In the past, buying spectacles has been a hands-on affair. Few people would have agreed to buy a pair of glasses frames without first trying them on to see what they looked like and how they felt. However, the Internet has made buying spectacles online a streamlined and effective way to get the glasses you want, in the style you like, at a price that is worth looking at.

Optometrists can provide a patient with all the information they need to purchase correctly-sized frames in any store, including online retailers and manufacturers. The information includes temple width, bridge with, and pupil distance, so that you can be assured of a good fit, even if you can’t try them on beforehand.

Many sites these days offer “virtual try-ons” to get an idea of what your new spectacles will look like on your face. This usually involves the superimposition of a set of frames onto an uploaded picture of your face. In many ways, this can be a more satisfying means of finding frames than the traditional in-store method, since you can only try on new frames by removing your old ones, thus making it harder to see.

A huge advantage of online buying over in-store purchasing is the availability of styles. In a store, the selection of frames is necessarily limited by space, and they must remove older styles to make way for the newer ones. But there has recently been a resurgence of interest in vintage frames online, prompting many online retailers to increase their selection to include “older” styles of spectacles and frames, and providing online shoppers with many more options.

Need more reasons to buy online? What about better prices, with fewer middlemen? What about comprehensive exchange policies and longer return periods? What about the ability to more easily match your prescription sunglasses to your regular frames? Factor all of that in, and you see why only one percent of online glasses buyers rated their experience as “poor”, and the overwhelming majority would purchase their spectacles online again.