Mystery Shopper Checking Her List

Kylee Magno must have been very good this year. She is getting 100 presents for Christmas.

Dresses, books, electronic gadgets and other items -- most with bright gift wrapping and heartfelt cards -- already are pouring into her Chicago apartment from all manner of online shopping sites.

But there will be no surprises inside those boxes. Magno bought them. She sent them to herself and plans to send back every one.

Magno is an online mystery shopper, a market researcher who anonymously buys from electronic commerce sites to test the experiences they offer customers. She gauges ease of use, selection, payment procedures, shipping, customer service, return policies and much more.

For Magno, shopping is no mere recreational activity. She takes meticulous note of every step of the process, counting each mouse click and clocking the transactions to the second.

Mystery shopping has long been a tool for researchers who judge how well stores are serving customers. Now that e-commerce has become an accepted part of retailing -- customers spent an estimated $912 million at U.S. Web sites during Thanksgiving week alone -- mystery shoppers are lurking there too.

“You can’t judge an e-commerce site just by looking at the home page, just like you can’t judge a shop by looking at the display windows,” said Lauren Freedman, president of E-Tailing Group Inc., the market research firm conducting the study.

“The sites might look great,” Freedman added, “but to really know what’s going on, you’ve got to go inside, ask questions, buy something and send it back.”

Freedman’s firm does the best-known mystery shopping survey online, testing such well-known e-commerce sites as Amazon.com and Dell.com, as well as smaller players including the Web arm of Omaha Steaks and art dealer NextMonet.

Of the millions of gift seekers flocking online to make holiday purchases, Freedman and Magno just may have the best appreciation of the joys and frustrations of shopping on the Net. Their observations end up in the hands of hundreds of online retailers desperate to find an edge in the increasingly cutthroat world of e-commerce.

This year, the process began the first week in September with the E-Tailing Group staff gathering in its Chicago office to discuss which 100 sites would get a visit from the mystery shopper.

“We fight over who should be on the list,” Magno said. Some sites that were in last year’s survey, such as electronic-gear seller 800.com, were dropped because they went out of business. Others, such as those of surplus retailer Overstock.com and jeweler Blue Nile, were tapped to take their place because they have “made big strides online” or are “doing something unique.”

The mystery shopping survey, which is either a shopaholic’s dream come true or an incredibly dreary chore, starts in October with Magno visiting each site one by one. Once there, she must check more than 100 attributes in a process that takes almost a month to complete. Magno, 36, does it all herself.

“It’s my baby,” she said. “I’m a merchant at heart.”

Entering a site, she takes notes on how clearly the goods are displayed and whether the home page is informative without being too busy.

“It’s really annoying if there is no white space,” said Freedman, who designed the survey. “Sometimes catalog merchants just lift big blocks of text and put them on a page. That might work in print, but it has to be friendly-to-read online.”

One of the most important factors is the quality of customer assistance. Magno checks on such things as the availability of a toll-free number and how easy it is to find.

“People don’t want to feel like they are going it alone when they visit a site,” she said.

This year’s mystery shopping survey still is in progress, but last year only one online retailer was found not to have a toll-free number: industry giant Amazon.com Inc. of Seattle.

Company spokesman Bill Curry said the retailer prefers to answer consumer inquiries by electronic mail, but he insisted that a toll-free number is listed on the site. He didn’t, however, know where it was located.

If it’s there, it is securely hidden. Magno says she failed to find it after hours of searching.

If customer service e-mail is available, she sends a message to test how long it takes to get a reply. Last year, Nordstrom Inc. won top honors in this category, answering an e-mail in 41 minutes.

But this is one area in which Web service is deteriorating, the E-Tailing Group surveys have found. In 2000, the average response time was 14 hours. Last year, it grew to 21 hours, with 18% of e-mails Magno sent to customer service getting no response at all.

“I think that is partly because the number of people shopping online grew a lot,” she said. It’s too soon to know whether the response time has slipped further this year.

When she considers the selection of merchandise, she does numerous other checks, including whether a site indicates which items are out of stock. This feature is becoming increasingly popular; 54% of sites in the survey offered it last year, up from 42% in 2000.

Eventually, it’s time to place an order. Magno looks for an item that is not especially costly but still expensive enough to trigger promotions such as free shipping.

The most she spent for a single item this year was $128 for a dress at Victoria’s Secret. That merchant is far better known for its undergarments, which is why Magno chose a dress.

“I wanted to see how they handled that item, like did it come wrinkled?” she said.

Magno ordered a baby outfit from Gap, a business card holder from Saks Fifth Avenue, an ear thermometer from drugstore CVS, pajama bottoms from J. Crew and a teddy bear from 1-800-Flowers.com.

Not only does she take extensive notes, but she also prints every page she views. A typical file on a site fills about 100 pages.

This might seem like the height of tedium, but Magno -- who used to be a buyer for major retailers -- doesn’t mind the painstaking work. Shopping is one of her fondest memories of growing up in Chicago.

“My grandmother and mother used to take me and my sister to Marshall Field’s on the El,” she said. “I’m the biggest impulse shopper you’ll meet. Send me a targeted e-mail with an additional percentage off and I’m shopping.”

Her record keeping becomes especially detailed once she places an item in her virtual shopping cart. From that point on, Magno times how long it takes to fill out all necessary forms, choose gift wrap, go over shipping choices and at last check out.

This part of the process is the most perilous for the online shopper. Magno has not experienced any complete disasters this year, but she has encountered several annoyances.

For example, the Web site of Sharper Image Corp. first insisted -- wrongly -- that Magno had not registered. When she tried to re-register, she said, she was denied because she was already in the database.

When the site still refused to let her make a purchase, she called customer service and was told to send an e-mail to the site’s technical support staff. Tech support never got back to her.

Representatives from Sharper Image could not be reached for comment.

Whenever gift wrapping is available, Magno orders it to test the quality.

“Some companies charge, and then they send the same box that was available in the store for free,” she said.

The biggest flub last year was from high-end toy merchant FAO Schwarz Inc., which charged $4.95 for gift wrap and then simply sent the item in a shopping bag with a red bow on it, Magno said. She complained and the company refunded the wrapping charge.

An FAO Schwarz spokesman said Magno’s version of events was impossible because the company does not charge for gift wrap. But Magno says she has the receipt.

Finally, she pays for her purchases with a company credit card that doesn’t list her name and has the items sent to herself. In more and more cases, a welcome trend then kicks in.

“More and more sites are using order tracking,” Freedman said, referring to services that alert customers by e-mail when transactions are complete and items sent.

As packages arrive and get evaluated, the returns begin. Some retailers make it tough, putting callers on hold on a customer service phone line for long stretches before a return authorization is issued. Other sites allow shoppers to print a return label on their own computers.

All the data go into E-Tailing Group’s report, which sells for about $500 and will be available in the spring.

In the meantime, Freedman has an inexpensive tip for online retailers:

“Shop your own site,” she said emphatically. “See how easy it is to use. Take note of the frustrations. You wouldn’t believe how many merchants don’t do that.”