12 sneaky ways online retailers get you to spend more

Matt Cardy / Stringer / Getty Images

Shopping online is fast, easy, and convenient - and that's exactly what retailers want us to think.

It takes a lot less effort to shop online: We can shop when we're tired, we can shop when we're emotional, and we can shop instantly. But just like how retailers use tricks to make us spend more at brick-and-mortar stores, there are also tricks they use to make us spend more on their websites.

"The internet is the wild west in terms of pricing," Mark Ellwood, retail expert and author of "Bargain Fever," told Business Insider. "It's policed far less aggressively than brick and mortar stores."

Online retailers are competing with hundreds of other sites who might be able to offer the same thing for a lower price, so they have to come up with more ways to get us to seal the deal on their site.

In fact, according to The Robin Report, a site that provides insights on retail and consumer industries, the retail space is expanding faster and greater than the human population, which "creates an era of oversupply and underdemand."

Here are 12 tricks online retailers might use to get you to spend more: