how to buy boots online

- Boots, yeah, that's right, this video is about boots. That was really weird and awkward. Let's try that again (beep). What's up friends? I am Miranda. Now just because you can't physically go into an REI store to try on, and purchase the right pair of hiking boots, doesn't mean that you can't find what you need online. So I am here to help you learn how to find the right size hiking boot, and how to differentiate between them, and choose the right shoe for you. Now the first step is to figure out what size shoe you need. And in order to do that you actually need to measure your foot. Now, you might be thinking, oh Miranda, I've been wearing a size nine since the ninth grade. I don't need need to measure my foot. You do need to measure your foot. Fit is super important, because you're walking the entire day, so. Oh, hi kitty. To measure our foot we are going to need a pair of hiking socks, a tape measure, or a ruler, and a piece of paper, and a pen. I would recommend measuring your foot later in the day. Preferably after you have walked around for a while, because your foot will be a little bit more swollen, and obviously when you're hiking you're walking around a lot, and so your feet will definitely be swollen. All right, let's measure our feet. You need a flat surface, preferably not a carpet, so we're gonna move. I'm gonna measure my left foot, since it is my larger and my wider foot. I am wearing my hiking socks, since these are the socks that I would be wearing with my shoes, It's a good idea to wear them to measure my foot. I'm gonna stand with my feet next to each other, my left foot down on the the paper, and from here, I'll try and just bend over and trace my foot. Trying to keep as much weight as possible centered on your foot. You do this. There is my foot. I'm now going to take this over to the sizing chart, and figure out what size shoes I need. I am going to now get out my tape measure and measure the width and the length of my foot. For the width, I'm gonna measure at the widest part of my foot, which on this drawing you can see is right here. I measure that. Three and three quarters. And now I measure the length of my foot. So I measure from the tip of my toe, down to my heal. Nine and three eights, inches. Now, from here I can figure out what size shoe I need. So there are a bunch of different size chart converters online. You can just Google, like, size conversion. But based on this, I have compared my width of my foot, and the length of my foot. I'm coming in right about a seven and a half. And then if I want to, I can actually take a look at the width of my foot. So, if I go to size seven and a half on these charts, and take a look at a three and three quarters, I'm in the medium, like, medium range. So, now that I know what size shoe I need, I'm going to go to REI's website and show you how to buy hiking boots. The first thing that you see are all these, like, filters on the side. So, you're hiking boots, and hiking shoes, different brands you can search by. There's also all these features down here. Things like waterproof boots. Like, new arrivals, if you wanna see what the newest boots on REI's website are. And then you can also search by footwear width, and obviously the size. And then down here you have best use. Cool, now obviously you can filter by color, you can also filter by price, and like, the way that they close, and then different technologies. Which primarily are gonna be the insulation and the waterproofing. Now that we have an understanding of how all the filters and the features work on REI's website, you can go through and pick a shoe that's gonna work right for you. So, let's just walk through an example together. Here I am on the women's hiking footwear homepage. I have no filters set, I'm just sorting by best match right now. And then we're just gonna go ahead and sort these boots, and pick something for a spring backpacking trip. So for the sake of this filter I'm going to say that I want hiking boots. And then I'll sort by bestselling. Again, I like to sort by bestselling boots, instead of customer rating, because I think you just get a better idea of what the most popular shoes are. And then we'll scroll past brands, let's say that we do want a waterproof shoe, because it is raining in the Pacific Northwest in the springtime. And then we'll go down to Footwear Width and Size. So, since I measured my foot before, I know that I'm a regular width, and that I need a size seven and a half. By filtering like this, I then can see just the shoes that are available in my size and width. And then you can see here that we have best use. So this has been narrowed down a little bit, just based on the other search criteria that we put in. We can see that there are some hiking shoes, and some backpacking, or hiking boots and backpacking boots, and then a couple of snowshoeing, and then a trail runner. If you're looking for a boot that has a lot of structure, and a lot of stability then you might want to filter specifically for backpacking boots, but for the sake of this, if I am just looking for a overall good all around hiking shoe or boot, you don't necessarily need to filter this. But, since I don't want this snowshoeing or the trail runner shoes, I'm going to filter by Hiking, and by Backpacking. Now, you can see it brings up all of these guys. Now there's this really cool comparison feature on REI's website. So we're gonna compare four different boots. Let's actually compare these Salomons, these women's KEENs, these Merrells, and then the Lowas. This is actually my backpacking slash hiking boot, and I love it. So we can compare four boots at once. So I've chosen all four of these, just based on the fact that they came up in the top five on my bestselling search. And we're gonna compare 'em. So we hot Compare. You can see that it brings up the boots. It brings up the cost, as well as all of these features. This is really where you can, like, dive in and make a decision about which shoe is going to be best for you, after you've set all of the criteria for yourself, and decided what you're looking for. So, first thing you might see is that the cost, there's a wide range of cost on the four of these boots. The main thing to remember is that you really get what you pay for. So if you get a more expensive hiking boot, you can expect it to be a lot more durable, have a lot more structure and stability, whereas less expensive shoes are not necessarily as durable. I don't wanna say that they're not as good as a more expensive boot. Because again, if you're looking for something that can just do weekend hikes, or can do occasional backpacking trips, then by all means get something inexpensive. Get something that you know will work for you, to like get into the activity. But if you're doing, like, trips really frequently, if you're wearing them all the time, you're probably gonna end up wanting a more expensive, more durable, more structured boot. And then, you can see that we have the Best Use here, so these are all considered hiking shoes, hiking boots. And then you can see here that these are, there's actually over-the-ankle, and then one ankle boot, these Merrell Moabs. These are not a low shoe, they are a boot, but they come up, like, just to your ankle, whereas the other three are gonna come up above your ankle. As far as footwear closure goes, they're all lace up. All four of these boots are waterproof, but they actually use different types of waterproofing technology. So, you see see that the Salomons use GORE-TEX, whereas the KEENs, and well, the Salomons and the Lowas both use GORE-TEX, whereas the KEENs and the Merrells use their own proprietary waterproofing. So that's KEEN Dry, and then just Merrell's sort of a waterproof material that they use. And then you can see that you can also compare the uppers, the linings, the midsoles and the outsoles. Where you see support, this is the shank that goes into the midsole of the shoe. That's just gonna provide more of that structure and protection from underfoot stuff. From rocks and things. (laughs) And then down here you have the weight. The weight will really matter if you are looking for something that's very light, or obviously like, lighter. All of these are actually pretty heavy for boots, but you can see that the Lowas, especially, coming in at two pounds and two ounces, are definitely a heavy, hefty boot. For comparison, lightweight hiking boots will often run closer to like, a pound, like, a little over a pound, a pound and a half. Again, Lowa Renegades are just a pretty heavy boot. I haven't had a problem with it, because I'm not an ultralight backpacker, but if you're an ultralight backpacker you probably want to look for something that's lighter than that. Two pounds is a lot of weight to carry on your feet. Hopefully what you can see round this, is that we have four awesome backpacking boots that have very different specs. When you're choosing you'll just have to kind of filter and figure out whatever it is that's gonna work best for you. If you have any other questions, or if you get your hiking boots in, and you want to break them in, there are some awesome article on REI.com, expert advice that can give you some tips on that. That's all for now. Thank you so much for watching, bye.