Web Sites to Hit for Those Last-Minute Gifts

Picking the Right Gift

Okay, you know when to order the gift, but you still don't know what to buy. Many retail sites now have special pages to help you pick the right gift. The trouble is, these tools don't know your loved ones half as well as you do.

Express.com's 60 Second Shopper is a good example. There's a pull-down list to pick the type of person you're buying for (Mother, Father, Boyfriend, Office Buddy, and so on) and check boxes for the types of products you have in mind (DVDs, CDs, Cool Stuff). I used this simple interface to find the right CD for my girlfriend, and got a selection of music from U2, the Wallflowers, Madonna, and others. But Express.com had no way of knowing that my girlfriend is a professional classical musician and an Ibrahim Ferrer fan.

E-mail gift certificates, of course, are the perfect solution to both problems. You don't have to worry about buying the right gift, or that it will arrive in time. And just about every online retailer offers these. What you lose with an e-mail gift certificate is the ability to hand the gift to someone and watch them open it. Of course, you can always e-mail the certificate to yourself, print it, and put it in an envelope.

If you go the certificate route, check out GiftCertificates.com. On this one site you can buy gift certificates for more than 500 retailers. Some are online, some are brick and mortar. You can pick a category like Apparel & Accessories or Dining, get a list of retailers that have signed up with GiftCertificates.com, read details, and make a choice.

Or if you can't make a choice, you can buy a SuperCertificate. Basically, this is a GiftCertificates.com gift certificate, which your loved one can use to buy other gift certificates. At this point, you might as well just send money.

With fast delivery and gift certificates, there's really no excuse for late gifts. Well, almost none. Long ago I committed myself to buying my son a PlayStation 2 for Hanukkah. There's no way that will arrive on time.

(See also "PCWorld.com Editors' Guide to Shopping Sites" and PCWorld.com's ongoing coverage of shopping online.