Seven Ways to Fix Technology Retailing

No doubt about it: The last few months have been weird and dismal in the world of technology retailing. First, CompUSA announced plans to shutter all its locations--then got a sort-of-reprieve when TigerDirect bought the brand and said it would maintain the Web site and a smattering of stores. And earlier this week, ailing DVD rental outfit Blockbuster said it was trying to acquire ailing Best Buy rival Circuit City--a deal which nearly everybody thinks would result in one larger, possibly even more sickly entity. Did I mention that sales are down sharply at RadioShack, a retailer that seems to be in business for the purpose of making buying electronics a little like visiting the DMV?

With few exceptions--mainly Best Buy, the Apple Store, and west-coast geek outfitter Fry's--almost nobody seems to be very successful at being in the business of selling technology gear at retail. I'm convinced that's in part because almost nobody makes the experience very pleasant. Or, actually, provides compelling reason to buy at retail rather than online, where plenty of merchants do a good job of making the buying experience fast and even fun.

Herewith, some suggestions for making the tech retail experience less taxing on us poor consumers:

1. Make support less stressful. The Apple Store has a huge advantage over most retailers in the fact that the Geniuses pretty much only need to know the wares of one company that doesn't make all that many different models of computer. But there's a lot that any retailer could crib from the Genius Bar experience. Let us make reservations in advance. Give us benches to sit on rather than force s to slump in a line that never seems to get shorter. Provide free Wi-Fi so we have a way to kill time.

2. Don't cater to the lowest common denominator. Want the latest, coolest tech products? They're almost always available first online. Which is why when I need something like an 8GB MicroSD card, I don't even think about shopping locally. And too many PCs at retail are stripper models--bare-bones units that seem to be tailored to achieving a lowball price for Sunday circulars.

3. Let us check out the merchandise. In theory, the single biggest edge that brick-and-mortar stores have over online ones is that you can see and touch products before you buy them. But many retailers throw away this advantage in multiple ways. Computers aren't connected to monitors, or are missing keys. Laptops are bolted into anti-theft lockdown devices so you can't gauge how easy they are to tote. PCs, cameras, and other products aren't plugged in. Displays aren't calibrated. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

4. Fix pricing. And by that I don't mean "match the price of online merchants." That's probably not realistic given the costs involved in storefront retailing. But it drives me bonkers when it's difficult to determine the price of a product I'm planning to buy, and many electronics sellers are prime offenders here. In an ideal world, every single box in the store would have an old fashioned price sticker on it; short of that, there needs to be a tag on the shelf with a clearly-marked price. Also, when manufacturer price drops do happen, many electronics merchants seem to be ridiculously slow about marking down items correspondingly-a sort of de facto markup, since online sellers typically implement price cuts very quickly.

5. Tell us what's inside. Sometimes, retailers have pretty decent lists of specs next to desktops and laptops. Sometimes they're incomplete. Sometimes they're for the wrong system. Sometimes there's absolutely nothing there at all. We need system information that's at least as good as what we'd get at Dell or Amazon. Other products, like digital cameras, also need complete and correct spec sheets. After all, there's almost no chance that the salespeople will know any of these facts off the tops of their heads.

6. Make it easier to get stuff. One of the reasons I think Best Buy provides a better overall shopping experience than Circuit City is that a higher percentage of its merchandise has historically been out on the floor, so I can simply pick up whatever I want and proceed to checkout. But even there, some stuff--especially small, pricey stuff-is under lock and key, and it's often tough to find a clerk to retrieve it. (Mysteriously, the same clerks who I can't find when I need them are available in droves when I want to be left alone.) I've been known to throw up my hands and take my business elsewhere. Why not rip off the system once used by retailers such as Service Merchandise, which kept almost everything in a stockroom and let customers place orders by filling out slips of paper with stock numbers for the products they wanted (or, in later years, by using a terminal)? Seems like it would be faster for us customers and cheaper and more efficient for the retailer.

7. Speed checkout. Sorry to keep using Apple Stores as a point of reference, but checking out tends to be reasonably speedy in them, in part because of the roving clerks who can ring up your sale using a wireless terminal. Why isn't this standard procedure everywhere?

Anyhow, those are my ideas--ones which, if implemented anywhere, would earn lots and lots of my business. Got any proposals of your own?