By Shopperati staff

So, you long ago got comfortable ordering collectibles from eBay, books from Amazon, and even shirts from J.Crew.com. But shoes? Given the number most of us try on in stores for every pair we wind up buying, how crazy do you have to be to try it online?

Lots of people are that crazy, it turns out, and you can learn from their successes and failures. A surprising number of blogs revolve around nothing but shoes (with hot new designs and photos of extravagant shoe closets competing with shopping tips.

We got one blogger to share tips from the toe-pinch trenches.

The pseudonymed “Jitterbugbaby,” who contributes to shoeblog.com, confirms some of our fears. “It’s just impossible to tell,” she says, “exactly what it looks like from a website.” While she feels the pictures in online catalogs do as good a job as they can of representing the color and materials of their offerings (particularly those with a zoom-in or multi-angle photo features), “I’m sure lots of people (myself included) have a story of a shoe they ordered online that looked brown on-screen and showed up purple instead.”

The deal-breaker in shoe shopping, of course, is finding the right fit, but more and more online retailers are shouldering the risk to convince shoppers to splurge, offering price-protection guarantees and other incentives. An industry leader is zappos.com, whose policies are so inviting they’re hard to believe.

Zappos spokesperson Tony Hsieh acknowledges that many newbies are intimidated by the uncertainty of buying shoes online, but “because Zappos.com offers free overnight shipping (within the 48 contiguous United States) and free return shipping, there really is no risk in purchasing shoes online from us.”

You read that right: Not only will they take your shoes back, they’ll pay for the privilege. “If you’re not sure if you’re a size 9 or 9.5, we encourage you to order both sizes and return the one that doesn’t fit. Since we pay for shipping both ways, it’s as if we brought the shoe store into the comfort of your living room.”

What’s more, while savvy shoppers like Jitterbugbaby try to steer toward businesses offering at least 90 days to return unsatisfactory purchases, Zappos extends that period to a full year, so long as the shoes are in their original condition (try them out on carpet to avoid scuffing the soles).

Another contender, shoes.com, boasts similar policies (its price-protection deal is better but its free-shipping is slower).

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