Zapos

How did Zapos shoes store, billed as the most popular online shoes store on the Web, get started? The story goes that Zapos was founded at the end of the 1990s after trips by the founder to traditional offline shoe retailers proved less than satisfactory. In other words, Nick Swinmurn, the founder of Zapos.com, couldn't find the shoes he wanted at the local mall.

Showing good old-fashioned American ingenuity, and driven by the frustration all consumers feel when they can't find what they need, the Zapos folks solved the problem by establishing an online shoes store that carries close to two million items in stock, including hard-to-find sizes. In the process, Zapos has made life better for everyone else who has a hard time finding great shoes in the right size. Carrying a lot of items in stock is helpful, of course, but it isn't the only reason for the explosive success of Zapos.

Another important factor is their customer service, which is widely praised. Perhaps equally helpful is the logical navigation scheme the Zapos.com website uses. After all, it does little good to have more than a million items to choose from, if it takes forever to sift through them and find the good stuff.

The technology behind Zapos.com is truly functional. You can search the site by size, style, brand, sale items, type of shoe, color, and even width. Type in a search query, and in seconds, a list of results is returned, along with a notation as to how many items were found. If you get too many results, you can narrow down your search by using a staggering array of subcategories. You'll never again be able to say you couldn't find the shoes you wanted.