Taking Your Shopping List Online? Read On

My general theory about online shopping is that it will prove popular only at that point when there is a problem in the relationship between buyer and seller.

That means computers, travel services, automobiles, financial products and all kinds of hard-to-find specialty items are good candidates, while clothes and housewares and consumer electronics are not.

That doesn’t mean no one will prefer, say, the Land’s End online site to the catalog, or Amazon.com to the corner bookstore, but that the overwhelming majority of people will stick with existing channels that work. Shopping, after all, is the great American pastime, a leading form of entertainment, and surfing the Web can be a bore by comparison.

Now, I have to confess that this theory does not derive from personal experience. As far as I’m concerned, all established forms of shopping are deeply flawed. A mall, for me, is only about a half-step above Hades, and there’s almost nothing I’d less rather do than while away a few hours in a department store.

It seems, then, that I’d be an ideal candidate for online shopping, and especially for holiday gift shopping. And this year, for the first time, there are enough good outlets on the Web and sufficiently solid transaction procedures that someone like me might be able to avoid the stores altogether.

So off I went to see what I could find. I have the dubious advantage of being bombarded with unsolicited suggestions about where to go, so I started by taking up IBM’s invitation to look at the online shopping tips on their Web page (https://www.ibm.com/e-business/commerce/tidings/experts2.html).

The first suggestion was to check the search engines for products and merchants I was looking for--I really could have figured that one out myself--and the second was to visit an online mall. It suggested two, and I clicked on the second (https://www.surfandbuy.com) and was greeted by a nice, colorful Web page. In French.

As it happens, I speak French, but even if I didn’t I could have figured out that clicking on the little British flag would yield the English version, which I did and it did. Then I had three choices: “discover exclusive French products,” “visit exclusive French shops” or “browse through the four universes, dream, action, thinking, feeling.” Really.

Since I was browsing, I clicked on dream, which produced a bizarre frame filled with single, disconnected words, including “fire,” “family,” “metal,” “holiday,” “action,” “air,” “craziness” and “wisdom.” There must have been more than a hundred choices. So I clicked on “wisdom,” which produced an art photo featuring a woman’s naked midriff. (I promise, I’m not making this up.)

Since I had work to do, I retreated to the French products button, and when category choices came up, I selected Games and Toys--but there were no merchants in that category. Then I selected Houseware, where the only choice was a boutique called Guy Degrenne, featuring the slogan “A good, beautiful table is the secret of homes where gaiety and warm complicity reign.”

I decided I’d better find a search engine.

Excite had been promoting its Shopping Search as the “fastest, smartest tool for shopping the Web,” so I checked in there, but out of the seven categories, four were “Coming Soon!”, leaving Computers & Software, Movies and Games & Toys as the only options, and in that last category only games could be searched.

Annoyed that such a thin offering was so heavily promoted, I wandered over to the main shopping channel on Excite, and, in search of presents for my niece and nephew, clicked Games & Toys. Under “Shop Here First” were Disney, FAO Schwartz and Learning Company, which Excite confirmed had paid for the privilege of being recommended.

The FAO Schwartz selection was limited and idiosyncratic. Then I looked under the main Games & Toys list, where there were about 10 sites. It was heavy on software vendors, but there was one company that I knew about--eToys, a Santa Monica-based firm that’s one of the start-ups being launched by Bill Gross’ Idealab business incubator--so I checked in there.

This site was mercifully straightforward. I browsed the Planes, Trains, Cars & Trucks category in search of a space shuttle for my nephew, and lo and behold I found one. It seemed cheap at $30, maybe even too cheap, and of course I couldn’t tell much about the quality or craftsmanship.

But I put it in my shopping cart, along with a paper-airplane book, and after coming up empty in search of art supplies that my budding Picasso niece didn’t already have, I went to the checkout. There was nothing to it--just enter name and address of recipient, credit card number, and send it off. I hope it’s nice stuff.

OK, now for that combination square that my brother needs. I started on Yahoo this time. There was no Tools or Hardware category, so I tried Home, and in the Remodeling category there was Ace Hardware.

But after noodling around on the site for a while, I finally figured out that they weren’t actually selling anything online. I clicked on Home Depot. Ditto. I went to the search area and searched shopping for tools, and came up with the typical ungainly search result--152 matches--and they generally didn’t look like online vendors.

Narrowing the search didn’t help much, so I finally clicked on the iQVC ad that had been blinking at me. The TV shopping channel’s online cousin is one of the biggest general merchants on the Web, and general manager Stuart Spiegel says sales are running about four times the volume of last year--comparable with what many other Web vendors are reporting for the Christmas season so far.

Hardware, Lawn and Garden looked like the obvious category, but let’s see, is a combination square a “measuring tool”? Apparently not. It’s an “accessory.” They had one, by Stanley, but I just couldn’t tell--is this the nice tool I want for my brother?

I got in the car and ran over to Orchard Supply Hardware--which actually didn’t take much longer than finding a combination square on the Web--and their one offering was half the price of iQVC, but it felt cheesy.

At that point, I realized that a big part of what I hate about shopping is deciding what to buy, not actually buying it, and Web sites aren’t much help there.

Online shopping is really best when you have a specific idea of what you want going in, and especially when there’s no need to judge product quality, as with books. Browsing is unsatisfying, because the experience can be so random, and you can’t touch and feel the goods or even see very good pictures. Flipping through a print catalog is far more efficient and agreeable than doing the equivalent on the Web.

Still, I was impressed at how far merchants have come in making the transaction process itself easier. When you’re buying a gift, moreover, you don’t have to worry about packing and shipping. Holiday shopping, in fact, is a case where there are special problems in the buyer-seller relationship. So I think my general theory holds.

I do think the Web will play at least some role for a very broad array of products, and sooner than I once thought. But even I will still be spending some time in malls.

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Jonathan Weber (jonathan.weber@latimes.com) is editor of The Cutting Edge.

HOLIDAY GIFT SPECIAL: D14-15

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The Top 10 / Buying Online

PC hardware and software are the top-selling products online. A look at the hottest sellers via electronic commerce:

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Rank Product 1997 sales, in millions 1. PC hardware and software $863 2. Travel $654 3. Entertainment $298 4. Books and music $156 5. Gifts, flowers and greetings $149 6. Apparel and footwear $92 7. Food and beverages $90 8. Jewelry $38 9. Sporting goods $19 10. Consumer electronics $20

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Source: Forrester Research Inc.