As a University of Illinois student, you’ve got a lot to take advantage of on campus — a variety of places to shop and eat, the nightlife and of course, the classes you’ll take. But there’s one more resource you may not be familiar with: the University’s WebStore. Members of the University can receive discounts of up to 90 percent on a wide variety of software at the online store.

Getting started

Now let’s get shopping! Go to webstore.illinois.edu and click “Personal Purchases” in the upper right of your screen. Then, on the left side of the screen you will see a green box that says “My Account.” Within that box, log in using your NetID and password — this will show you what products and offers you are eligible for, as well as your profile, order history and shopping cart.

Your order history may be important later because once you’ve made any purchase through the WebStore, all the information you may need to receive and install your software can be found there.

On your main shopping page (after you clicked “Personal Purchases”) you’ll see nine categories, and if you scroll to the bottom of the page you’ll find even more specific categories to browse. These include specific departments like engineering, architecture or math and statistics, as well as interests like web development, graphic design and video editing. After clicking on the category you’re interested in, you can sort the products alphabetically, by popularity or by price.

Recommended offers to take advantage of

Great, now you’re all set up to shop! Now here’s how to take advantage of what the WebStore has to offer. As mentioned earlier, logging in will show you what offers you’re eligible for — some offers are only available to faculty, staff or students in specific departments.

Because the WebStore operates across all three University of Illinois campuses, make sure to look at special offers for students on the Urbana campus. Within the nine categories on the main shopping page, you’ll find one titled “Urbana Campus Products,” which has offers specifically provided to the U-C campus community.

Another place to find special UIUC offers is on the bottom of the page, where you will see “UIUC Student Savings” in the list of product categories — you can also find this page by going to webstore.illinois.edu/uiucsave.

“It will pull up a list of free and extremely discounted products that almost, I won’t say all, but a large majority of our students will use,” said Courtney McLearin, IT product marketing specialist at the WebStore. “To make it a little easier for students to find what they need to get started once they’re here at campus.”

This includes McAfee security software, MATLAB access, both free, and Microsoft Office for the discounted price of $50.

McLearin also recommended taking advantage of the Adobe Creative Cloud offer (search for “creative cloud” on the WebStore), which gives you a 12-month subscription to 27 Adobe programs for $195. You do not have to download all 27 programs at once, you can download them as you please within those 12 months.

There is no way to compare prices at the WebStore, so if you want to find out how much you can save, you’ll have to do some searching of your own.

Learning to use your software

Now you’ve got your software, but do you know how to use it to its full potential?

The WebStore offers workshops for a variety of programs, including Microsoft and Adobe products. For those interested in web development, you’ll find an intensive web design course (which is being updated, according to the website, and the next sessions will be scheduled for the 2014-2015 academic year) and a course in HTML and CSS.

Hopefully you have now learned almost everything you need to know about using the University’s WebStore!

Eleanor is a senior in Media. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eleanor_black14.