FEATURE/Consumer Reports Online Names the Best Online Shopping Sites This Holiday Season

Business Wire, Dec 7, 2000

Online & Retail Editors

FEATURE...

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YONKERS, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE FEATURES)--Dec. 7, 2000

e-Ratings Online Shopping Guide, at www.ConsumerReports.org, looked at 130 popular e-Commerce sites -- and found only three earned

top scores

Holiday gift giving begins in earnest in two weeks - and it is time to really get serious about online gift shopping. Consumer Reports Online (CRO) e-Ratings: Online Shopping Guide - at www.ConsumerReports.org - looked at 130 top Internet shopping sites and found three sites that merited top overall scores. Babycenter.com, webvan.com, and etoys.com stood out from the other sites, excelling in making their policies, usability and content accessible to the online user.

"These three sites had top marks overall while most of the 130 e-merchants we evaluated were "Average" or "Very Good," says Michelle Rutkowski, Marketing Director, Consumer Reports Online. "They excelled in the three key factors: good contents, both the products themselves and the information about them; easy usability, including top-notch navigation; and policies that ensure consumers' privacy and secure credit-card information. It's important to note that many of the products available at these three sites - particularly items that don't require first-hand inspection - are well suited to web shopping."

A brief look at the top sites:

-- www.babycenter.com offers a large selection of baby products, a variety of
fun tools, and an absolutely enormous amount of information about everything
related to babies. All that, along with easy navigation and a low price
guarantee, makes BabyCenter worth a visit.

-- www.webvan.com currently serves San Francisco Bay, Sacramento, Atlanta, and
Chicago areas. This site has very good privacy and security policies, and an
especially good delivery policy that includes free delivery with orders over
$50. You must be at home to receive deliveries, but you can select a very
convenient half-hour delivery window between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 10:00
p.m., Monday through Friday (with slightly shorter hours on weekends). This
site is fairly easy to navigate and placing an order is clear-cut. Webvan
carries a very wide range of items, with more gourmet/upscale selections than
other sites in this category and is definitely worth checking out.

-- www.etoys.com has a huge selection of toys, with interesting categories for
browsing, and helpful product information. There are many special features that
make shopping fun such as an idea center with helpful gift suggestions.

"Electronic gear, apparel, books, music, and video, health and beauty, and sporting goods are the most popular online shopping categories and e-Ratings found that many of these e-merchants have terrific sites," notes Rutkowski. "All five sites selling electronic gear and seven out of eight apparel sites rated "Very Good" scores. We also liked Sephora.com for beauty supplies, perfume, soaps, etc.; Crate & Barrel, which was very good for kitchen and small home decor items and accessories; and REI, which is great for the sports/outdoor/recreation enthusiast."

e-Ratings selects sites for evaluation on the basis of site traffic (based on data obtained from audience measurement services) and sales volume. Some sites are included when they are determined to be of particular interest or relevance and are considered to be sites that subscribers should know about. e-Ratings approaches each site as an average -- but very disciplined --consumer would. In every case, a consistent shopping scenario is followed: browsing for products, searching for specific items and features, and actually placing an order.

Using an in-depth checklist, CRO takes note of all aspects of a site's policies, usability, and content. During the evaluation process, there is also room for discovery -- an opportunity to wander around and find what is special, unique, and new about a site. Using these two approaches, analytical and exploratory, e-Ratings offers an overall sense of the total shopping experience at each site. BizRate.com, an independent and unbiased organization, supplements Consumer Reports Online e-Ratings with shopper experience ratings, based on surveys of millions of online buyers each month, covering factors such as on-time delivery and customer service.

e-Ratings is available only to subscribers of Consumer Reports Online, at www.ConsumerReports.org, the fastest growing Web site of its kind, with more than 500,000 paid subscribers. All site visitors have free access to helpful advice, safety alerts, recalls, and much more. Site subscribers receive unbiased product ratings and service recommendations, access to the latest issue of Consumer Reports and four years of past reports, exclusive reliability reports, message boards and more. CRO does not accept advertising, and has no ties to the manufacturers whose products and services it tests and rates.