Its interesting to see that most of the customers seem to be women(or men buying for women). Might be worth taking a look to see some consumer buying choices.
It's hard to explain the appeal of Zappos, but one of my friends told me that she can buy ten pairs of shoes for an upcoming event, try them all on at home, keep the one or two she likes and return the rest. Basically, it's like online shopping mashed up with real window browsing.
That's basically why I use Zappos (although not quite to that extent).
Shoe shopping isn't really "fun", it's a utility exercise. The only reason you can't easily order shoes (or other apparel) online is because of the fit issue. A size X from 3 different manufacturers (or 3 styles from the same manufacturer) could vary enough to affect the fit.
So, I can go to Zappos, throw a few shoes I'm interested in into my cart and they're generally at my house the next day. Try them on, keep the ones I want, box the others up and drop the box off at the UPS store on my way to work.
Far less hassle than going to the mall, with a far wider selection and better prices. Not really sure what the downside is, if any.
I've heard it's very valuable for shopping for shoes where sizing must be very precise, i.e. rock climbing shoes. Order the 3 sizes you usually dance around, and keep the one that fits you best.
The site seems to map purchases down to the individual address of the customer (you just have to zoom in a while to get there). As a potential zappos customer, I can't help but feel a little weirded out that my order information is so public. I can't really think of any real security violations (other then a really convoluted phishing app), but it'd be interesting to see if they can even legally report this data under their user agreement policy
It may not be the actual address - I noticed a shoe purchased a few hundred miles off the coast of Africa in an area without islands (I zoomed in to check!).
That's probably 0 degrees north, 0 degrees west, right on the Greenwich meridian and the equator, in the Gulf of Guinea. It's a spot that basically means "no data".
