As one of the biggest proponents of e-commerce, like many others, I began my holiday shopping online this past weekend. After all, I''ve got a vested interest in the overall success of e-commerce: as long as people are still building e-commerce sites, and people are buying from those sites, my mortgage will get paid.
As an all-too-often victim of shopping cart rage, e-commerce has been a blessing to me. Determined to not subject myself to the fluorescent lighting and bad ventilation of a single mall or department store for the fourth year in a row, I sat down in my cozy home office, hot mug of java in hand, on a dreary New England fall morning and began. I was looking forward to unhurried, leisurely shopping without the hassles of crowds and dial-up connections from Hell, as I now have a very unhealthy dependent relationship with my cable modem.
Foosball Anyone?
by Robyn Greenspan
It was decided that what our home needed was a foosball table. Having zero athletic inclination, I had no idea what a "foos" was but I was pretty sure I wasn''t interested in any of the activities surrounding it. I soon figured out that foosball was the name given to table soccer -- something that didn''t hold any appeal for me either.
However, I did like the knuckle-bleeding thrill of a good air hockey game, and if I could somehow find a foosball table that also functioned as an air hockey table, I would happily make the purchase.
I started at Yahoo! Shopping where I''d had previous success, not just for purchasing but for researching products based on key words. After a couple of tries, I was able to find the perfect item -- a multi-function table that was not too expensive and adequately constructed.
I had a manufacturer name and description of the product, so finding it at the best price was not going to be too difficult. I checked the merchants on Yahoo! Shopping and was surprised to find that not only was the pricing identical at all the e-stores but so was the shipping cost -- $99! I tried my luck at mySimon, bottomdollar.com and excite''s jango.com, all with similar results.
Fortunately, one of the e-tailers carrying the table was The Sports Authority and there were numerous Sports Authority brick-and-mortar stores in my vicinity. I figured that I could make the purchase in person and save the cost of shipping.
I drafted a friend who was used to doing some of my heavy lifting and proceeded to the store. We looked around a bit and couldn''t seem to locate the exact item. When I inquired, I was told that the items on the Web site are not always carried in the store and vice versa.
So, what was the point of having an online component if they didn''t carry the same merchandise? I was told that the purpose was to make the consumer patronize both places. If that was the case, I wonder why the online store had the same name as the offline store and why they didn''t operate as independent entities. (Bluelight.com ring a bell?)
Agitated but undeterred, I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to pay the $99 shipping cost but I knew I would buy my multi-function table somewhere other than The Sports Authority.
I checked with DealDude.com to see if any of the big e-tailers were offering some coupons or promotions. I found a viable $30 off incentive for buy.com so I thought I would see if they carried the same foosball/air hockey table.
And herein lies the e-commerce happy ending: Not only did I find the very same table at buy.com but I was able to use my $30 coupon and shipping was only $55. Overall, I saved $74 from what I originally expected to pay.
E-tailers: 1
Retailers: 0
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I grabbed my shopping list, opened up that great little guide to online holiday shopping, courtesy of a media kit from BizRate (for access to their online shopping guide, check out Bizrate.com and go to the books and magazines section), and eagerly clicked on my Amazon.com bookmark. I figured they''ve got just about everything I''ll need, so why not start there. After all, they already have my credit card information stored securely on their servers, my friends'' and relatives'' Wish Lists at my disposal, and they''ve always been reliable.
According to the NPD Group, Inc. eight in 10 Web users plan to join me on my online shopping binge this holiday season. Fifty-four million of us plan to go ahead and complete an online transaction by purchasing at least one product or service on the Net. This is approximately two-thirds of the active Internet population. Great news for ecommerce!
Unless, of course, it''s downright impossible to make that transaction.
According to an announcement from Jupiter Research today, more than 50 percent of online retailers state they are confident they will be able to handle high volumes of orders this holiday season versus last year, when only 10 percent were confident of their sites'' infrastructures.
Jupiter did warn, however, that online retailers could leave shoppers hanging in the event of a site crash, due to their lack of customer-service contingency plans. (For more on this, check out Beth Cox''s article, A Surge of eShoppers)
After purchasing a couple of classic videos for my grandmother, CDs, video games and books for some friends, and a George Foreman grill for my city-dwelling, eccentric sister from ol'' reliable Amazon (would you want to be seen at the local brick-and-mortar with that in your cart?), I also needed to pick up an inkjet printer. Where else but Staples, I thought, because "yeah, they''ve got that."
Well, they may have it, but apparently they don''t want to sell it. I should have been tipped off that it wasn''t going to be easy by the "register first, then you can shop" mentality at Staples.com. After 20 long minutes and three annoying JavaScript errors during the checkout process, I left. That''s right. Another abandoned shopping cart. My first holiday shopping snafu. Usually I am more forgiving, but this was completely unacceptable. Something as trivial as a JavaScript error should have been debugged a while ago. I expected busy servers, out of stock items, and perhaps even a shipping delay, but crashing shopping carts? I know better than to panic about whether or not the order was placed, but what percentage of those other 54 million other shoppers don''t? How many of them are going to start burning up the 1-800 customer service phone lines in a panic? Granted, not every one of them will be shopping at Staples.com, but it still didn''t bode well for the rest of my shopping experience.
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