Should e-commerce be better than this? Why do retailers design sites this way?

Asked by elbanditoroso (33159

) July 12th, 2013

I’m looking for a replacement toaster oven. I went to the Best Buy site because they (used to) have a good selection. My plan was to shop online and then, if I found something I liked, drive straight to the store and pick it up this afternoon.

On their site, I wanted to filter by “At store in Zip code xxxxx”. That way I would know what is in stock today.

But their website doesn’t do that. You can filter by “online only”, which is the exact opposite of what I wanted to do.

Why does a retailer like Best Buy, who has both real stores and e-stores, make it so difficult to buy from them? This seems counter-intuitive.

Come on, web e-commerce developers, why can’t you be smarter?

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2 Answers

Has Best Buy changed their website then? I could swear that at one time you could filter by zip.
As a matter of fact I’m pretty sure that my fiancé and I did just that last summer when he was looking for a video game.

I don’t see why they would change that. It’s a great feature.

Stupid move, Best Buy.

Katniss (6656

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Did you start by looking for the product? I’m finding that they do allow you to look at product availability by zip code from the product information page. But whether they provide this option depends on the product, and also apparently on the location (in Canada, it appears that most products can’t be checked for local availability, whereas if I force it to show me the US site, this option is more frequently offered).

glacial (12145

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