And so this Christmas, the battle for the Web shopper will take on a second dimension.

Luckily for the e-tailers, Web shoppers are showing themselves to be a bit less the dogged bargain hounds than originally thought.

Still, it is not necessarily a risk that Web shoppers run.

Web shoppers, for example, might much prefer curling up on the couch with something more like a catalog to planting themselves at their desktop computers to shop.

Mr. Diller wants to build a business hooking up Web shoppers with brokers.

Web shoppers who spent more than $250 online in the past three months bought more than $800 worth of groceries during that time.

This information is stored in vast data warehouses and mined for a few nuggets about how to drive Web shoppers wild.

BizRate, similarly, found that only 10 percent of Web shoppers this month are making their first purchase online.

But with the exception of computer electronics and airline tickets, high-price goods have not been fast to catch on among Web shoppers.

But high-price goods have not been fast to catch on among Web shoppers.