Search Engines eating all profit?
When I read the summary of Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox: Search Engine as Leeches on the Web, my first reaction was what? You gotta be kidding me. His summary is as follows:
Search engines extract too much of the Web’s value, leaving too little for the websites that actually create the content. Liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites and software vendors.
This seems so wrong. Without google many sites would not exist. Many sites depend on google to deliver visitors, and they depend on google for income, through adsense. So how is google leeching on these sites?
But Jakob Nielsen isn’t talking about these sites. He’s talking about webstores that get customers through adwords. And his conclusion is that most of the profit of these webstores is going straight to google to pay for the adwords. He’s probably right about this.
His solution, improve customer loyalty, is correct, but misses in my opinion the most important ideas. He suggest to improve customer loyalty by using email newletters, request marketing, affiliate programs, news feeds. These are all good ideas, but i don’t think these will turn me in a loyal customer. The most important ideas are quality, customer satifaction and trust. If i’m happy after the first sale, i’ll probably come back for another. Why would i gamble with a new webstore if i’ve had a good experience with an earlier webstore?