Online Shopping for 2009’s Holiday Season

I don’t like to assume, but I’m going to take a chance and guess I’m not the only one that hates the holiday shopping season. There is tons of traffic getting to the malls, when you get there it takes an hour to find parking, and then you have to deal with the hundreds of other irritated mall shoppers walking slowly in front of you or bumping into you because they feel their final destination is more important than yours.

What’s the solution to this epidemic problem? Internet!

What doesn’t the internet have now-a-days? I can invite friends over, order a pizza and rent a movie all without leaving my chair. So, why not avoid the mall fiasco as well?

Online shopping has been around for years now, but for you late shoppers in desperate hopes of avoiding the packed malls here are some places that you can find great deals on quality products:

Gifts.com:

This is a simple but ingeniously user-friendly site that helps you match gift ideas for the type of person you are shopping for. You have a list of visual categories that let you choose from Man, Woman, Teenage Boy, Teenage Girl, Boy, Girl, Baby and even pets! It goes into further details of the characteristics of the person you are buying for to help you narrow down the gift options.

This site should definitely help you in your decision making process.

Barnes & Noble:

Buying a thoughtful book shows that not only do you care about someone, but also that you care about their knowledge; depending on the type of book you buy of course.

Barnes & Noble has a “Gift Suggestions” widget that lets you vary from Adult or Kid. The kid option lets you expand on age range. When hitting the adult section, you can select by price. There is then a list of interests to choose from. The  kid’s interests section has variation of things like, cars, trains, planes, animals, and dolls. They also have select toys, games, and DVDs alongside their books.

Of course they also advertise their new electronic book reader the Nook!

GiftGen:

Is a very simple website that lists gifts by price ranges, ages, sexes and also lets you choose the “couple” category, so you’re not forced to choose one gender over the other.

They even have an option to spend “nothing”! In which they give you ideas for creative gifts that you can give all without spending a dime. For example “get a library book, visit a gallery, or make a meal, just to name a few.

The web site also offers an embeddable widget and iPhone and BlackBerry apps.

For my fellow Twitter-obsessed, here is a list you can follow that gives updates on major deals: http://twitter.com/ErinGifford/holiday-deals

These were a few ideas, but there are dozens of resources available for you to shop online and find great gifts.

For those of you that don’t think online shopping is a better move check out Mashable’s compilation of videos in an article titled 7 YouTube Holiday Shopper Videos That’ll Make You Glad You Bought Online. They just may scare you into never going to a high traffic store ever again!