How To Find The Best Deals This Holiday Shopping Season

Shop It To Me’s data team is always looking for insights from our massive database to help you save the most.

Our data divers just uncovered some interesting intel about where you might be able to find the best discounts on women’s clothing, shoes and accessories for the remainder of the year.  Read on for what we think are key takeaways from holiday season’s past:

**For swoon-worthy sales, online-only retailers may be your best bet.  **During holiday shopping season last year (October through December), Online-only retailers were discounting at an average of 45.7%, with Specialty Retailers at 45%. Department store discounts lagged at about 41%.

The deals may be even better for Holiday 2011, if discounting trends so far this year continue. To date in 2011, Online-only retailers are averaging 47.3% off women’s items, compared with 45.9% off for Specialty retailers and 43% off from Department Stores.

**Expect deeper discounts than last year.  **Overall, women’s discounts online across all types of retailers have become steeper in each of the past two years.   For example, summer season discounts in 2009 averaged 41.9%; in 2010, discounts jumped to 45.8% off; and this summer, they reached 47.0% off.

But, don’t hold off purchases, expecting this trend to continue.  While online discounting has become deeper each year, the size of the increase is getting smaller and smaller.  During summer 2010, discounts were almost 4% deeper than for 2009, while this year, they were only about 1% steeper than prior year.

Our data team looked at more than 25 million total women’s items from 139 retailers sold online over the past three years (whew!) to find these insights for you. Now they are working on advice for Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping.  Stay tuned!