To: selivanov who wrote (117785 ) 7/25/2013 3:13:21 AM From: E. Charters Respond to I think it might go the other way. On line buying, notoriously low in availability, quality of service, with no guarantee, and expensive to ship might start to stultify and retail will make a comeback. Stores already offer on line buying and delivery to local centres. Wal Mart was largest US business with an income substantially larger than Austria's GDP. That does not sound like an ailing retailer. Store catalogues have to improve major as to search and find. Google is always faster to search any site than the decrepit catalogues. If I want to find a 2 1/2 inch black iron pipe nipple 8 feet long I can find it in 1/2 second on google within the same home depot catalog. I will take 30 minutes to browse the catalog itself and get either zero or 2000 unrelated hits when I search it, due to not being able to enter a slash for 1/2 inch. Company websites have always been stupid and aren't getting any smarter. Kijiji is the same. I think HD does it so you browse a lot. Tired of that crap. Give me the Eaton's catalog any time. Faster [ and more fun with the ladies wear section - i learned my sex there. ] by far. And just indexed alphabetized linked lists are faster than browse. Acklands Grainger's catalog is bearable, but I have seen better. [ and way better prices] Any company with a good multi key approx spelling searchable database of well organized parts-searching backed up by a google into the site, could beat the majors, who suck donkey dong when it comes to finding anything and getting a price. I have seen major sites who say, "call us", or have "call for quote" etc.. They are dreaming. Nobody picks the fone to call for quotes off the site when the competition has prices. Especially after hours. People who depend on highly motivated buyers don't think marketing. Download work on the customer and you download customers on the competition. A classic site had a search tool "Enter SKU number". Right. Great customer relations. 99% of company sites 5 years ago when you entered the name of a popular product in the search window had no results. Probably not what they called it exactly. These kinds of businesses deserve to be out of.
