Online shopping is a big business, even for huge companies like AOL. They are working to improve their Web shopping environment, inStore. In addition to making it more accessible, I think it does need the upgrade. If they are going to compete in this area, moving things forward just makes sense.

America Online Inc. (AOL) plans to roll out significant enhancements to its inStore retail comparison shopping Web site in April, as the company simultaneously develops similar Web sites that will replicate the inStore concept for other industries such as travel and autos, an AOL executive said.

The inStore enhancements, which AOL refers to collectively as inStore 2.0, will include an improvement to the AOL Wallet service, expanded personalization capabilities and an extended integration with the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) instant messaging service, said David Lebow, AOL’s executive vice president and general manager of AOL Media Networks. AOL is also working hard at building loyalty features into inStore, but those may not be included in the April upgrade, Lebow said. “This new package of enhancements will carry us through to the holiday season,” Lebow said.

AOL wants to make it easier for inStore visitors to use the AOL Wallet to do transactions with the vendors whose products can be found on inStore, Lebow said. The AOL Wallet is a service that lets subscribers store frequently used credit card numbers and shipping addresses so that they don’t have to enter that information again when they make a purchase online. Another enhancement being contemplated for the AOL Wallet is the masking of actual credit card numbers with virtual ID numbers for additional security, an AOL spokesman said.

Meanwhile, inStore will have new capabilities to remember what shoppers did on their previous visits and, based on that knowledge, make personalized suggestions and offer different options to different shoppers, Lebow said. This would be an extension to the level of personalization already offered through inStore’s existing “My Favorite Stores” feature, which lets shoppers create lists of their preferred stores; these lists are displayed for shoppers on the inStore home page and in other sections. “What we want is for the Favorite Stores function to be intuitive so that it remembers what you did last time and takes you back to certain places,” Lebow said.