How PriceArea Saved My Day From Horrible Ecommerce Experience

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.