coupons not only for merchants in the U.S. but also in the United Kingdom and Canada. It also has a special Christmas coupons and deals section.

And if you're shopping for children, check out CleverBabies.com. It has coupons for stores such as Toys R Us, DisneyShopping.com and babyGap. The site also posts sales, has forums and has its own coupons.

Get cash back

Another way to spend less is to earn cash while you shop. That's the premise of FatWallet and Ebates.com. You have to join their cash-back programs and can get cash back (usually a percentage of your purchase) when you buy items from select merchants. Be sure to read the fine print. You don't get cash back at the time of your purchase. Instead, it accrues in an account and is sent to you periodically. Also, not all merchants featured on these sites participate and of those that do, some have their own requirements for earning cash back.

Happy Shopping!