You may have already heard about it, but Amazon has jumped headfirst into the online Shoe biz with a brand new separate site. I have to hand it to them - when they go all out, they don’t mess around. The new website is called Endless.com and they basically sell hundreds of brands of shoes and handbags.

So far, it sounds like just about every other online shoe website. But here’s the kicker: they offer free OVERNIGHT shipping on ALL orders in the U.S. That’s pretty sweet. And when they mean overnight, they mean overnight. I think each page has a countdown clock telling you how long you have to order so that it’ll still get there overnight.

I can just see the other sites scrambling madly to figure out how to compete with that offer. Granted, the online shoe market is pretty huge (or at least it’s projected to be) - so there’s a lot of pie to go around for everyone wanting a slice. Still, this definitely will set them apart from the beginning and should make other sites worry just a bit.

Incidentally, this venture marks the first time that Amazon has actually launched a separate online brand as well. It definitely won’t hurt the site’s credibility that it’s backed by the online powerhouse, although it is clearly a separate venture.

They also offer a 110% price guarantee for up to 2 weeks after you purchase your shoes. That means if you can find an online competitor offering the same shoe for less, they’ll refund 110% of your purchase price. This gimmick isn’t as good as the Free Overnight shipping, because it of course does not apply to any special promotions like rebates, gift certs and BOGO type offers.

So how is the website itself? Pretty interesting, actually. They claim to have designed the site from scratch with user interface motivations coming from actual customer suggestions. What’s pretty cool is the ability to search for shoes using different aspects like style, color, size, width and brand concurrently. As you pick options, the search narrows itself. I’m not sure if they’re using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML - the magical stuff behind all those Flickr and Web 2.0 sites), but it sure seems like it because I don’t see the page reloading when you change options.

This way of searching for products is much different (so far) from most other shoe sites which are hard-coded and tree driven - that is you have to manually dig down page by page into the various categories in order to find particular shoes you want. From a customer standpoint, Amazon’s method really seems to work intuitively. It remains to be seen - but if anything, I think this unique method of searching may lend them more advantage than their crazy Overnight Shipping.

You can visit the site at Endless.com.