4 ms·

This seems... Very out of touch. The author makes the argument that all websites look the same because of Google, but never really gives a reason why... (besid

This seems... Very out of touch. The author makes the argument that all websites look the same because of Google, but never really gives a reason why... (besides name dropping "PageRank" once) Then it goes on to say that same experience (or more accurately the lack of a "unique" experience) is why they have poor conversion rates. Then it blames the website for causing an increased spending in customer service, pointing to this as the reason why they think brands will start "closing" their websites. But every step of the way I think the author is way off. Websites don't look like that because Google's "PageRank" is forcing them to somehow, and that look and feel isn't the reason why conversions are bad. In my opinion, websites look like that because a useful website follows some guidelines, and that may make it look "bland" but at least I know to look for my "cart" at the top-right of the page (or even have the concept of a "cart"). Also, I think the reason why conversions are bad is because retailers looked at the web for years as an afterthought. The reason only a handful of large companies are doing well on the web is because so few treated it as well as they treat their storefronts. You can't treat the internet as an afterthought, you need to build your business around it. Amazon, eBay, Overstock, and others have done this, they spent the time, money, and engineering to do it right, and do it fast. Someone like Nike throws something slow and cumbersome to use together as an afterthought just to have one. If websites start closing, it's not because of the "big bad google", it's because ecommerce is hard, just like how some online-only or online-first companies are now finding out how hard brick-and-mortar really is.

JoshMnem 9y ago
It's a dystopian prediction. The WWW is what makes the Internet great. If a company would take down their website, they would lose a lot of customers, including me. I don't use Facebook and only use a few mobile apps. I'm also looking for a way to get rid of my smartphone.
natecavanaugh 9y ago
Thank you! This guy dismisses conventional UX as some sort of bad thing while starting out saying that everyone's unique experience was a huge headache in the early web. And the a huge reason why Google even took off was because of how completely bland it's experience was. I'm not saying there aren't things that need to be improved, but the sudden death of the website? Oh, cmon.
pascalxus 9y ago
I think your absolutely right. The vast majority of UIs are okay and get the job done. I've rarely not ordered something because the UI was too bad. But, I have to admit, the author is right on one account. Alot of websites these days are lurching from one page to another, just to score more page views or something, rather than a Single page app. And, I hope goolge doesn't think their done with search. Google doesn't always do a great job of ranking the best products and sites at the top. Sometimes it's downright awful. On a number of occassions, I've had to click through each of the first 10 results and the next 10 and still not finding exactly what i want. And, I've found that if google can't find it in the top 20, it usually doesn't find it in the next 20 either. But, I'm sure it exists somewhere.
- cheschire 9y ago
  Relevant results for me have gotten a lot harder to find in the last several months. I believe this is since they switched over to neural networking instead of algorithms, but I’m not inside enough to know if this really happened. I get a lot of queries now where the first few results are missing at least one of my terms. I have to scroll before I find my first result that doesn’t say it’s missing a term. I don’t think google is done with their search, but I have a feeling they’re going through a major transition right now and a lot of the web is still designed for old SEO models.
  - themodelplumber 9y ago
    You're right on. I've found it useful to typologize my searches to take advantage of specialty information portals. For example I use NIH for medical, MDN for webdev, specific subreddits or forums for other projects. This helps counterbalance the currently weakened global search (Google) outcomes.
- arkh 9y ago
  > Alot of websites these days are lurching from one page to another, just to score more page views or something, rather than a Single page app. All hail the Single Page app! Long live the Flash heir! I wish more websites were not using the "let's load ton of shit to make the client generate basic HTML" approach.
guitarbill 9y ago
> In 1995, I came up with the technology for those chat windows that pop up on websites. An e-commerce site is a tool to sell stuff. You need a product I want to buy, and then make it easy for me to buy it. 95% of marketing efforts do the opposite. I'll take a plain e-commerce site with minimal JS any day. No infinite scroll. No weird AJAX sorting or calls for anything other than checkout or search. No chat windows that pop up. Talk about a bad user experience. There is no need to innovate here, although that's not to say it's easy. But e.g. Amazon's success comes from almost everything but their website, which is not great but functional. Ships when they say it will ship. Good refund policy. Doesn't spam me with marketing emails. Dare I say trustworthy? Now, if people aren't interested in your products by the time they get to your store page, that's a different issue. And yeah, some marketing will convert customers, but at the expense of others. Maybe unsurprisingly, Apple does a decent job: glitzy landing/product pages, toned down and clear shopping pages. What's in the box, shows you what the different options cost, compare models, FAQ, etc. Take note. (Big catalogues won't have custom product pages, but other than that these lessons still apply. The amount of times I cannot tell one product from another without a diff tool is too often.)
b1daly 9y ago
It’s interesting to me that the most successful general ecommerce sites have a visually utilitarian appearance, with emphasis on function over form (so to speak). Brand websites have the extra burden of trying infuse their sites with a unique brand identity. Companies that sell directly on the internet, and have enough products that they have need for a “catalog” to present products, have an extra challenge. Such brand websites carry a heavy load, as they serve marketing/brand identity, suppport, contact, communication, and ecommerce functions. Throw in the mind-f*ck of “responsive design” and it’s not surprising some websites fall short. The OPs thesis seems dubious, as he proposes no alternative for anything that could possibly fulfill all these functions.
wvenable 9y ago
This article is nothing but an ad for his services. Almost nothing in this article rings true to me. Where are these statistics coming from? "As much as 90 percent of calls placed to a company’s contact center originate from its website." Nobody gets a Yellowpages in the mail anymore. If I want to call a business I have to go to their website just to look up the phone number.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  > If I want to call a business I have to go to their website just to look up the phone number. Google Maps’ business lookup works 90% of the time for me, including listing opening hours. They’re good at listing numbers for non-retail businesss too.
  - megaman22 9y ago
    Dollars to donuts, Google is scraping websites to get that information in most cases.
campuscodi 9y ago
The author says "We are already working with several large brands to make this a reality," which clearly indicates this is an op-ed from the CEO of a AI/bot-making company. So no surprise he's predicting a future that benefits him. Fearmongering at its best. I'm just gonna flag the story and hopes it disappears from my feed, like I do with 3/4 TechCrunch stories these days.
shams93 9y ago
Ecommerce is hard but its also telling that Gucci can't just sell on their own website, while they have a site where you can buy Gucci they are also forced to have an amazon presence as well. Amazon are a big deal because people want to put out their personal information on the web as little as possible. The more you can get everything you need from Amazon you can limit your exposure to your credit card being on the web only to Amazon and not to hundreds of individual sites. Maybe in the future if the world goes to crypto Amazon will lose this advantage. But for now they have a big advantage in the breadth of items they offer such that even a powerful brand like Gucci is forced to sell on Amazon even though they have their own website and in theory could impose a monopoly over access to Gucci products on their own website. However that requires shoppers to setup their credit card on Gucci, another site besides Amazon. Every other site you have to sign up for you're taking a risk with your personal information being misused. Amazon's lack of being hacked for persona information is one of the huge drivers of this consumer loyalty even when Amazon often make mistakes, they don't make the mistake of leaking your credit card information. They might marked something as delivered when its not and have brutal restocking fees but people are willing to put up with the nasty parts of Amazon because they feel their credit card is safe on file with them.
- shams93 9y ago
  I wonder if they had just moved to enable Amazon pay instead of opening up shop on Amazon it would have enabled them to use people's exiting amazon accounts without having to open up shop directly on amazon where they can do things like randomly put your items on sale etc...

JoshMnem 9y ago

It's a dystopian prediction. The WWW is what makes the Internet great. If a company would take down their website, they would lose a lot of customers, including me. I don't use Facebook and only use a few mobile apps. I'm also looking for a way to get rid of my smartphone.

natecavanaugh 9y ago

Thank you! This guy dismisses conventional UX as some sort of bad thing while starting out saying that everyone's unique experience was a huge headache in the early web. And the a huge reason why Google even took off was because of how completely bland it's experience was. I'm not saying there aren't things that need to be improved, but the sudden death of the website? Oh, cmon.

pascalxus 9y ago

I think your absolutely right. The vast majority of UIs are okay and get the job done. I've rarely not ordered something because the UI was too bad. But, I have to admit, the author is right on one account. Alot of websites these days are lurching from one page to another, just to score more page views or something, rather than a Single page app. And, I hope goolge doesn't think their done with search. Google doesn't always do a great job of ranking the best products and sites at the top. Sometimes it's downright awful. On a number of occassions, I've had to click through each of the first 10 results and the next 10 and still not finding exactly what i want. And, I've found that if google can't find it in the top 20, it usually doesn't find it in the next 20 either. But, I'm sure it exists somewhere.

cheschire 9y ago
Relevant results for me have gotten a lot harder to find in the last several months. I believe this is since they switched over to neural networking instead of algorithms, but I’m not inside enough to know if this really happened. I get a lot of queries now where the first few results are missing at least one of my terms. I have to scroll before I find my first result that doesn’t say it’s missing a term. I don’t think google is done with their search, but I have a feeling they’re going through a major transition right now and a lot of the web is still designed for old SEO models.
- themodelplumber 9y ago
  You're right on. I've found it useful to typologize my searches to take advantage of specialty information portals. For example I use NIH for medical, MDN for webdev, specific subreddits or forums for other projects. This helps counterbalance the currently weakened global search (Google) outcomes.
arkh 9y ago
> Alot of websites these days are lurching from one page to another, just to score more page views or something, rather than a Single page app. All hail the Single Page app! Long live the Flash heir! I wish more websites were not using the "let's load ton of shit to make the client generate basic HTML" approach.

guitarbill 9y ago

> In 1995, I came up with the technology for those chat windows that pop up on websites. An e-commerce site is a tool to sell stuff. You need a product I want to buy, and then make it easy for me to buy it. 95% of marketing efforts do the opposite. I'll take a plain e-commerce site with minimal JS any day. No infinite scroll. No weird AJAX sorting or calls for anything other than checkout or search. No chat windows that pop up. Talk about a bad user experience. There is no need to innovate here, although that's not to say it's easy. But e.g. Amazon's success comes from almost everything but their website, which is not great but functional. Ships when they say it will ship. Good refund policy. Doesn't spam me with marketing emails. Dare I say trustworthy? Now, if people aren't interested in your products by the time they get to your store page, that's a different issue. And yeah, some marketing will convert customers, but at the expense of others. Maybe unsurprisingly, Apple does a decent job: glitzy landing/product pages, toned down and clear shopping pages. What's in the box, shows you what the different options cost, compare models, FAQ, etc. Take note. (Big catalogues won't have custom product pages, but other than that these lessons still apply. The amount of times I cannot tell one product from another without a diff tool is too often.)

b1daly 9y ago

It’s interesting to me that the most successful general ecommerce sites have a visually utilitarian appearance, with emphasis on function over form (so to speak). Brand websites have the extra burden of trying infuse their sites with a unique brand identity. Companies that sell directly on the internet, and have enough products that they have need for a “catalog” to present products, have an extra challenge. Such brand websites carry a heavy load, as they serve marketing/brand identity, suppport, contact, communication, and ecommerce functions. Throw in the mind-f*ck of “responsive design” and it’s not surprising some websites fall short. The OPs thesis seems dubious, as he proposes no alternative for anything that could possibly fulfill all these functions.

wvenable 9y ago

This article is nothing but an ad for his services. Almost nothing in this article rings true to me. Where are these statistics coming from? "As much as 90 percent of calls placed to a company’s contact center originate from its website." Nobody gets a Yellowpages in the mail anymore. If I want to call a business I have to go to their website just to look up the phone number.

DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
> If I want to call a business I have to go to their website just to look up the phone number. Google Maps’ business lookup works 90% of the time for me, including listing opening hours. They’re good at listing numbers for non-retail businesss too.
- megaman22 9y ago
  Dollars to donuts, Google is scraping websites to get that information in most cases.

campuscodi 9y ago

The author says "We are already working with several large brands to make this a reality," which clearly indicates this is an op-ed from the CEO of a AI/bot-making company. So no surprise he's predicting a future that benefits him. Fearmongering at its best. I'm just gonna flag the story and hopes it disappears from my feed, like I do with 3/4 TechCrunch stories these days.

shams93 9y ago

Ecommerce is hard but its also telling that Gucci can't just sell on their own website, while they have a site where you can buy Gucci they are also forced to have an amazon presence as well. Amazon are a big deal because people want to put out their personal information on the web as little as possible. The more you can get everything you need from Amazon you can limit your exposure to your credit card being on the web only to Amazon and not to hundreds of individual sites. Maybe in the future if the world goes to crypto Amazon will lose this advantage. But for now they have a big advantage in the breadth of items they offer such that even a powerful brand like Gucci is forced to sell on Amazon even though they have their own website and in theory could impose a monopoly over access to Gucci products on their own website. However that requires shoppers to setup their credit card on Gucci, another site besides Amazon. Every other site you have to sign up for you're taking a risk with your personal information being misused. Amazon's lack of being hacked for persona information is one of the huge drivers of this consumer loyalty even when Amazon often make mistakes, they don't make the mistake of leaking your credit card information. They might marked something as delivered when its not and have brutal restocking fees but people are willing to put up with the nasty parts of Amazon because they feel their credit card is safe on file with them.

shams93 9y ago
I wonder if they had just moved to enable Amazon pay instead of opening up shop on Amazon it would have enabled them to use people's exiting amazon accounts without having to open up shop directly on amazon where they can do things like randomly put your items on sale etc...