Busiest day ever

If our statistics are anything to go by, this is definitely going another record Christmas for online shopping. Shopsafe.co.uk had its busiest day ever yesterday, and we are rated in the top 15,000 web sites in the world according to Alexa. If you plan to go shopping online hold on tight, it's going to be a busy December.

Following an announcement of slow pre-Christmas sales, online giant Amazon has announced plans to allow you the chance to buy sections of books rather than complete works. The first of these, Amazon Prices, will sell "just the pages needed" whether you need only a single page or one or more chapters. The second, Amazon Upgrade, will give you access to online copies of the hardback books after purchase.

Both of these technologies build on July's "Search Inside!" upgrade to Amazon's book search engine to give customers unusual flexibility in how they buy and read books.

Without an official launch date for these services though we'll have to continue buying books in their entirety, but we will keep you posted on any further news.

Cooking up a Storm

We thought it might be interesting if we interviewed one of the website owners listed on Shopsafe. This is what happened ...

SS: Tell me a bit about your online store?
C&K: Cooks and Kitchens is a (nearly award-winning!) cookshop that has developed a significant online presence over the past 6 months or so. We try to cover all the usual cookware categories, but much of our web business is generated on specialist items that people can't find locally. I especially like the fact that virtually all our online sales go to areas outside our normal retail patch.

SS: What are the most extreme lengths you have gone to to make a customer happy?
C&K: I'm afraid we don't do 'Milk Tray Man' type heroics, but we frequently get into long email conversations to close a sale and we did find a set of scales for an Australian customer, 4 months after their enquiry!

SS: What is the weirdest thing a customer has asked for?
C&K: We get enquiries for all sorts of daft things related to cookery, but the best one recently was 'How do I use a tin opener that I recently bought?' - It gets better because, whatever tin opener it was, they didn't buy it from us!

SS: When is your order deadline this Christmas?
C&K: Monday 19th December

SS: What is going to be your biggest seller this year?
C&K: I'd love to say Alessi kettles or high-end knife sets, but it's probably going to be cake tins....

SS: What would you buy yourself from your shop this Christmas?
C&K: Wow, that's tough, as I'm a cook at heart. I have a real soft spot for Emile Henry's new Flame casseroles that should be online in a couple of weeks, but I would probably replace my Wusthof knives with an even better set of Wusthof's or buy some Bridgewater crockery.

SS: What was the last thing you bought online?
C&K: Sadly, it was an 1893 map of the village in which I live, bought yesterday.

SS: Which is your favourite online store?
C&K: Gaynor Sports (for walking gear).

Online Prices set to Rise

According to the Times yesterday, millions of online shoppers will see price rises before Christmas.

They say electrical retailers are increasing the prices of items on web sites so that they match the high street prices. This means that the DVD recorder, digital camera, PSP or iPod that you were going to buy as a Christmas present could get more expensive in the next few weeks.

Our advice? Get shopping now, then you can spend December with your feet up playing with all these toys before you have to wrap them up again!

Host with the Most

After the server trouble we've been having we've moved Shopsafe to a new hosting company, Net Benefit.

After many years with our previous hosting company I hope this sorts out the hiccups we've been having, and provides a great platform for our web site to get even busier in the run up to christmas.