Buy.com beats Amazon in Forrester PowerRankings

BANGALORE: Buy.com has emerged as the top e-commerce site in the latest

PowerRankings of online electronic sellers by Forrester Research Inc. The site

has pipped big names like Amazon.com, Best Buy and Egghead.com to the post,

primarily due to its free shipping and fast customer service responses, said a

Forrester release.

Forrester PowerRankings combines survey data from online consumers and

unbiased shopping tests to provide rankings of leading US e-commerce sites. This

is the first time that buy.com has won PowerRankings. According to Forrester,

low prices — for both products and shipping — have long been a hallmark of

the site, but its speedy buying process, thorough online help, and quick-loading

pages ensured its win. "However, the site still has its weaknesses, such as

having no real-time inventory information, express checkout, gift-wrapping, or

customer reviews," the research agency added.

Amazon.com, which came in second, is easy to use and brimming with features

like customer reviews, gift-wrapping, and the fastest express checkout of all

the sites tested, said Forrester. But, its customer service — both email and

phone — continues to be a problem. The customer service phone number is nearly

impossible to find on the site, and the Forrester shopper had to wait an average

of four days for email responses, the study pointed out.

"Buy.com is usually the cost champion, but this is the first time the

company has been ranked an overall first in a PowerRankings category," said

Tom Rhinelander, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "While the shopping

experience at buy.com continues to improve, its victory was no doubt aided by

the deteriorating customer service at Amazon.com."

Best Buy took top honors in customer service because of its quick email and

phone responses. But, to challenge the leaders, Best Buy must eradicate site

failures during product searches and add shopper-friendly features like express

checkout and gift-wrapping, Forrester suggested. On business-focused Egghead.com,

Forrester commented that it was getting better, but it still lacked many basic

features like an online address book and product reviews.

For the latest PowerRankings, Forrester surveyed 20,000 consumers from the

NPD Group's online panel. These consumers identified the e-commerce sites that

they purchased from most recently and rated their experiences. A team of

Forrester shoppers then evaluated the shopping experience on sites that have a

statistically valid number of consumer respondents by performing a series of

rigorous tests. The consumer data and Forrester shopper scores were then

synthesized and weighted, with consumer views accounting for two-thirds of the

overall PowerRankings.