Online Product Research

Q:I am trying to develop an understanding on how one does a product purchase on the net. One of the ways to do so is to use a comparitive service like Jango (off Excite), Compare.net, shopping.com, or pricewatch (specific to computers). I would like to know how many people use comparitive services (and if you don't use one of the ones listed, please tell me what one you use) and how you feel that have been at meeting your needs.

A:Finally, I would love to know what "service" you feel could be offered to you that would make it easier for you to get to a purchase point. What do you want? Comparitives (lie the above)? Better search tools (alta vista with some smarts)? Better index engines (Yahoo! with a more detailed understanding of cross referencing)? If you could define a tool that would help you in an e-commerce purchase, what would that tool be? I like to use the web sites of known retailers to compare prices for products. Also, posting a question in a comp. newsgroup about where's the best price on such and such usually brings several responses from people who have recently bought the product. I did the same with a graphics software program and found the best price that way. The couple of times I tried one of the online services, it returned a ton of results with sellers I had never heard of and didn't want to now have to start researching the company I'm going to buy from after spending time researching the product I wanted. I, like many IMHO, prefer to do business with a "name brand" retailer. Unless it's a local small business that I can actually visit. As a small business on the internet only, I had a hard time getting a merchant account and find the price to be unbearable to set this up. When my company expands, this will be an area of growth however at this time I rely on check software to accept checks over the internet. It was a cost effective solution that has worked well for me and my clients. I purchased this from http://www.checksoftware.com