American e-commerce giants like Amazon.com, CDNow and Dell may have the most brand recognition when it comes to buying books, music or computers online, but Europe is spawning powerhouse sites of its own.

A recent survey conducted by the London School of Economics ranked the world's 100 best corporate e-commerce sites: six of the top 10 were European, proof that companies on the Continent are starting to realize that there is more to doing business online than slapping the company report and a picture of the CEO on the Internet.

TIME DIGITAL takes a look at some of Europe's best e-commerce sites


BOOKS

Bertelsmann Online
www.bol.com
Owned and operated by Bertelsmann AG, the world's third largest media company, BOL offers sites specific to Germany, France, Britain and the Netherlands. Spain and Switzerland are next. Each site offers national book titles as well as international ones. BOL also lets you create a "personal bookshop" that, based on your preferences, shows you the latest books by your favorite authors or on the topics of most interest to you whenever you log on.

Les Editions oohoo S.A.
www.oohoo.com
Zero Heure offers electronic versions of books which are sent via e-mail within 15 minutes of an order. It also offers print-to-order books and books from the publisher's stock.

Bokus
www.bokus.com
Good customer service, low prices and fast deliveries have helped this Swedish site grow rapidly.

Vltava internetovy obchod
www.vltava.cz
Offers 15 different search categories for over 100,000 book titles in both English and Czech.



TRAVEL

Lufthansa
www.lufthansa.com
Ranked number one in the LSE survey, this site allows you to book flights on over 500 airlines worldwide, 24 hours a day. It offers live ticket auctions, a step-by-step guide in German and English to booking flights, and a number of online specials. Users can build a personal travel organizer with details of their travel preferences.

British Airways
www.british-airways.com
Allows you do things like type in that you have a budget of $500 and want to fly to where it's sunny, then lets you choose a destination.

Groupe Degriftour
www.degriftour.fr
Great French-language site for anyone who wants to see the world, especially when planning at the last minute.

Buy.bye Touristik
www.buy.bye.de
Offers tickets at big discounts but requires bookings four weeks in advance. Also gives advice on extras such as car rentals.



PERSONAL COMPUTERS

Conrad
www.conrad.de
Conrad offers over 30,000 products, from ordinary PCs and peripherals to cell phones. Customer service and support is available through branches in Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovenia and Switzerland.

Direct s.p.a.
www.direct.it
Targets Italy's 4.5 million small and medium-sized businesses with computers, peripherals and how-to books.

Red Submarine Computer Company
www.sub.co.uk
Specializes in computers customized for those wishing to download music from the Web or compose their own songs electronically.

Hardware
www.hardware.de
Features regular auctions with bargain prices and offers used hardware for those interested in buying last year's monitor or keyboard.



MUSIC

Boxman
www.boxman.com
Boxman's sites in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany and the U.K. each feature a home page with selections tailored to national music tastes. Coming next: the Netherlands. The sites also offer an international catalog as well as video games, movies and DVDs.

Partitor
www.partitor.com
Sells music scores which are sent directly to your computer printer with a patented system designed to prevent copyright infringement.

Cerberus Central
www.cerberus.co.uk
This privately owned site offers the Virtual Record Store, an automated kiosk that allows you to assemble a compilation CD of favorite tracks.

Movabit
www.movabit.de
Allows you to listen to what you want and then download it for later use as the building blocks for your own customized CDs.


PERSONAL FINANCE

Woqats
www.woqats.com
Woqats offers stock quotes, currency information and investment research in English, German, French and Dutch. The site also has links to major banks, European and American online brokers and financial news sources. The Waterloo company's sister site, European Investor (www.europeaninvestor.com), which was launched in April, carries additional information. The site offers quotes from 14 European stock markets, company news and market reports from Agence France-Presse. Links connect with markets, brokers and news sources in Europe and the U.S.

Micropal
www.micropal.com
Europe's leading fund-tracking firm Micropal provides performance data, analysis and links for thousands of funds in Europe and offshore.

UK-iNvest.com
www.uk-invest.com
This site has quotes, access to a database of U.K. stocks, unit trust information, news and commentary on investing and personal finance.


You'll find links to lots more sites on the country-specific pages of Yahoo! (www.yahoo.de connects with online broker ConSors and mutual fund site Fondszentrum, for example, while www.yahoo.fr links to online broker Self Trade). The country pages of Yahoo! Finance carry business news from European sources like Reuters and AFP.