The following article was originally written for CompareItAll.com. The rights have reverted to the author.
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A year ago, beyond the core of books, music, videos, computers, and electronics, shopping on the Web was very thin. There were many online stores, but most of them were brand new, had little selection, and made poor use of Internet capabilities to provide detailed information or to prompt you with gift suggestions or to answer your questions.
This Christmas, shopping online was a totally different experience. There was no need at all to battle your way through crowds at physical stores. And those improvements -- many of which were pushed ahead in anticipation of Christmas demand -- are now available for our year-round shopping needs.
I did most of my shopping at Amazon.com. I've been a long-time delighted customer of theirs for books, but had never before explored their other product areas, like music, electronics, and toys. In fact, I'd been very skeptical of their rapid expansion into other product areas. Now I relish the convenience -- a search from any screen at their site can take me to the next item on my shopping list, regardless of what kind of product it was. By buying many items from the same store in the same shopping trip, I was able to save substantially on shipping cost. And when I thought of new things I needed to buy and went back the next day and the day after, placing additional orders, the account management features at Amazon allowed me to consolidate shipments, saving even more. Amazon's efficient record-keeping was also a boon -- I could see not just my recent orders, but everything I had ever ordered from them, so I could quickly double-check what I bought for this uncle or that cousin a year ago.
When it came to logistics, Amazon performed like a pro. While I put as many items as possible into a single order to save on shipping, they went out of their way to send everything as soon as it was available, breaking my large orders up into numerous small shipments that got to me very quickly, and with no extra charge for the extra shipments.
Also, they partnered with the US Postal Service as their carrier for standard 3-5 day shipping. And the Post Office bent over backwards to outperform their competition. Time and again, just one day after an item shipped from Amazon, it would arrive at my house -- typically at 7 AM, delivered in a truck the Postal Service had rented from Sears to handle the extra Christmas volume.
Amazon was good -- so good that it wasn't until very late that I discovered some of the other top performers, like CDNow, Reel.com, eToys and SmarterKids. SmarterKids in particular was extraordinary, providing a totally different experience when looking for gifts for kids. Rather than focus on products and supply you with the brand-name stuff you've been primed for by advertising, they focus on kids. You can fill out online questionnaires to help determine your child's learning style and your goals for him or her, and can even enter results from standardized tests. Then based on that profile, they provide you with recommended products, tailored to the child's needs. Often these are intriguing items that you had never heard of before.
The biggest problem I faced was availability. The same hot toys that were impossible to find in physical stores, were very difficult to find online.
eToys had enormous selection -- but time and again, the items I wanted were marked "out of stock." Yes, I could sign up to get an email alert when the item became available again; but that wasn't like to happen before Christmas.
On the other hand, eToys did have great search tools. I was looking for a scrabble-like 3D word game that I had seen advertised but couldn't remember the name of. I had searched for Scrabble at shopping bots and in half a dozen other stores, including Amazon, and couldn't find it. A search for Scrabble at eToys, gave me UpWords -- exactly what I wanted.
To my surprise, ToysRUs, with a far less impressive Web site, turned out to be the best place to find toys that were hard to find -- though they did a very poor job of letting their customers know that. For instance, I hadn't been able to find Pokemon Monopoly anywhere -- not online, using shopping bots, and not locally, calling physical stores. The bots would bring back lists of matches, but the stores they pointed to were all out of stock. Finally, I tried the online ToysRUs. Their basic setup was frustrating, with no indication at all of what was in stock and what wasn't. I put Pokemon Monopoly in my shopping cart, expecting that then, finally, they would tell me they were out. When I got no such message, I was extremely skeptical. Before finishing the sale, I wanted to make sure that they actually had the item and that I would receive it in time for Christmas. In frustration, I called their 800 number. Then, much to my surprise, I was told that every item listed in their online catalog was in stock -- that they didn't list items not in stock, and that if I placed the order today, it should easily arrive within a week, with standard shipping. I ordered. It arrived as promised. And I'm still amazed at what a poor job they did marketing what in fact was a great service.
One of the toughest challenges I faced was buying women's clothing. A year ago, that had been virtually impossible, because very few products were available for sale online and those that were presented in ways that I found impenetrable. I simply don't know enough about the subject to do reasonable searches. The vocabulary is like a foreign language to me. This year, the major shopping portals, like shopping.com, had enormous selection in the area of women's clothing. But the manufacturers themselves did a better job of simplifying the shopping experience. For example, Victoria's Secret had a great gift finder, that gave you the right kinds of suggestions, even when you didn't know the right vocabulary. Then when you had made your choice and were ready to check out, they tempted you with the picture and description of another related item. Unfortunately, they hadn't yet worked out all the bugs in their system. In my case, when I tried to add that extra item to my shopping cart, I was told that it was out of stock in that color. And when I tried all the other colors, each of those was out of stock, too. So they had done a great job of marketing. I was ready to buy. But they had nothing they could sell me.
Despite a few glitches like that, this was a great online shopping season. I bought more gifts and better gifts than ever before. The prices were reasonable (even including shipping cost). And everything I ordered arrived in plenty of time.
Clearly, online shopping has matured -- no longer is it a curiosity or novelty. These stores, having survived trial by fire -- bombardment by millions of newcomers who needed easy access to everything and immediately delivery -- are now an everyday resource for us.
For the most part, we've learned how to use them, and they've learned how to serve us. Now, over time, we'll all learn to balance the physical and cyber worlds of shopping, making better judgements as to when it makes sense to go which way. And gradually, the services that stores provide will be more and more integrated -- physical stores benefiting from Web presence, and Web shipping services benefiting form partnerships with physical stores.
Online shopping advice
The Online Shopping Directory
Can we help you build an Internet business? Richard Seltzer is an independent Internet writer/speaker/consultant. Click here for details. or send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
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