Online Shopping: Good, Bad and Growing
You Can Get Books, Jewelry and Even Miss Melba's Olde Timey Fruitcake
By TINA KELLEY
n many houses, there is a mouse stirring this holiday season: the one attached to the computer.
It is being used for one-click gift ordering, with the promise of avoiding crowded malls and traffic
jams and the hope of finding last-minute purchases on the Web.
Online holiday purchases are expected to double compared with last year,
said Nick Donatiello, president of Odyssey, a market research company in
San Francisco. And while online shopping will still account for only a small
part of holiday purchases, wired merchants and investors have been
salivating over the potential increases.
But can shopping online really make the last-minute rush easier? A sampling
of shopping sites and interviews with Internet retailing experts suggests the answer is yes -- at least for
products that can be found on the Web and especially for near-last-minute purchases.
Just remember that many items are not easily available online, that Web traffic itself can suffer from
jams and that most of the things you click your mouse on still have to be delivered by trains, planes or
trucks.
To sweeten the season's shopping experience, Internet retailers have developed gift registries, gift
suggestions for stumped shoppers and even live customer service -- just like stores. And the number of
Web retailers grows every year, increasing selection and competition.
There are big and efficient online sellers for books, CD's and computer equipment, and many sites
offer electronic cards and gift certificates. There are even games that can be downloaded, theoretically,
the night before Christmas.
In fact, for grown-ups who would rather visit a root canal specialist than a toy store in the next two
weeks, there is www.etoys.com, which promises that "Santa can go to bed early this year." Toys are
categorized by age, and pages describe what awards each toy has won. At www.toysrus.com, the Toys
'R' Us site, you can check the baby registry created (off line) by the moms of the munchkins you're
shopping for. At www.justpretend.com ("toys and playthings that inspire imagination and creativity")
there are five sets of specialized dress-up sets, with reversible wizard-or-princess hats.
For those with quirkier tastes, sites can be found offering four-pound fruitcakes, fancy sports
equipment, foreign musical instruments and rare videos.
Books are among the biggest-selling items online, with Amazon.com and the Barnes & Noble site as
two major places geared toward last-minute book buying.
"My goal is to take a two- or three-week period of hell and turn it into 15 minutes of a pretty good
time," said David Risher, senior vice president of Amazon.com, as he tripped through Web screens in
his Seattle office, demonstrating how to give a present in the fewest possible seconds.
"Let's say you're in a big hurry," he went on. "We have a feature
on the Web site, Gift Click. You can do it Christmas morning."
The function tells your recipients via e-mail that you are sending
presents and lets them do the pesky work of filling in the mailing
addresses. For purchasers who put their credit card numbers on
file, it's one-click shopping.
Barnes & Noble, in addition to offering "buy now and get a free
book" deals for new customers, (www.barnesandnoble.com) posts
a chart of the last day you can order a book in stock for
Christmas delivery.
Another innovation for online shoppers is the gift registry. One example is the Wish List offered by
iQVC, the Web version of television's QVC home shopping channel. About 10,000 people have signed
up to use it, said Stuart Spiegel, vice president and general manager for iQVC. At iQVC's jewelry site
(www.gemsandjewels.com), those who think it's blessed enough to receive can leave very specific
instructions on what they want, right down to ring size, favorite stone and preferred designer. Those
who are going for the greater blessings of giving use the password of the person who registered to find
out which precious stone to concentrate on.
"It's no different from that magazine left on the coffee table a little too long opened to the right thing,"
Spiegel said. "It is a fun way to point people in the right direction."
A similar service is offered at Eddie Bauer (www.eddiebauer.com), where you can send out e-mail
announcements to friends about what you want from the store. They're not subtle: "Hi from (my
e-mail address) (my name)! I have an Eddie Bauer Wish List at eddiebauer.com. Just go to
'Wish Lists.' . . ." The message includes the wisher's password to get access to the list, but not so much
as a "please" or "thank you."
Another helpful feature for buying off the Web are shopping agents, programs that search commercial
sites and come back with a list of items and prices, which can certainly reduce fingertip fatigue. One,
www.mysimon.com, will even search for the best bargains for the objects you desire, then let you send
the results via e-mail straight to people who have you on their gift lists.
Some online sites have gone so retro that they are providing actual human beings, through chat or
e-mail, to help shoppers. During limited hours you can try live customer service at Azazz.com, an
Internet-based department store that offers housewares, apparel and home office supplies, with free
shipping. Another is Adatom.com, which offers brand-name furniture, linens and toys direct from the
factory. The humans function much like the programs that are always available at sites like Amazon,
which provide suggestions for other books or movies a "Beloved" or "Titanic" fan might like.
For those who would rather decorate the house with all that time freed up by not shopping, you can
buy live Christmas trees and wreaths or artificial trees that arrive at your door already strung with
lights. Then try poring over the numbing prospect of 26 different kinds of angel ornaments available at
Christmas Depot (Christmasdepot.com) (mauve satin, peach satin, pink satin, red lamé starburst, red
sparkle, red velvet, silver lamé, silver lamé starburst, etc.). At the Menorah.net site, candle holders are
available in three-, six- and nine-foot models.
Some of the less delightful aspects of holiday shopping exist on the Web as well, like piped-in tinny
Christmas carols and traffic that can be heavy at peak hours, slowing things to a crawl. And every once
in a while you might see the screen message, "Please contact the server administrator and inform them
of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error." So
much for the customer is always right.
The Web is never as smooth as it could be, and shopping is no different. It can be just as hard to find
some things online as off.
For example, for the father who wants a video of the 1939 (not the 1978) version of the English drama
"The Four Feathers," a search through Reel.com, Amazon.com, and MySimon yielded two sites
advertising VHS versions of the flick (both were out of stock) and one offering a laser disk (too
high-tech for Papa). Then again, he hasn't been able to find it in a real store, either.
Yet the Web can be very useful for finding obscure items. Frith Maier of
Seattle had her heart set on a heated toilet seat, like one she had enjoyed
while visiting Japan, for her sister's outhouse in Alaska. After calling
plumbing supply companies with no luck, she found one on the site of ToTo
Toilets. The catch was that the seat, equipped with an extra device that
delivers a puff of warm air, cost $900.
If you want a used cello (knock-knock.com/mie/cellos.htm) or a bodhran
(www.bodhran.com), an ancient Celtic drum, your selection will probably
be greater than can be found by skimming your local classifieds. Bodhrans, which are made of goat
skin stretched over a wooden frame, abound on the Web, from Ireland to Massachusetts and Prince
George, B.C., with air mail delivery times as short as three days.
For kids who need a specific brand of soccer ball, beyond what the mall stores sell, www.soccer.com,
for example, offers more than 25 kinds.
Since online orders can be entered and registered so quickly, consumers can be forgiven for believing
they can put off their shopping to the very last minute. Lands' End's site (www.landsend.com),
announces how many "shipping days left!" until Christmas, and Christmasdepot.com counts down the
very seconds. For Father's Day, Amazon.com processed lots of same-day sales, with gift-certificate
orders coming in via e-mail that morning and being sent out the same hour, Risher said. The same is
expected on Dec. 25.
With the under-$1,000 computer hoping to attain Most Favored Donation status, computer sites on the
Web are revving up for a high-volume December.
Computershopper.com, on its gift ideas pages, gives hints on buying someone a PC and have it last
longer than a year. But earlier this week, CompUSA, in its holiday Web section, listed a few items that
were already out of stock and back-ordered.
One big site selling computers, Cyberian Outpost (www.outpost.com), has warehouses and shippers
located together and offers next-day delivery for items ordered up until midnight Eastern time. And
with the wide variety of software available there and from other sites to download onto children's
computers, a popular game could arrive this Christmas morning via the phone line, instead of the
chimney.
There are other aspects of the holidays that the Web can help with, of course, like planning dinner.
Where else but online could you find a recipe for Hanukkah Candle Salad
(www.pastrywiz.com/archive/channuka.htm) that features half a banana stuck in a pineapple ring,
topped with a gumdrop, with mayo dripping down to represent melted wax and a green pepper handle
for the candle holder?
And what brick-and-mortar store has as many kinds of fruitcake as the Web, with Miss Melba's Olde
Timey, Monastery, Gloria's Classic, Babs' Jamaican, Sunshine Hollow's Real Handmade Pecan and
Carolyn's Cajun (from Cut Off, La.)?
And for when the holiday hangover clears, there's always the return policy to think about. At
www.azazz.com and Cyberian Outpost, returns are accepted for any reason. Amazon.com asks no
questions about returned books, though CD's and videos need to be unopened. A printed packing slip
for returns comes with every order. Beats driving downtown, parking and having to look someone in
the eye and explain why that gift from your beloved isn't a keeper. |
