14 DAY TRIAL // While the economic downturn is still affecting most businesses and individuals there is at least one market that has flourished as online coupon sites have seen a dramatic rise in traffic and revenue in line with everyone's need to save up money. So Yahoo couldn't have picked a better time to launch a completely revamped Yahoo Deals, offering printable coupons, deals and money-saving tips all within the same repository.
"Frugality is the new 'cool,'" said Greg Hintz, head of Yahoo! Shopping. "We now know that couponing and bargain hunting are losing their stigma and are now a regular habit for many people. Our goal at Yahoo! is to be the center of people's online lives and we're making Yahoo! the easiest place for consumers to find and manage the coupons and deals that are relevant to their lives."
The economic conditions coupled with the drop in traditional newspaper subscriptions have led to a surge of interest in coupon sites. Coupon searches have seen a big increase, with Yahoo claiming that queries like “printable coupons” are up 50 percent since last year on the site and 135 percent from 2007. This is confirmed by other studies that found that 88 percent of US Internet users searched for economy-related topics in the past year and that 40 percent of those also sought saving coupons online.
The new site is mostly a shopping and deal aggregator with several main sections like daily deals, coupons, Visa deals, as the companies have an exclusive partnership, and weekly ads. There is also a shopping tab that redirects users to Yahoo's Shopping portal. The most interesting section seems to be the daily deals, featuring reduced-price items in several categories while also redirecting to specialized daily sale sites like Smart Bargains and Woot's Sellout. And for those who want to keep up with new deals in real time Yahoo is also offering a Twitter account that regularly tweets new deals.