 |
Order items that are unusual or unavailable locally. Sometimes save money, since doing business online can mean lower overhead for the retailer. Shop renowned retailers from all over the world, without getting on a plane. Shop in your underwear. But if the promise of shopping on the World Wide Web is huge, the frustration can be equally enormous. Web shopping can be glacially slow, and the sites difficult to navigate. A search that gobbles up your time gets costly and takes all the joy out of web shopping. The first remedy is to make sure your hardware is up to the task. If you're being tortured by the "World Wide Wait," consider getting a 56 kps modem. Web pages pop up much more briskly than with the 28.8 kps modems popular until about a year ago. Moreover, even though Internet use
is growing faster in Asia than anywhere else on the globe, most cybersellers
are U.S.-based companies targeting U.S. and Canadian consumers. All too often
upon finding a tantalizing site, you soon (but not soon enough) learn they
won't deliver outside the U.S. But don't despair. Not all Web marketers
are based outside the region, and many that are ship overseas.
With the Internet's dizzying rate
of change, it's a good idea to keep checking sites that interest you in case
they start long distance delivery. A leading U.S. toy site, eToys, promises to
offer international service "later in 1998."
The price of delivery is a
critical part of figuring out whether an online purchase is worthwhile.
While geography is no barrier to wandering the virtual marketplace, long
distance can make it expensive to deliver the goods. Many sites provide
charts showing prices for different weights and destinations. The well-known
delivery services they use are particularly expensive when the item is cheap.
Says Lisa Fraser of Once Upon a Breeze, an Oregon kite shop (www.webcom.com/~mrkites):
"If somebody wants a $25 kite and they find they have to pay up to $85 to get it,
they're just gonna forget about it." Fraser notes, however, that her
unstructured parafoil kites fold up for cheaper shipping.
It may be worth a steep delivery
charge, however, on an item that is unique. It doesn't make sense to buy a
Barbie Doll from New York's famous toy store, FAO Schwarz (www.faoschwarz.com)
if it's available locally. A 40% charge tacked on international orders turns the
$50 item into a $70 one. But if you simply must have all five Spice Girl dolls
(yes, even Ginger) at $124.95, the additional $49.98 charged by FAO Schwarz
may not deter you.
The typical shopping site provides
an electronic catalogue with product photos and descriptions, and an order form
that allows credit card purchases. There is still much room for improvement in
the instructions for overseas ordering. One common problem is the insistence
that customers fill in a U.S. zip code. Leaving it blank is liable to get
you booted out of the ordering section. Try putting in XXXXX, and if that fails,
exit the site. It's not geared for international orders.
In some cases, overseas shoppers can't
orders through the website but only via e-mail or phone. Those options are
also available for shoppers wary of forking over their credit card information
to a website.
Such worried souls should be aware,
however, that the encryption software designed to safeguard their credit card
information has an excellent track record. Experts maintain that it's riskier
to hand your card over to a mâitre d' in a restaurant than to pay online.
"The software and hardware needed to crack the typically long coding sequences
are so expensive it would be impractical," says Tony Bonham, marketing director
at Oracle Systems, Hong Kong.
Cyberconsumers tend to know what
they want before logging on. And most of them comparison-shop. The newest
tool for navigating the ocean of web stores allows shoppers to search a particular
product across many sites and compare prices. One place to find that service,
www.webmarket.com, also offers independent evaluations of
shopping sites.
On the following pages is a sampler
of sites that should give you an idea of the range of e-shopping possibilities. --Miriam Herschlag
Sampler of Internet Shopping Sites |
|