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Shopping directory ShopSmart recently took the quality versus quantity debate to extremes when it halved its e-tailer database, leaving just 1,000 online shops represented on its revamped site (www.shopsmart.com).

Following three months of consumer research, the company came to the conclusion that customers want a brand they can trust, rather than an endlessly growing choice of places to shop. 'Consumers want more in-depth reviews on the site,' says Daniel Gestetner, managing director of ShopSmart, adding that it wasn't just a case of brand protection, but of resources.

'We can't go deep enough with thousands of partners, so we decided to develop a more compelling experience, with new features such as a mystery shopper,' he says.

Gestetner comes from the school of thought which believes that shopping portals should be like the shopping mall in the high street - somewhere you'd go to find a wide, but nevertheless finite, selection of different shops under one roof.

Mike Honor, an analyst at Forrester Research, says that the editing process currently being exhibited by sites like ShopSmart mimics the retailer model on the high street.

'Retailers have traditionally bundled products from suppliers, displayed them to the consumer and taken the pain out of the bewildering process of shopping,' he says.

'If you're after a hi-fi, for example, you have the choice of visiting a big warehouse superstore or you could go to John Lewis, a trusted brand name, that won't offer everything, but which has already chosen what it believes are the best products,' he says.

ShopSmart also justified its decision by claiming that 85 per cent of its traffic exited through its top 300 e-tailers.

Richard Longhurst, founder of shopping directory 2020shops.com, rejects this statistic as meaningless.

'That the top sites get the most traffic is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the shops you list first, in order of rating, will obviously receive the most clicks,' he comments. 'It's also a disingenuous argument to say that 2,000 is too many and 1,000 is better because the rating system means that the top five will always appear on the first screen, so how many more follow is irrelevant.'

But you wouldn't expect approximately 90 per cent of shops in a physical mall to be largely unvisited would you? Longhurst says that the internet is more chaotic than the high street, and therefore shopping portals serve a far more important service than the high-street mall. Because of the size of the internet, he believes that there is value in a service which says 'don't go there'.

He voices concerns about omitting sites that 2020Shops.com thinks are poor quality.

'If a customer comes to us and finds we simply omitted a site that they have heard of, it might suggest that we are less than thorough,' he says.

Alex Beaton, founder of UK shopping directory nobags. com, which has 1,500 e-tailers on its site and 400 waiting to be reviewed, agrees. 'Limiting it to 1,000 e-tailers makes the directory static,' he says. 'Users on sites like Yahoo! and ShopSmart rarely go beyond the first few pages anyway.'

What most shopping directories and portals do have in common is the aim to become the ultimate destination for anyone considering shopping online Therefore, the more traffic they can build the better, and this, along with a strong marketing campaign, is based on trust.

Recently landed on our shores, accompanied by a large marketing campaign, is Kelkoo.com, a European comparison shopping service with 150 partners and a directory of more than 25,000 e-tailers across Europe and Latin America.

Despite focusing on price, UK country manager Philip Wilkinson is well aware of the damage to his brand if a customer has a rotten experience on one of his partner sites.

'Even if we offer the best price, if the merchant they are sent to is substandard, they will ask us why we recommended it in the first place,' he says.

Jo Mosaku, advertising and sponsorship director at zoom, the shopping portal owned partly by The Arcadia Group, is also aware of the damage which an unsavoury experience on a partner site can cause, despite zoom being supported by high-street brands such as Top Shop.

'I think what ShopSmart has done is a wise idea, especially in the current climate, where more emphasis is being put on customer service,' he says.

'Unless you place very strict criteria, you risk your brand image. Being seen to recommend a site by listing it and then falling foul of a poor delivery by the partner is unwise.

Mosaku continues: 'I also believe that if a site lists thousands of e-tailers under the protection of a wide disclaimer message, then it no longer becomes useful. And anyway, 2,000 partners are nothing but a headache.'