Become.com is a retail site in the style of amazon and shopping.com. The site has a cool autocomplete feature that helps you find an impressive display of products.
So why don't all portals and retail sites use autocomplete? A website that offers the service is offering a better search experience, which in turn leads to a better overall user-experience and to more return customers. But because the internet is still in its baby stages of evolution, and in the current state of things some websites believe that they will profit more by offering users an inferior service.
Why? The notion dawned on me as I was presenting PredictAd to one of Britain's top destination portals. When I told them that PredictAd would help their users find exactly what they're looking for quicker and more accurately, they acted as if I had just uttered a horrible obscenity.
The reason? Although they'll never admit it - portals and websites value page views far greater than they value user-experience. The reason is obvious, a website can brag about its page views to potential advertisers. And unfortunately for the user, their experience isn't a metric that interests advertising agencies.
The bottom line is that websites want you to get lost in the wealth of information they provide. A frustrated visitor that wasted 20 minutes, and surfed through 30 pages is far more valuable to the website than a satisfied visitor that found what they were looking for in 2 minutes and 3 pages views.
This mindset is slightly distressing, but ultimately there will be a backlash. Today's consumer is smarter and less patient than ever. The phenomenon of autocomplete hasn't yet become so mainstream that users notice when it's not offered. With a little help from our friends that will soon change, and the sites that are cashing in on page views will need to change their ways or sink in a tide of underwhelmed visitors.
1 comments:
Very True!
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