My early review of Jet.com, an online retailer betting on low prices

Recently, online retailer Jet opened its doors to a small audience for feedback on their Beta. I've been using Jet for a few days, and wanted to share some early thoughts.

Note: Jet's terms of use require me to tell you two things: Jet.com is still in Jet Beta Phase, and I've been provided early access.

What is Jet?

Jet is an e-commerce startup headed by Marc Lore. Marc created Quidsi, which operates sites like Diapers.com. Marc sold the company in 2010. Now, he's back with a new venture with a different model.

Jet is a subscription-based shopping club. For $50/year, you can shop their inventory, which ranges from grocery items to household goods to electronics. The company currently offers free 6-month memberships for customers to kick the tires, and promises low prices, free shipping, and free returns.

Price is the killer feature

Jet's killer feature, the thing that everyone will talk about and the thing that will draw people back, is their prices. In my experience, the majority of Jet's products are priced at a discount to other retailers, sometimes significantly so. In addition to low prices, Jet adds ways to move the total price down as you shop:

• As you add more products to your cart, Jet provides an additional discount if the products ship from the same place, up to a limit of 5 products. In my experience, around 80-85% of products offer this additional discount.
• You can waive the right to return a product in your cart, knocking off another small amount from thee price (somewhere between a nickel and a quarter, usually).
• At checkout, paying with a Visa or Mastercard credit card gives you an additional 0.25% discount. Paying with a debit card gives you an additional 1.5% discount. Amex users get no discount.

The result is something that feeds the deal hunter habit: shop for low prices, and shop more for an even better deal.

Jet also gives discounts by offering kickbacks for shopping on other sites. Called Jet Anywhere, the idea is to shop at another online retailer and get a percentage of your order's value added to your Jet account as JetCash. Unfortunately, you have to both remember to click through to the other retailers' sites from Jet and you have to forward your order confirmation email to Jet in order to earn your JetCash. These two steps are enough to lead most people to not bother with this, though some kickbacks are significant (as of this writing, Anthropologie, Gap, J. Crew, and Macy's get you 30% back in JetCash).

Selection is decent, but can improve

Jet has a broad selection. Categories include products for the kitchen, bathroom, pantry, office, and toy room. I was expecting primarily a grocery and home supply selection, so I was surprised to find laptops and fishing lures alongside cereal and dishwashing detergent (figuratively speaking). Jet's category depth is somewhat lacking however. For example, I was excited to find that Jet carried the 12.5oz cans of Wellness cat food I usually buy, but was disappointed that Jet did not offer the 5.5oz size. A search for a particular kind of Kiss My Face shampoo yielded one or two varieties, but the company offers many more. Jet also appears to have just one of the many varieties of Dry Soda. The issue does not appear to be universal, as I didn't have this problem when it came to a search for deodorant. An email from the company promised to add one of the products I contacted them about, so I assume they are actively looking to improve this.

Customer service appears to be quick and friendly

I've been sending Jet feedback as I've been using the site. If the email responses are any judge, Jet's customer service team is quite good. I've received emails back within a few hours and responses are in a friendly, conversational tone. Followup emails get answered just as quickly. I haven't had to process a return or ask a complicated question, but based on these interactions I would expect a positive experience.

Site usability leaves room for improvement

Jet's website is decent, but has plenty of room for improvement: 

• Jet's product imagery is often a single, low-resolution image. This is fine for products you're familiar with, but practically a non-starter for things like grocery goods where you want to look at the ingredients and nutrition label on the box.
• The color scheme is a little hard on the eyes. Purple and light blue on white is not the best text accent color.
• Search results are sometimes unpredictable. The cat food options that comes up when searching for "wellness cat" do not come up when searching for "wellness", and vice versa.
• The site is very search-driven, and there's not much a browse experience to speak of. Curious what cereals Jet has? You have to hover over Grocery, then over Cereals under Breakfast, and click. The resulting page is a category filter of products that match Cereals. Curious about what's new or hot in Cereals? There's apparently no curated category page for that. Curious what products are tagged Breakfast or Grocery overall? It seems you can do that by deleting category filters on the left bar, but I was unable to make that work.

Are these problems bad enough to make people stop using the site? I don't think so. But with a web-only, search-driven site like Jet is today, problems searching and finding what you have in mind seems like a fairly significant problem.

Summary

So, is Jet worth the $50/year fee? Like other subscription programs, it depends on how much you buy, which depends on price and selection. I think Jet has price down pat, but their selection can be improved. A trial subscription will let you evaluate their catalog and consider how much you'll spend annually to decide if it's worth it.

I'll post some followup thoughts as Jet evolves and opens up its site to a broader audience. 

• Pros
• Great prices
• Better prices for ordering multiple products, waiving returns, and paying with a debit card.
• Products across lots of different categories
• Friendly customer service
• Cons
• Depth of selection in some categories
• Site usability
• Cumbersome Jet Anywhere rewards program