It's all fine and dandy until you start coming across a lot more than you bargained for. Tempting advertisements lure you into expanding your search to include items you might not need, deviating from your original search, or offering ways you can get a discount on the item you have in mind. Here are a few common marketing tactics you ought to keep your eyes open for, else you might find yourself caught in a trap.

Sales- sales everywhere!
Once upon a seasonal time, sales were common when shops wanted to clear inventory that wasn't selling very well usually towards the end of a season, or if they wanted to promote a particular brand name. Nowadays, it's rare not to come by a sale. Whether it's in your inbox, on your Facebook newsfeed or invading your peripheral view as you surf, sales are everywhere and you have to watch out for the ingenious ones. I'm a sucker for good online deals, but even I was not brought into it without having my own qualms. It took some getting used to before I became more confident navigating the online shopping deals space. As long as you remember that seeing a sale doesn't necessarily mean you'll be getting a good deal, you'll save yourself money and distractions.

Free shipping trap
A commonly employed online scheme is for shops to attract more users by guaranteeing free shipping when you meet a minimum spending amount. However, remember that this too is not a good deal unless that minimum cart value equals what you had in mind to buy to begin with.

User-submitted coupons
This is probably one of the most irritating phenomena in the online shopping business, one that I am well acquainted with myself when I go coupon hunting. Even though the site I'm managing recently introduced the feature of Social Codes, a lot of coupon sites don't take sufficient measures to check what coupons their users are subbmitting to the site which can cause a lot of spam, and worse, for many online shoppers to lose hope in finding a decent coupon code that actually works. 

Being too loyal to brands
We're far past the days when you could recognise real quality items in the brand names we purchase, versus non-branded products. In some cases, quality and brand undeniably go together, but nowadays commercial brand names aren't necessarily tailored with as much care as non-branded stuff. Next time you decide to buy an expensive item because of its brand, ask yourself whether you're doing it out of genuine style that you can't find anywhere else or for pure brand loyalty. Why not try the road less travelled nowadays with authentic quality hand me down schemes or thrift shopping

Check for shipping requirements and return policies
If you weren't able to transparently find this information while you were shopping, then you're at risk of shopping somewhere that might be hiding this information to mislead you (and not for asthetic reasons either). It's better to be safe than sorry so before you get your hopes up and start shopping, check the store's shipping and return policies. Maybe you can't return the item later if you're unsatisfied with it, or maybe there are hidden costs that will bump up your bill that you should be aware of.