Online Deals
Top 10 Daily Deals Sites
Feb 23rd
HomeRun.com
With the explosion of daily deal websites, it can be hard for the average consumer to keep track of all the options available to them. Which one is right for them? Which sites should he or she bother checking frequently? 2011 may indeed be a make or break year for many of these sites as a number of larger players prepare to enter the space like Google with Google Offers. As of right now though, here’s a wrap up of the top ten daily deals sites according to Alexa.com statistics:
Groupon
Daily Visitors: 952,470
Groupon is the clear leader in the space right now and turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google to raise funds through an IPO.
LivingSocial
Daily Visitors: 662,994
LivingSocial is helped by an $175 million investment from Amazon and is gaining on Groupon. Their biggest hit was the Amazon.com daily deal offering $20 in Amazon credit for $10. 1.3 million of these deals were sold.
Woot
Daily Visitors: 425,170
Woot is one of the oldest daily deals sites and owns a few other specialty sites such as shirt.woot and wine.woot. In June 2010, Woot was acquired by Amazon, but still identifies as its original identity.
Eversave
Daily Visitors: 165,505
Eversave started offering local and national deals in 2010 and has made a quick rise to the upper tier of the space.
Gilt City
Daily Visitors: 26,846
Gilt is a high-end daily deals site that offers deals on upscale restaurants, spas and events.
Buy With Me
Daily Visitors: 21,696
Once a top-three deals site, Buy With Me has undergone some leadership changes as it seeks to rebound.
Kgb Deals
Daily Visitors: 15,941
This site also offers directory assistance in the UK and France.
Tippr
Daily Visitors: 10,886
Tippr has recently raised funding and is rumored to be an acquisition target for Google.
HomeRun
Daily Visitors: 7,043
HomeRun raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding and is quietly gaining traction.
ScoutMob
Daily Visitors: 6,383
What ScoutMob is doing right now might be the future of daily deals. The site works with your mobile device. If you see a deal you like, send it to your phone.
Signpost Rolls Out Merchant Platform To Help With Slow Days
Feb 17th
Signpost
Business is cyclical and I’m not just talking about the holiday sales rush. There are certain days of the week where sales are typically slow and owners have to decide whether it’s worth paying employees or closing on a particular day each week.
Enter Signpost, a deal site funded by Google Ventures and Spark Capital that has just released a merchant platform allowing local business owners to create and distribute prepaid coupon offers in real-time, not just as a deal of the day.
The key benefit here (since consumers already share deals they find on Signpost) is that businesses can issue a set number of prepaid coupons for the slow days. A classic example would be a salon that is traditionally slow on Mondays. The salon could sell 25 coupons every Monday for haircuts at a discount. For the salon, this is a better option than a daily deal which has a shorter period of visibility and may spur an influx of customers on days they already have ample full-paying clients. It’s about convincing, wooing and giving incentive for people to visit during downtime.
As for Signpost’s cut of the deal goes, there are two options. If a business uploads a mailing list to spread the word on a prepaid offer, Signpost takes 10% of revenue. For a 30% cut, Signpost will actively market the deal and share it through affiliate partners. In either scenario, businesses can promote the deals through email, Twitter and Facebook. Consumers can visit the site or use the Signpost app to browse deals based on GPS location.
Businesses that would like to try the service out can do so for free through February 24th. It’s yet another twist on this increasingly crowded space.
Alternative Apparel Coupons
Feb 15th
Alternative Apparel
Alternative Apparel, like the name suggests, is an alternative to American Apparel. It makes apparel basics for for urban dwellers and anyone else interested in the latest trends.
What I like about Alternative Apparel is its approach of being a bit more sophisticated than American Apparel. The advertising isn’t blatantly as sexual (never thought I’d say that was a bad thing) and you feel like you’re getting something a bit more refined. I totally love my button-up shirts and baseball tees from them. They’re super soft and give you an opportunity to get creative by either screen-printing at home or sewing on a patch.
Alternative Apparel is currently honoring a couple deals redeemable at their online store. I’ve listed what I can find below:
15% off dresses and skirts through 2/20: Enter “KISSES” at checkout.
Free shipping on any order through 2/27: No coupon code needed.
Independent Supermarkets Embrace Digital Couponing
Feb 15th
Independent grocers are catching up with digital coupons
M-Dot Network, a retail technology provider and Alliance Marketing have struck a deal to allow Alliance Marketing’s independent grocer clients access to M-Dot Network. M-Dot technology provides a retail system for stores to create, manage and track digital coupons for their customers. It’s an enterprise software platform for point of sale digital coupons where no additional hardware or infrastructure is needed.
Once a grocer integrates with M-Dot, shoppers can browse coupons on the store’s website or via browser-ready phones. Shoppers redeem coupons at checkout by swiping their club card or providing their telephone number to the cashier. The available coupons and offers are then matched against purchases to automatically deduct the savings from the bill.
While this doesn’t sound very different in comparison to what larger grocery stores and drugstores have done for years, it’s a big step for small independent grocers that don’t have the resources to create a system on their own. Many are already customers of Alliance Marketing and this is Alliance’s latest offering to provide more value to their clients. M-Dot Network and Alliance hope to have the system in place for 180 clients by the close of 2011.
A Freebies Site With A Sense Of Humor
Feb 11th
HeyItsFree.net
Hey, It’s Free (HIF) is a website dedicated to finding the best freebies on the internet and sharing them with consumers. The site is written in blog format with each freebie listed in a separate post. Readers simply click on the blue links and are in most cases taken directly to the company’s site to enter in a mailing address for the freebie to be sent.
All posts are categorized, so it’s easy to search out freebies in a number of different categories like clothes, electronics or food (and to be honest that’s just the beginning). But perhaps the best part about HIF is that they don’t post bogus links and offers where you never really get what you’re promised. All the deals here are real, recent and rewarding like the $2 Amazon Music Credit I just picked up or the well-publicized free taco coupon from Taco Bell as a response to recent reports about its meat (only for the brave).
If you had to choose only one freebie site, HIF wouldn’t be a bad choice (unlike warm milk on a hot summer day). It’s clean, direct and the creators even have a sense of humor (just see their About Us page). That’s good enough to win me over, what about you?
A Solution For Daily Deal Buyer’s Remorse
Feb 10th
Lifesta.com
Daily deals sites like Groupon, LivingSocial and the upcoming Google Offers all benefit from the impulse buy. You see a deal you fathom to good to pass up and jump on it, even if you weren’t planning on eating at that restaurant or shopping at that store. In fact, 20-40% of daily deals are never redeemed, making it a complete profit for the websites.
Yael Gavish was one of those people that picked up on this and because there’s a site for everything these days, created Lifesta, a marketplace to buy and sell daily deals that have already been purchased. In fact, a number of sites have emerged in the space including CoupRecoup and DealsGoRound.
You may not necessarily get your full value back on a resale, but getting something back on a deal you paid for and may never use is better than nothing. I’m just not sure whether it’ll encourage you to buy more deals or get wiser to what you actually need.
