On Saturday, I bought the Tom Peters book "The Brand You 50" for $10.95 and the Peanuts video "Its the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" for $8.99 from Buy.com.  On Sunday, I purchased the CD "Very Best Of Burl Ives Christmas."  Amy had seen this CD reviewed in Friday's Wall Street Journal Weekend Section and wanted to get it (you know what they say...the couple that reads the WSJ together, stays together.  I am one lucky guy; honey, I love you).

Ben and I went to see Toy Story 2 Saturday morning at 10 am, then looped back to the house to pick up Sam and Amy for lunch at McDonalds (yum yum for two boys).  The ongoing Happy Meal toy promotion is for Toy Story 2, how convenient.  The boys got Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head and Woody riding atop Bullseye.  I got sucked up in all of the Toy Story 2 hype and bought the boys a few action figures from KBKids.com.  Most of the TS2 action figure prices at KBKids.com were well below that of all competitors that I identified (e.g., $4.95 and $5.95 versus $7.99 and $8.99).  Only the Woody's Roundup -- includes Woody, Jessie, Bullseye, and Prospector, woohoo -- was priced higher than others ($24.99 versus $19.99 at Amazon).  I sent in a price match request to KBKids.com that will hopefully be approved.

The selection at ToysRus was disappointing.  I was ready to buy; they didn't have much of interest for sale.  They had three TS2 items for sale.  KBKids.com must have been rocking.  The loading times of its webpages were painfully long.  Connection errors occurred frequently.  It was very painful to shop there.  They did, however, offer very good selection.  I must have shopped there for several hours real time and about 15-20 minutes contact time (i.e., time in which I was actually interacting with the website).  eToys and Amazon also had reasonably good selection.  They were not running any significant promotions.

Some thoughts about online retailing

Be Prepared for High Traffic
The KBKids.com website was the most painful online shopping experience that I have ever had; I could not have even imagined an experience like this.  The server was painfully slow.  On some occasions, placing an item in the cart would take up to 20 minutes to complete.  On many instances, a connection error would occur (i.e., could not connect to the requested webpage).  Fortunately, I was multitasking; I was working while I shopped.  My procedure was to perform a shopping related click and then turn to a window where I was working.  When I noticed that the shopping click was complete, I would return to the shopping window.  After several hours of this back and forth windowing, my shopping was complete.  The amount of real time that passed was about seven hours (I'm not KBKidding); the amount of contact time  was about 15-20 minutes.

I am curious as to why I tolerated this experience.  I wish I could blame it all on scientific reasons.  Once I knew that the low prices were at KBKids.com, I was determined to buy there.  I knew I would be on my computer all day working away, so to me, the cost of multitasking was obviously not greater than savings associated with purchasing TS2 items at KBKids.com.  Anyone out there buying that as a rational explanation?

Advertised Items should be Listed and In Stock
ToysRus listed a Toy Story 2 Internet Special in a circular enclosed with the Sunday newspaper.  The item, however, was not listed online.  At their website, they trumpeted the arrival of Toy Story 2, and, yet, had very few TS2 toys.  I sent them an email commenting on this situation.

My email

Dear ToysRus.com,

Your online selection is underwhelming.  You have all of three Toy Story 2 toys listed - wow.  I have been shopping your website for over 2 weeks and I have not made a purchase (though I've been ready) because either you have glitches, your offerings change suddenly, or it is difficult to find items.  I'm disappointed.  Best of luck.

Sincerely yours,

Bruce D. Weinberg

[When I first attempted to send this email, it was refused because I did not "complete" their email form.  I added the following comment in a provided space "improving this site."]

I attempted to send this email without entering my telephone number and address and the email would not send without this information. This information is irrelevant to my email submission (my email address should be enough) and it weakens my trust for your organization.  On the Internet, privacy is highly valued.  I was not signing this anonymously as I included my email address.  Hey, folks, sorry to be blunt, you're  missing the boat.

ToysRus' Response

Dear "Bruce Weinberg,

Thank you for contacting toysrus.com.

We certainly do value your feedback.  Your e-mail has been received and will be brought to the attention of our technical staff immediately.  We are currently working to rectify each and every technical issue we receive.  It is because of your comments that we are able to improve to be the best website we can be.

We are sorry for any inconvenience you may have experienced.  We look forward to serving you better in the near future.

Sincerely, 

B J Slater
Guest Services Representative

www.toysrus.com

Few Items in a Page Can Be Annoying
This surprised me.  One website design tenet is to minimize scrolling.  In the case of shopping, however, this may not apply.  ToysRus would list about 4-5 items per webpage.  One of their categories contained approximately fifty items; these items were spread out across ten webpages.  I would have preferred to scroll down one or two webpages over clicking through all of the webpages; it didn't help that traffic was heavy and loading time was relatively high.  Both Amazon and eToys had this figured out and listed many items per webpage.

Jumping Through Hoops is Not Fun
KBKids.com price guarantee process is as follows:
1) Email service@kbkids.com and request the list of online merchants against whom they will price match.
2) Wait for their reply (yah, right).
3) Email to service@kbkids.com the URL for the item that is priced lower by another merchant.  This is done after you place your order.
4) Wait for approval from KBKids.com