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A test of whether buying a home improvement product on the Web is better than visiting the store

Yahoo! Internet Life, a magazine published by Ziff-Davis, runs a department called, "Old Way Net Way" in which the publication compares the "tried-and-true" with the "net-and-new."

In its July issue, it compared two ways of keeping the dog well-fed. The Old Way involved checking with the local feed store and a Petco superstore to price out a 40-lb. bag of Nutra Adult Maintenance dog food. The effort involved four minutes of calling and a half-hour of shopping.

The Net Way involved electronically searching for pet supplies. The reporter found lots of sites for toys and dog beds, but no dog food. An electronic search specifically for dog food found a "cool Dog Food Comparison Chart" but no online purveyor of dog chow. Not even Petco's Web site offered a way to order and purchase online. The reporter surfed for 30 minutes, without any luck. Thus, the magazine declared the "old way" the winner and suggested that selling dog food online is a business waiting to be exploited.

Similarly, the reporter looked at buying a wedding gift the Old Way and the Net Way. He and his wife went to three crowded downtown stores (Saks Fifth Avenue, Williams-Sonoma and Macy's) where the bride-to-be had registered. After seeing what the couple had asked for, and what they had so far received, the reporter and his wife left, unable to decide among the overwhelming number of choices. They didn't buy a present, even though they could have, after two-and-a-half hours of searching, including parking and shopping time.

On the Web, they checked out Macy's online bridal registry, where the couple was also listed. In about six minutes, they filled out the online forms, including a message to the bride and groom, and sent the gift. "No crowds, no cars, no parking." The winner: the Net Way.

That article gave me the idea to test the Old Way against the Net Way in the home improvement business. I decided to see how easy it is find, order and purchase a fairly common home improvement product -- a cordless power drill -- online.

The Net Way

A search for "cordless power drill" via my Excite search engine found 20 home improvement shopping sites which purportedly had information on and/or allowed for the purchase of this product. These ranged from manufacturer sites such as Bosch Power Tools, Husquvarna Power Equipment, and Black & Decker and store-related sites like Sears Craftsman, Orchard Supply Hardware and Home Depot, to Internet-only retailers such as Superbuild and Toolsource.

The first site listed was Housemart.com, an online retailer partly owned by members of the Sutherland Lumber family. The Internet company has an agreement with Sutherland in which a couple of the dealer's Oklahoma warehouse stores supply merchandise for the Web retailer.

Using the site's search engine, a search for cordless power drill produced no products or departments for the search parameters -- even though the home page itself featured a photo and description of a "3/8-in. cordless drill/driver kit at $35" (no brand identified).

Clicking on the sale item took me to a registration page, although what I really wanted was more information about the product, at least the brand or manufacturer. I thought I would finally get the additional product specifications I was looking for after registering. Instead, my next step after clicking on the register button took me to a shopping basket page, where I was treated to these additional tidbits of product information: the tool is 9.6 volt and shipping will cost me $4.

After 18 minutes I didn't buy anything, mainly because insufficient information was provided about the product.

My next electronic stop was at the next site listed on my search engine, William Alden Woodworking. The home page loaded quickly and listed six major product categories (power tools, hand tools, paint sundries, stationary power tools, clamps and books) plus a "specials" department.

A search feature at the bottom of the page allowed viewers to look up what they want by product, manufacturer and even sku number. Instead of using the search, however, I clicked the power tools department and was taken to a page listing a number of different models of tools by these manufacturers: DeWalt, Milwaukee, Porter Cable, Hitachi, Makita, and Woodstock.

I clicked the listing for the "Makita Cordless Drill 3/8-in. 14.4-volt, cordless drill driver, variable speed and reversible, $204.99, sku number 826552, manufacturer code 6233DWAR, with charger." Heavens! A bounty of product information, including a picture.

My excitement was tempered when I got to the shopping basket page and was perplexed by a few things that seemed to indicate that this site has some glitches to work out. For no apparent reason, the product, once it was in my shopping basket, was listed at $178, a nice $27 discount, which I certainly wasn't going to argue with. An interesting feature was the pull-down menu which showed that Massachusetts residents must add a 5 percent sales tax to their order, while out-of-state buyers paid no tax. Another pull-down menu indicated that it would cost me $12 for standard shipping; however, two-day air and next-day delivery (premium options that should have cost more) were free! Something didn't look right about that.

Nevertheless, if I were a serious hobbyist and looking for a premium quality woodworking power tool, I would have ordered from this site.

It took me only 15 minutes to find a product to buy, register, and then check out on the Sears.com/craftsman site. Either this site was one of the easier ones to navigate or I was getting better at shopping online - probably a bit of both.

Things that impressed me about the site included the long list of product categories from which to choose and the nine different cordless power drills listed. When I clicked Sears Item No. 27490, a Craftsman 3/8-inch cordless drill, I was taken to a page with a photograph and more than 100 words of descriptive copy that made me feel comfortable buying this $97.99 product. However, that price ballooned to $114.16 after Sears added $7.22 for tax (the first site I encountered that charged a sales tax) and $8.95 for shipping.

A visit to Superbuild.com also took about 15 minutes to locate, select and purchase a cordless power drill. Like the other sites, Superbuild's search engine proved pretty useless. However, its 12 store departments illustrated the breadth of products carried, from appliances and outdoor recreation to building supplies and housewares. The power tools department contained just six products, but luckily for me one was a 3/8inch cordless driver-drill for $144.53. Clicking on the product brought up more information, such as the manufacturer (Makita) and the suggested retail price ($166.99). The site charges no sales tax and shipping was just $2.95 for UPS Ground.

As at the other sites, new users must register, which is a real pain the first time but through use of passwords allows quicker access on subsequent virtual shopping visits. All the home improvement Web sites, including the ones that aren't yet selling merchandise, are aggressively signing up users and collecting email addresses for their marketing databases.

The Old Way

In shopping the old way for a cordless power drill, I hopped in my car and drove about 15 minutes to my nearest home center, a Home Depot, since the world's largest home improvement chain is probably the standard against which these Web site upstarts will be measured.

I've been in literally hundreds of Home Depots during the course of my retail reporting career so it took me little time to locate the tool corral. I suppose to some shoppers (or for a more arcane product), finding what you want in Depot's cavernous stores could be an adventure and take up significantly more time.

The Home Depot store offered a much broader selection of many more manufacturers' models than any of the e-tailers I visited (some more expensive, some less costly than the ones I found online). The cost of the gasoline I used didn't come close to matching the shipping charges of the Web sites, easily offsetting the savings on sales tax I could get buying from most of the tax-free Web sites.

Since I didn't need any help to select the tool I wanted, the store didn't really hold any customer service advantage over the Web sites. However, being able to touch and lift the product made me feel better about purchasing it.

For a Saturday, the checkout lines were fairly short and moved quicker than usual, so I could have exited the store in just 15 minutes. However, I couldn't resist the temptation to browse around the 100,000 square feet of retail space and pick up other assorted, small items I needed. My entire shopping trip took about 45 minutes.

Old Way vs. Net Way