Bargain hunting on the Web hots up

Cover Story

For many consumers, online shopping is like hopping from square to square in hopscotch. It might start with a stop at one Website to research a product, a jump to another to compare prices and a leap to a third to actually purchase the item.

But Internet portals such as Lycos, Inc and Alta Vista Company want to make the

online shopping experience

more like making a slam dunk in basketball.

Lycos and Alta Vista will introduce shopping services that bring product reviews, comparison shopping services and ratings from other consumers together into one place.

It’s the next evolution for shopping at portals where consumers have mostly found a collection of links to products or partner merchants.

Analyst Jill Frankie said one-stop shopping is

something more and more consumers want as they are faced with the multitude of e-commerce choices.

“There has been consumer demand for a more integrated solution as people are shopping the Web and as the number of merchants and service on the Web have grown,” said Frankie of Gomez Advisors, which provides consumer-based e-commerce research.

“We may be in for a shift in consumer behaviour with respect to the way

they’re shopping.”

Portal sites began as search engines

that helped people navigate the thicket

of content on the Web. While they’ve relied mostly on revenues from advertising and sponsorship agreements, with companies paying for prominent placement of their links on

the site, portals are now seeking other sources of revenue.

One of those is from e-commerce.

For portals, the new shopping services are a way to keep consumers on their site, where they’ll see more advertisements and make purchases, leading to commissions from merchant partners.

Lycos, for instance, is hoping to take in some of the US$6 billion (A 59.19 billion) that consumers are predicted to spend online this holiday season by providing tools for the entire shopping experience. Already, about 40 percent of the searches performed on the Lycos site are shopping related, said executive vice president Ron Sege.

The Lycos Web Shopper, a new

comparison shopping tool, will allow consumers to rank features they’re looking for in a product, such as the manufacturer, price, availability and resolution of a digital camera. The feature, which is powered by technology from Frictionless Commerce Inc, will return links to products that are scored according to how well they meet that criteria.

Lycos will also offer links to sites such as epinions.com, which provides

product reviews by both professionals

and consumers.

The new Alta Vista Shopping.com, one of three new Alta Vista services that were introduced recently as part of a relaunch of the Alta Vista portal, will offer similar features including product reviews and comparisons.

A website creator with his creation. On-line shopping of any kind has become more popular

Alta Vista is working with ConsumerßEVlEW.com and ZDNet to provide product reviews from other consumers and professionals.

Alta Vista and others also use information from bizßate.com, a merchant rating program based on online buyers’ feedback.

In the next few months, America Online, Microsoft Corp’s MSN portal and The Walt Disney Company’s GO Network site also plan to unveil additional shopping services; - MSN’s Gift Finder, available on

msn.com now, is similar to services that AOL and go.com introduced during the past holiday season. It allows shoppers to specify

a recipient’s relationship,

the occasion, the type of gift and price range to a database, which then returns a list of gift ideas. - At AOL, a new “live products simulation” service will allow consumers to

electronically manipulate

an item on the computer.

For example, someone shopping for a wireless phone could click a button to turn the phone on.

The antenna would go up and they could click on the phone’s keypad, learn how to program it and listen to its ring. - Many of the portals also are offering electronic “wallet” services that allow consumers to securely store their credit card,

billing and shipping

information. When shoppers encounter an online form at a partner store, it’s automatically filled out with the information.

Some of the shopping services are already

offered at sites such as Productopia, Inc which collects expert and user opinions and selects top picks based on quality, value and style. Productopia CEO Roger Neal said the portals are

trying to play catch-up.

“What they’re doing is a bold

experiment,” Neal said. “They’re

experimenting with what people want.”

At Alta Vista, the experiment extends to its entire network. It’s been working for a year on an overhaul of its main www.altavista.com site and has added about 550 employees in

1999 - 400 of whom are based in Silicon Valley.

Alta Vista CEO Rod Schrock said it’s targeting an audience of “Web enthusiasts,” sophisticated Internet users who use the Web frequently.

Besides the revamped shopping service, Alta Vista is also introducing Alta Vista Live!, which will provide content including news, live stock quotes and sports scores that is updated each minute, and an expanded Alta Vista search service that will index more than 275 million pages. (KRT) ■

Patrons at a cybercafe surf the Internet