Target.com allows easy product purchase, but too many opportunities to stray from your shopping goals.

IN A NUTSHELL

Chock full of product, Target.com provides an online version of the in-store experience: aisles and aisles of things to buy. But you can do more than just shop on the site. You can also start a gift registry, browse print catalogs, manage your pharmacy prescriptions, apply for a Target credit card, read about home decorating tips, learn about product recalls, and, and…yeah, there's a lot here. And just like a Target store, you can find lots of stuff you need, and a lot more stuff you don't need.

BRAVO

Target.com has a lot of information to present, but selling product takes top priority, as it should. And the site does everything it can to provide users with any and all information they'll need to make a transaction. At first glance, the many ways to browse seem overwhelming–by product category, brand, age or gender of gift recipient, rooms in a home, color, and more. But once you get in there and start to look around, it's actually pretty easy to find whatever item you might be looking for. The categories make sense and can be broken down into subcategories displaying a greater variety of a single product (for example, the "appliances" section displays one of each appliance type, with links to explore more versions of each product type, like blenders).

Additional tools offer more personalized ways of searching for products. The Gift Finder helps you quickly narrow down your selections, while the shop by color feature, found on the home-related categories, is just plain fun.

TRY AGAIN

While the site provides all the information necessary to help you buy, it also induces information overload. There are so many text links on each page that it's hard to commit to any particular destination. Do you really need product categories listed along the top nav as well as the left nav? No. You don't. And the product pages could use refining. Each product display features a big red button at the bottom, but some will add the item to your cart, while others open a pop-up window that displays more product detail…and another big red "Add to Cart" button. But worse than that, the buttons aren't all aligned horizontally, making the pages look extra cluttered.

Other features are either clunky to use or just seem like overkill. The catalog browsers load slowly and display in a window that's too small to allow any actual browsing (although a cool pop-up feature provides quick product info and easy one-click purchase). The Red Hot Shop is a bizarre application with inconsistent performance and no obvious practical use. Both of these features feel like a waste of space.

Overall, the site delivers what it should to allow easy purchasing, but a little restraint on the amount of info and features would make for a smoother user experience.