Mypss.com
Mypss.com is the 3-year old online ordering site for PSS World Medical, a Jacksonville, Fla., medical supply company that's been in business for 20 years.

The sites's 14,000 registered users appreciate the instantaneous order confirmation and the speed of delivery, says Mike Youmans, the site's administrator. "If we receive an order by 3 or 4 p.m., the customer has it the next day," says Mr. Youmans.

Sharon Pesselato, the administrator at Aesthetica Surgicenter in Atlanta, particularly likes a Mypss feature that labels a shipment "green, yellow, or red," indicating how soon it will ship.

McKesson.com
McKesson.com is dedicated more to the venerable medical and surgical supply house than to online ordering, but users of the site say that it's worth the effort to get to the ordering page where you'll find brand-name medical and surgical products as well as McKesson private-label products.

"Our hospital purchasing department created an order template, and we just place our orders online and submit them," says Donna Quinn, RN, the executive director at the Orthopaedic Surgery Center, in Concord, N.H. "We can just click on an item and see the price and what packaging it comes in."

Ms Pesselato's center has been using the McKesson site for about two years. "McKesson lets you choose by case, carton or box, and tells you whether it's available," she says. She notes one drawback. Unlike other sites, McKesson.com does not give an expected shipping date (although you can track the status of an order).

Medline.com
Orders at the 5-year-old site for Medline Industries of Mundelin, Ill., a company that's been in the medical supply business since 1966, are up by 50 percent over last year, says John Marks, Medline's director of corporate communications. He estimates that one-third of the site's users are smaller facilities and the site's "regulars" purchase 85 to 90 percent of their total orders online.

He says administrators appreciate the site's extensive product catalog, as well as a customized ordering template based on the user's previous purchasing habits. You can track product shipments (Medline has 27 U.S. distribution centers), and access such online reports as top products purchased, spending statistics and purchase history by category.

The site promotes a unique feature called "Super 60: The Original Backorder Relief Service." Customers may submit their non-Medline product backorders to a dedicated customer service area, which will source the product, cost and delivery time and get back to the customer within 60 minutes.

JnJgateway.com/commerce
Once you've registered for Johnson & Johnson's online source for medical and surgical supplies, all user-specific information comes up immediately on subsequent visits. Other popular site features include:

• a simple order sheet showing 10 products at a time (you can add as many as you want)
• correct contracting prices, up-to-date product availability (or backorder status) information;
• checking order status, seeing when it shipped, when to expect delivery, and linking directly to the carrier to track packages; and
• complete purchase analyses, going back 24 months (including reports on all of your business with J&J, regardless of whether your orders were faxed, phoned in or submitted online).

Cardinal.com
Cardinal.com is the 3-year-old site for Cardinal Health, Inc. The site offers a full product catalogue as well as clinical and health care information. Other major features include"

• express log-in for users with slower Internet connections;
• easy access to lost or forgotten passwords;
• instant order status information, as well as "live" customer care assistance; and
• an "intelligent" system that recognizes users and offers customized information based on the user's profile.

Ms. Pesselato likes the way this site immediately supplies an expected shipment date. One frustration she has with the site, however, is that when she receives an error message that says she's specified an invalid unit of measure on her product order, the site doesn't tell you the valid unit of measure.