Underware...hardware..software... virtual....What about Footware

You can buy hardware..software as well as underware... yes the largest sale is WOMAN APPARALs. Especially lingaries and bras and what not. Jewllery, mobile all are traded and shopped but, have you ever imagines buying Shoe in virtual world.

According to traditional wisdom, shoes should be a tough item to sell online. Who buys shoes without trying them on? One manufacturer's Size 9 is another's Size 8. And can you really fall in love with a pair of shoes by looking at a photo?

Yet Shoebuy has figured out a method of tempering customer doubts -- in fact, the site has developed a series of techniques to sell an item that consumers have traditionally needed to see in person.

First, the site offers free shipping -- and free return shipping. If you don't like your purchase, it'll cost you nothing to send it back. And there's no hidden clause, like "purchase must be over $35." Free shipping means even a $15 pair of shoes can be purchased and returned at no customer expense.

In other words, Shoebuy is willing to lose money on some transactions to assure customers that buying shoes online is risk-free. Consequently, the site's return rate is about 16 percent, says Shoebuy CEO Scott Savitz. This number has remained pretty consistent since the site launched, he says, with a slight downward trend now that the site has a greater percentage of repeat customers.

"We've always offered free shipping, from Day One," says Savitz. "What happens is that people make their first purchase, and they think 'I'm not going to lose anything.' And they find out it works out extremely well, and they buy an awful lot more."

Replicating Brick and Mortar
To sweeten its offering, Shoebuy offers a 110 percent price guarantee on any shoe purchase. "So if you're seeing a lower price on another site, we will look at what we're offering it for and give you 110 percent of the difference," Savitz says, noting that this offer is rarely used by his site's customers.

To replicate the brick and mortar shoe buying experience, Shoebuy offers live phone help. This is a "huge" part of the site's success, Savitz says. All of its calls are answered in-house -- he feels that outsourcing phone support ultimately proves ineffective -- by a team of about 20 trained sales personnel.

To go a step above brick and mortar, Shoebuy offers a selection not found in an average shoe store. The site partners with over 200 footwear brands, allowing it to offer about 300,000 products.

Automated Merchandising
Shoebuy's e-commerce platform is completely proprietary, built by in-house programmers. Likewise, its Web analytics software was also coded in-house, and Savitz says attention to the analytics data is non-stop.

"We do a lot of A-B testing, and funneling, and clickstream analysis, so we look at are they getting to where they want to be?" he says. By his account, the site gets 2 million unique users per month. During the workday, until about 5 pm, it sees 3,500 to 4,000 queries per minute, from shoppers clicking on product links. The average visit is 18 minutes long.