Internet commerce has boomed in the last decade with UK online retail sales estimated to be above £8.2bn. Many people are familiar with the online entities; Amazon and Play.com and their high street counterparts like John Lewis, HMV and even Tesco.

With the boom in internet commerce, many opportunities have opened to the consumer. Here are some of these opportunities that might help you when buying online.

• Use price comparison websites. Online portals such as Kelkoo, Froogle and PriceRunner index thousands - if not millions - of products, sorting them by relevance, price and ratings, they are able to guide you to a cheaper retailer of your wanted item, allowing you to save some more of your hard earned cash or even buy a few more products!
• Use shopping forums to find great deals you were not even aware existed. Using these sort of sites, you are able to sign up to their updates and alert yourself of any product that is either going cheap, has just come on the market or even just to grab yourself a freebie. The sites I use are HotUKDeals and MoneySavingExpert. The latter allows you to save money not only on your purchases but gives great advice on all manner of financial matters.
• The online voucher code. Many retailers prefer consumers to shop online, this is because it saves them from having to employ customer facing staff, renting of premises etc. So to reward the online buyer, many sites offer discount coupon codes that will knock off a certain amount of money from your purchase. Buy entering these codes, you can save yourself a packet each time you shop online.

  The site I use for the discount codes is again, HotUKDeals. They have a vouchers section which lists all the codes by retailer, so you just find the code and copy it into your checkout!

They are just a few ways to save money online.

You must also be aware of the dangers that online transactions propose. Here are a few pointers to help you from being a victim of internet fraud:

• To gain a helping hand with your browsing, download Mozilla Firefox. Firefox comes with a built in Phishing Filter that will flag any potential hazardous sites that could pose a threat to your online transactions.

  N.B - There is also a button on the right hand side of the page which can will direct you and help you setup your Firefox installation.

• If a deal is too good to be true, it normally is. Most people who have used Ebay will either know somebody who has been duped or have been duped themselves. As with buying on the high-street, common sense prevails.
• Try and stick to the more reputable online retailers. Using the Amazons and Play.com’s of this world, you are less likely to be scammed and these sites tend to have very favourable consumer policies.
• If you cant find something online, phone the company in question and see if a) they have a shop you can reserve an item from or b) to physically check their stock and alert you if they do indeed have any.
• Use strong passwords for your sites. I would say it doesnt overly matter if you use the same password of many sites, just make sure that they are strong. This normally means having an 8-digit password with at least two numbers in them. For my Ebay and Paypal accounts, I used this website to generate a strong pass for my use.

  It is recommended to have different passwords for all your accounts, this will stop attackers from using all your details on all your favourite sites if your password becomes compromised.

I hope that these tips help you save a few shillings here and there, if it does, drop us a comment and show us what you bought and how much you saved