Gap

Full review
As a carless student attending college in rural Ohio, I have limited access to malls and big, bad,(but useful) chain department stores. My town has great coffee shops and a cool independent bead/clothing store, but where do I go for t-shirts and underwear? Enter www.gap.com.

Gap.com has a great selection of merchandise, including the ever-necessary undies (lots of cute string bikinis and thongs in cotton and nylon!) The site is well-organized in terms of categorizing items (pants, shirts, denim, skirts, etc.) including the very important SALE category. There is also a picture of each item, which is generally adequate, although you can't zoom in as well as you can with the jcrew.com or ae.com (american eagle) sites. Another problem with gap.com is that all the sizes and colors (especially in the sale section) are shown as available, until you click on add to cart. Then sometimes you get a pop up screen telling you that small doesn't come in red, only xs or medium--or that you can get small in blue or purple instead. It can be kind of a drag, but that screen has a pull down menu which allows you to select from the colors and sizes available. I still think Gap should put this on the first page with the photo of the merchandise.

The site still runs pretty smoothly--check out is easy and you can sign in to save your shipping and billing info for next time.

The best thing about Gap is the speedy shipping. Maybe it's just being in Ohio, but I have often gotten my items the day or two after I ordered (when I selected regular shipping, not overnight)! They generally do a good job with packaging too, and will put your items in a sturdy envelope instead of a box if they can fit it in. (I like this--environmentally sound!)

If you like what you see in the physical Gap stores, try out their virtual equivalent in gap.com.