Shopping. Oh Joy.

Ah, shopping, always been my favourite activity. Aside from the consumerism that I try to stay on the humble side of, there is the decision-making.

Physical shopping, i.e. shops on High Streets and out-of-town parks; well if I were to draw hell that would be my personal incarnation. I have found recently that I am practically blind in a crowd, I see no one. I stare at feet and hair simple to avoid collisions. Every advert I see I analyse to find the specific weakness a particular company is preying on.

And the Internet, well I though we would have arrived at a more metric-like system by now...and to a certain extent we are arriving at some semblance of this. It is complicated though.

At the top of the stack (the trust layer) there are three forms of web site:

1. Those that gather user feedback or reviews. Amazon, Kelkoo etc seem to be ahead of the game in this aspect
2. Then there is the professional 'watch dog' type sites like Which? I quickly found that this approach is seriously flawed - everything recommended in 'Best buys' is out of stock. Still it helps find the respectable brands (and hopefully keeps them on their toes).
3. The independent reviews. Not many of these but sites like Washerhelp are very informative when it comes to washing machines.
   

Next in the stack are the aggregators like Pricerunner and Kelkoo. These sites scrape prices and product details from suppliers and also importantly provide pretty advanced search engines. In fact the search facilities provided at this level are normally better than the supplier web sites. For example suppliers like KitchenScience don't allow you to find only appliances that are A+ energy efficiency rated.

Then there are the suppliers. You've found what you want and just need to pay for it and arrange delivery or pickup.

So you to-and-fro between these sites. Back and forth. The conscientious trying to buy sustainably, minimise transport, not use non-eco materials etc. You are also checking sizes, weights, costs, delivery times, arggghhhhhh!

One thing that is pretty spectacular is Amazon-like recommendation and category browsing. It happened so many times that I think I know what I want but then their engine shows me something better. Hours of fun putting things in your basket only to take them out.

And don't even mention eBay complications! Do I trust the vendor, what am I not thinking about with this product i.e. from the image and description. How much to bid.

These sites do seem to missing a few tricks and be harbouring a few annoyances:

• The image tells you so much, so few sites have good pictures
• Most of the specification provided about products is gobbledygook. What's the point of telling people that a washing machine is 42db? Is this good, bad, how does it compare to other machines, what is the average across all products. Perspective is missing. Too many parameters just confuses. This is especially true for audio-visual equipment
• Some key word searches are not well factored in the systems e.g. soap holder finds little in Amazon but Soap Dish finds loads.
  

The main thing I see is that consumer lead reviews need to be abstracted from suppliers. There needs to be one place to catch all reviews. Consumers would benefit as would the less paranoid suppliers.

Anyway, this is a blog so I'll keep it converted. Shopping on the Internet can actually be pleasurable. For myself I found the process quite technical but I am very picky and hate being ripped off. The killer will be when it all arrives (yes, delivery is the next hassle as I am bound to have to traipse through Oxford gangland to the pathetic post office returned goods stinky room to get the stuff. We'll see though. All in all I am pretty excited by what should be arriving in the near future(ish).

(And not to forget the mother of all web sites - the online bank and your balance.)