Online shopping is gaining critical mass in the country and is slowly finding its loyal patrons. From food to footwear, everything can be shopped at your convenience and will be delivered at your home. Huge discounts and promotional sales are another plus.

“Electronic items including cameras, music players and even TV sets are among the durables for ecommerce sites. Personally, I have bought all my electronic gadgets online for the past 10 years. I also recommend them to my friends. Once you are used to the convenience, you will never go to an offline store,” says Jayabalan Subramanian, chief technology officer of Netmagic, the data centre services provider. His statement reflects the experience of several habitual online buyers. Books are the largest selling category. Business online has also been boosted by prompt delivery.

Most sites promise to deliver goods between 2-4 business days. In several cases, the products arrive at your doorstep the next day after ordering. However, not every purchase made online turns out to be advantageous. According to Rahul Khanna, MD, Canaan Partners, goods sold online are categorised into “hard and soft goods”. Electronic goods are part of the former and others including apparel, footwear and jewelry are soft goods.

“Rejected returns are high in the soft goods category primarily because there is no standardisation in terms of sizes even among leading brands. A medium size in one brand could be large in another. Some firms send two pieces of the same order in different sizes so that the customer can take the one that fits best,” he adds.

At least for now, it is better to buy “soft goods” from physical stores. You will save a lot of time haggling with the vendor for the right size.

Moreover, there is the traditional pitfall of jacked up MRPs and high discounts on the same. While they do look attractive, it is better to compare the prices with offline stores before proceeding to buy. Always check prices at multiple ecommerce sites before making a purchase, says K Vaitheeswaran, CEO, Indiaplaza.com.

Most trusted sites would sell at about the same price. If there is too high a discount, the site is probably bogus. The goods promised may never get delivered.