Yeah 2005 is a bit early. As the internet progressed, shopping online slowly got safer and easier and more convenient. It's hard to say when it got good exactly, but it probably peaked at some point between 2010 and 2015 IMO.

I remember building PC's and helping friends to do so around that time and being incredibly impressed with the shopping experience on Newegg. I thought "wow this is so much better than driving to BestBuy, dodging their employees who are being harasses by their bosses to harass their customers tl upsell stuff". The categories and organization were so clear and useful. The filters were tailored for each kind of specification you would want for a specific item. It was incredibly easy to look at what was relevant, narrow it down to a <5 choices, then deep dive and compare to make a decision. Then they got bought out and the website has turned to complete garbage. Not even worth looking at anymore.

There is an argument to be made that the best online shopping was post-pandemic. Prior to 2020 it was very common for items to take 2-4 weeks to arrive. Early 2020 I bought a PS4 controller on eBay that took 2 months to arrive because of some weird flu hitting China at the time, but I didn't think anything waa off for the first month. Nowadays i'm still shocked by how fast stuff arrives.