Internet shopping has been described as catalogue shopping par excellence. That's a load of rubbish, of course. You don't pay by the minute for browsing a catalogue. Nor do catalogues suddenly, inexplicably lock up as their pages are turned. There's no 'excellence' about it. Most Internet users, buyers and sellers (except the proselytising Wavey Davey types), acknowledge this.
Late last year, for example, The Wall Street Journal carried out
a survey of major retailers, and asked them why they weren't particularly
interested in selling online. The Internet was too slow, said
many. It wasn't secure enough, said others. Then The Journal rounded
up 1,013 netsurfers and asked much the same. They weren't too
concerned about the speed (or maybe they were just resigned to
its sluggishness), but they did complain that online retailers
weren't offering attractive enough discounts. They argued that
the absence of a rateable brick-and-mortar shop meant that retailers
didn't have the usual overheads, therefore their goods ought to
be cheaper. And, most heinous crime of all, they said, most retail
web sites were boring.