Online Coupon Sites Make The Cut

As inflation of the dollar threatens to hit 25 year highs, shoppers are scrambling to find savings on basic items such as food and clothing. Corporations also want to keep customers from straying toward cheaper, generic or “store brand” products.

The solution? More coupons, especially in the form of online printable coupons.

Some Web sites such as Couponcabin.com and Retailmenot.com have long been devoted to providing customers with discount codes that they can present when checking out at an online retail outlet.

Other sites, such as Eversave.com and CouponMom.com provide shoppers with more traditional coupons that they can print and bring to the grocery store. This type of site in particular has been gaining popularity as more and more households need to stretch their budgets.

Steven Boal, an executive at the parent company of Coupons.com said to The Chicago Tribune : “We're seeing a higher return rate, of people coming back more frequently than ever before.”

The Tribune also reports that online coupon sites had nearly 25 million unique views in May alone, and this suggests that more and more shoppers are making visits to these sites part of their shopping routine.

Despite the popularity of online coupon sites, clipping coupons out the Sunday circulars is in no danger of becoming obsolete. Though many of the sites have significant traffic, printable coupons are estimated to make up only about 5 percent of the number of coupons used in stores of the course of the next year.

--Bridget O'Sullivan