So, I had to buy some curtains last night. I thought I would buy them the old-fashioned way, by driving to a nearby store, but I discovered that the local store didn’t sell curtains in the dimensions I needed. I could get cafe curtains or long panels at the store, but nothing in between.

So, I decided to go online. No, I wouldn’t be able to touch the fabric, yes, it would mean I’d have to postpone my new-curtain gratification, but it seemed like online there would at least be a wider range of sizes to choose from. At least, that was my first assumption.

I decided to go with known vendors, so instead of typing curtains into Google and seeing what I found, I tried Sierra Trading Post (an odd choice, I know). Here’s what I found:

They had 43 results, that seemed promising. The problem is that I wasn’t looking for “curtains” - I was looking a pair of curtains to fit a 46″x53″ expanse of windows. So, I didn’t need floor length panels. And that was all I could see as I scrolled down the page. Worse, I wasn’t able to narrow the results to see if they had any curtains in the sizes I was interested in. I had to review each listing. OK, well, maybe an outdoor surplus website isn’t the place to buy home furnishings.

Next, I tried sears.com and landsend.com. I did this because I have Sears gift cards I wanted to use up. Sears had 153 curtain listings on their site, but again, no ability to narrow results by size, so I would have had to page through 153 results to find the few, if any, that were available in the size I wanted. Again, most appeared to be panels for large French door type windows, not the kind I wanted. I was motivated by the magic of gift cards, though, so I dutifully checked the list. They did offer options to narrow by brand names, but I didn’t recognize the brands, and I was really only interested in curtain size, something that wasn’t available in the “narrow your search” options. I did find one curtain that might have worked, and I held it in my shopping cart, but I wasn’t sure it was the best option. For one, it seemed expensive (each curtain was $60 and I needed 4 of them…).

I checked LandsEnd.com. Neither “curtain” nor “curtains” turns up anything in their search, but if you click through Home Accents, you can get to Curtains and Rods, which had nice looking stuff, but again, nothing in the size I wanted. Since there were only two choices, though, I didn’t mind paging through them.

Finally, I did what I should have done in the beginning, I did a Google search for curtains. I skimmed the organic and the sponsored listings. I couldn’t do JC Penney, the top listing, because I had the Sears card. It just didn’t seem right. I skimmed down to Overstock.com and clicked through their ad. Now, when I searched for “curtains” on Overstock, I got 11 pages, 60 results per page. And, the absolute best, I got a way to narrow my search by size. Exactly what I’d been struggling with on the previous sites. I found several pairs of curtains that matched my specifications, and while I was there, I recalled I had a few other things to buy. So, Overstock did right by me, search wise, and I ordered more than just curtains when I was there.

So in my completely unscientific nonrandom survey of 4 sites, overstock.com was the best online experience because it offered me a quick way to find what I needed.