SHOPWIKI: MAKING US ALL BETTER, WISER, SMARTER SHOPPERS

Just a few minutes ago, my next door neighbor returned my car which he and his wife borrowed earlier today to do some shopping. Their own car had been in a repair shop for 3 days now. My neighbor's face was full of remorse when I saw him as I opened my garage door for him to park the car. Initially, I feared something might have gone wrong with the car - and braised myself for the bad news. My neighbor was repeatedly muttering "I should have listened to you!...I should have listened to you!" as he got out of the car - making me nervous and anxioius at the same time. Curious, I asked him what he meant by his mumblings since I couldn't recall what I might have said earlier this morning. He merely shook his head and shoved into my hands a bunch of receipts which according to him totaled a whooping $1,500 as he once more muttered "I should have listened to you!" for the nth time. Then I suddenly remembered when they got into my car this morning that they told me they were just going to buy a hand mixer to do some pastries for their daughter who will be visiting them over the weekend! When I looked at the bunch of receipts, I noticed it included a receipt from Starbucks, a receipt for an expensive handbag and some perfumes, some toys for the kids, another one for assorted dinnerware and cookware. It turned out there was a big mall-wide anniversary sale where they went. I didn't bother to finish going through the rest of the receipts and handed them all back to my neighbor who by now has slumped himself on my old couch seemingly exasperated by his wife's impromtu shopping binge. My neighor's wife is a dyed-in-the-blood impulsive shopaholic who can't simply resist an on-going sale when she sees one. No wonder she didn't pay much attention to me this morning when I suggested to try shopping on line instead! Now, my remorseful next door neighbor is hanging around a bit longer asking me to show him the Shopwiki online site I which I have mentioned to him I have blogged about last Easter. Now, he remembers! I guess the fangs of the current financial crisis is taking a bite on him too to make him realize he needs to avoid impulsive shopping and save those precious dollars for harder times ahead. Ahh, that's it! Shopwiki is the cure  to impulse buying! Impulse buying is what you do when you go shopping without a clear idea of what you need to buy. You end up buying a product or item because it is placed in a prominent position in the store or there is a big advertising campaign pushing this product. I explained what Shopwiki is to my neighbor and he left with a smile on his face clutching a piece of paper with him where I wrote 'http://www.shopwiki.com/'.

Shopwiki is not an online store.  It does not sell anything. It is a shopping search engine designed to help consumers find specific products on the Internet with ease. It is the only shopping search engine that combines advanced web-crawling technology with consumer-written wiki buying guides to help shoppers make the most informed buying decisions. (Yes, you read it right, as a wiki, shopwiki is also a consumer-written buyers guide!)  It is a shopping search engine that crawls and indexes retail products from thousands of online merchants. The purpose of the site is to help consumers find the products they are looking for online with ease.

For example if, like my next door neighbor, you are in the market for kitchen appliances, all you need to do is click the link for kitchen appliances and follow the succeeding categories until you reach the hand mixers. The shortest way is to type the product you are looking for on the search bar at the right hand corner of any Shopwiki page and it will immediately bring you to an initial selection page which contains the featured products in the category search, as well as links to the online stores that sells them - with their price ranges of course.

From the initial search page result you can go ahead and browse through all the listed products and even surf from one store site to the other. Or, you can further refine your search by adjusting the the search filters found on the right side of the page to suit your specific needs or budget.(See the image at the right.) Your search can be filtered according price range, color, or brand. Whether you are looking for kitchen appliances, food processors, stand mixers, hand mixers, dinerware, or flatware, Shopwiki will source the best brand, make, price, and color that suits your specific needs with just a click of your mouse. Known kitchen appliance brands like Hamilton Beach, Kitchen Aid, Bosch Kitchen, Sunbeam, Black and Decker, Oster, Amana, Cuisinart, Krups, Braun, Viking Range, Electrolux, Salton, Jenn-Air, Presto, Toastmaster, and many more are listed in their indexed pages. The beautiful thing with using Shopwiki to source your shopping needs is it instantly links you to the online stores that stocks them where you can immediately make your online purchases.

Big name stores that have their own online presence are also included in Shopwiki's indexed pages like Home Depot, Macy's, The Great Guys and lots more. So, even if you don't want to do online shopping and would rather visit a mall or a store for your needs, it is also wise and prudent to 'Shopwiki search' your requirement before you leave the house to save you time, money, and effort.

For all your shopping needs, you need not jump from one online shop to another. You need not google, nor yahoo, nor MSN your search. You need only to Shopwiki it!

THE ULTIMATE SOURCE FOR ALL YOUR SHOPPING NEEDS!

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