Window(s) shopping has got a whole new meaning this holiday season ? where shoppers are logging on to snatch the best deals. And if you were thrilled at your favourite stores offering a flat 50% off, there are better deals available on the Net on a host of websites, which offer up to 80% discount, besides, of course, the comfort of shopping from home.

Lucknow resident Harshita Singh?s Christmas gift came from one such website?a D&G watch at a whopping discount, and that, too, delivered right at her doorstep. For 25-year-old Delhiite Vivek Khaitan, some online shopping saved him from a dull New Year. He not only managed party vouchers to a popular pub at a 40% discount, but also access to the VIP lounge.

It?s early days, but clearly the new-age e-commerce sites using discounts as arsenal are gaining traction with both investors and consumers. While Fashion and You raised $8 million from Sequoia Capital early this month, last month Accel India Venture Fund and Helion Advisors invested $2.8 million in Exclusively.in. Some others such as 99 Labels are close to raising private capital.

Most of these sites are not more than a year old and have made the best use of their first year-end sales. A look at the number of members and transactions that these websites are registering gives an idea about the increasing online pie, though most sites are reluctant to share their turnover figures as they are privately held.

Deals and You claims to have a transaction every minute, and claims to have a pool of 6 lakh members. Similarly, SnapDeal claims it adds 10,000 new members everyday to its subscriber base of one million. Fashion and You ships out almost 2,000 products a day, which is up from 1,500 a day average of last month. Similarly, 99 Labels boasts of 600-1,200 transactions per day.

? F&B vouchers and spa deals are our staples, but this festive season, a lot of people are buying products too online, for which we have introduced many discounted products,? says Kunal Bahl, CEO, Jasper, the Delhi-based parent company of SnapDeal. ?For us, December sales have jumped three and a half times,? adds Anchal Jain, co-founder of 99 Labels. Here is a sample of what?s clicking with online stores: Deals and You says that in the past one month, it has sold more than 107 New Year cruises (price ranging between Rs 6,000 and Rs 23,000), more than 500 parties at popular lounge and bars in the metros and around 500 spa vouchers. SnapDeal recently sold 1,000 watches in a day at one-seventh the market price. Another of its sold out deals has been of the Rs 99 car servicing facility by Carnation (a Jagdish Khattar company). At the same time, on portals such as Fashion and You and 99 Labels, perfumes and watches are selling like hot cakes this season.

The portals point out that it?s mostly youngsters who are buying on these websites as they offer entertainment options, as well as brands, at discounted prices. ?The average age of our consumer is 26 years,? says Gaurav Kachru, CEO of Deals and You.

And if you thought only residents of metro cities are buying online, think again ? For both 99 Labels and Fashion and You, 35% of their orders come from non-metros.

?To our surprise, we have orders coming from places such as Bhubaneswar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Guwahati, Jammu and Lucknow. Sites like ours are making luxury brands more accessible, as most of the these brands don?t have stores in non-metros,?says Pearl Uppal, CEO of Fashion and You.

At the same time, these websites are grappling with bottlenecks too, such as low Internet penetration, fewer credit card users and the fact that people in India still prefer to ?touch and feel? a product before buying it.

?Right now in India, e-commerce is gaining popularity because of the price factor, but as the medium evolves, people will order online for the convenience factor too,? says Bahl of Jasper.