This post is going to sound like a big-fat promotion but I’ll say it up front that – as usual – I’m not getting paid for any editorial publications I post on DailySocial. However I feel strongly about publishing this piece to make sure people know about the problem with many e-commerce sites (and startups in general).
So, here it goes.
Earlier today I suddenly feel the need to buy a wireless mouse to support and boost my productivity (yeah right) and I decided that I want a magic mouse. So I started to roam around local e-commerce sites to find one with decent price and convenient delivery.
I started to visit three of the big e-commerce sites that first came to my mind, I don’t need to say which ones. After 30 mins of browsing and trying to find a magic mouse, I got frustrated. Not because it’s expensive or unavailable, but because it’s ridiculously hard to find them. Why? Because most of the search engine on these e-commerce sites are really bad. For the lack of a better word : sucks.
One website even gave me a Mickey Mouse comics and underpants (seriously) when I searched for “magic mouse” on the site. It’s frustrating to get around these websites even when you know exactly what you want.
Finally, I gave up and go to PriceArea, an e-commerce search and comparison engine where *finally* I get accurate and satisfying result. They directed me to one of the biggest electronic marketplace and I finally bought a magic mouse from that site.
For me, PriceArea just saved my day.
Lessons learned : e-commerce sites in particular should fix their search engine, you can also embed third party search engine if necessary. It’s a painful experience to navigate around these sites and it’s not a good experience especially for first-time users. They get nervous because they can’t even get around and navigate throughout the site, giving you their credit card information can almost be an hard/impossible decision for them.
I also express the same concern to websites like Koprol and Kaskus, but Kaskus promised to improve this on their #newkaskus platform so we’ll wait and see. As for the rest of the startups out there, make it easy for visitors to navigate and get around your website, improve your search engine because that’s where they would go eventually.
Thanks Rama for the post and compliment!
Hummm… what seems to be the problem sir? http://www.tokobagus.com/halaman/lokasi/7/mencari/magic%7Cmouse/search.asp (you would have saved som money 😀 )
http://www.kaskus.us/search_result.php?forumid=298&q=magic+mouse
Nice topic for a discussion though. The ones of which you say search isn’t good mostly chose a score based algorithm like Google does and default use the “or” operator instead of the “and” operator. The downside is that Mickey Mouse can show up in the results but it will always be lower ranked than the magic mouse itself. The downside of the pricearea.com algorithm is pretty much illustrated by this search: http://www.pricearea.com/result/magic+mouse+wireless It only shows one wireless magic mouse and leaves out all others that lack the word “wireless” in the title which wouldn’t happen when there’s a combination of using the “or” operator and a score based algorithm. In sites like Kaskus and Tokobagus many niche searches are done with maybe just a few results and you don’t want to deprive your visitors from showing them all the relevant results just because one word is lacking in the title or they made a typo in one word.
Besides that, comparing any comparison shopping site with any single ecommerce site is totally non-relevant in my opinion because the last is a subset of the first.
Still, compliments to Bima and the rest of the pricearea.com team, they’ve certainly greatly improved their product and I for one will use it more now.
Funny how price area is not giving the cheapest price since the one on tokobagus is cheaper 😛 That’s also the problem that i encountered with pricerarea and other online shops, which is the lack of data. Most of the time, it’s a lot cheaper to just go to the nearest store and get better price than to actually shop online.
Thanks Remco for the credit.
We do aware our search results needs improvement and we’re constantly refining the algorithms as well as our data collection methods.
Which 3 ecommerce sites did you check on?
you’re just “exaggerating”.searching one item isn’t a “horrible ecommerce experience”, and you shouldn’t call those sites “sucks” just because you can’t find the one you’re looking for.
if you go to super market looking for a noodle brand for example, you can’t find it. you don’t call the store “sucks” just because of that, you ask the people nicely ‘where is it’ or ‘do you have it’.
you’re so arrogant blogger.
In an offline store, you can ask the store employee if you want to look for items. But in an online store, that “store employee” IS the search engine, I ask the search engine the result will show me where I can find the items.
Imagine you ask a clerk for a magic mouse and he show you Mickey Mouse underpants. I categorize that as “SUCKS”.
ecommerce sells the convenience of NOT having to go to the store, saves time, gas and effort. That convenience in exchange for money. I think sometime soon, the price will go down as the infrastructure (banking, logistics and delivery) matures.
I’m quite sure I don’t want to publish that.
and they’ll hate me for that 😉
if such clerk exists, you’re going to a wrong store.
1. you clearly don’t get the difference between search engine and human clerk. what tech blogger are you?
2. that Mickey Mouse item appears along with the other real computer mice which is logically true that both item share common term.
3. the item search result number one shows Apple Magic Trackpad.
Of course it’s different, but that doesn’t mean search engines can be stupid.
Search engines are supposed to help us find things we’re looking for. And there are so many search engines that knows the difference between “Magic mouse” and “Mickey mouse”. If human clerks can help you, why can’t search engines do that?
I call that SUCKS.
exactly my point with the whole post.