X out of 10

Christmas shopping has always been tough for me. I’d like to think of myself as a good gift-giver, but some folks are just impossible to shop for. Enter Gifts.com.

At Gifts.com, you can search for gifts by recipient and interests, and by gift categories, such as “Stocking Stuffers” and “Hot Gadget Gifts.” But far and away, Gifts.com’s best feature is the brilliant—and curiously non-prominently-displayed (see the bottom-left corner of the page)—Personality Profiler.

In the Profiler, you click your recipient’s sex and age, and then answer a few quick questions about their interests and personality. Gifts.com will then take that information and auto-magically provide you with a rather extensive list of gifts. From there, you can further refine your results by price range, popularity, or category (books, music, video games, etc.).

Gifts.com loses some points for not including common, hard-to-shop-for categories (try finding a gift for your Grandmother on Gifts.com. If she’s anything like mine, you won’t find much). Also, their Personality Profiler is still rather limited, typically asking only three questions to determine which personality type your recipient falls under (and therefore, which gifts they’d like). I’d imagine that by next Christmas–if they’re still around–Gifts.com will have expanded their catalog of personality types, making it possible to narrow down your search to a far more granular, individual level.

X = 8.2

Gifts.com