I've bought multiple phone cases over the past 10 years. For each case I bought, I was a satisfied customer. Yet after doing some digging I realized that I have never bought twice from the same vendor. "Why not?" You might ask. Because I bought them on Amazon.
If you want to buy something online, and get it shipped as quick as possible, then Amazon is a blessing. Most often then not, you are not buying the product directly from Amazon. An independent store or vendor with a presence on Amazon will fulfill your order. The seller only has minor identifying characteristic on the platform. On the search result page, the space designated to the seller is small and insignificant. The customer has very few reminders that products are offered by anyone but Amazon. (Although if you want to dispute a sale, you are starkly reminded that the item is from a 3rd party vendor.)
Want to buy the same item again? Chances are you will use the search box. Type the name of the product, and you will end up choosing a different vendor. The search algorithm only shows the vendors it deems worthy. You won't even remember who you bought it from the first time. This is by design.
Google follows in the same principle when it answers your queries. Type a question and google presents you with an answer that doesn't encourage any further click. The snippet appears as a google product. There is very little space to tell you that this is information scraped from a website. The more answers Google can give you, the less likely you are to discover the underlying websites. In other words, websites information are turned into a Google product..
AMP pages are the next step in this Google encapsulated web. Click on an AMP page and you are virtually still on Google.com, not on the website you thought you clicked on. This increases the page views for the publisher. But on the user's perspective, this piece of information is found on Google, and they turn into google customers. Next time, the user will not go on the publisher's website, instead she will be back on google search.
Most major app try to encapsulate the web into their app. By default, if you click on a link on most social media apps, you redirected to an embedded web browser. This browser will not allow you to access the URL. Unlike with iframes, non-consenting publishers cannot get you out of the embedded page with iframe busters. The user will browse through the app thinking they are still on Facebook, twitter, Instagram, or the flashlight app.
When you are looking for hotels on Expedia, the price and amenities are more important than the name of the hotel. When you are on Airbnb, you are shopping for a place on Airbnb, not for that place by that owner.
The web is powered by the hundreds of millions of websites. Each freely make their information available. But, that data is getting funneled more and more through the dominant gateways of the web, passing it as their own product.
When you start a business, you have little to no choice but to put yourself at the mercy of those platforms. Anecdotally, I have many friends that will not go on a restaurant that does not have yelp reviews. If a restaurant is not on yelp it must be bad. If a product is not on Amazon, it is suspicious. If a website is not on the first page of Google search, it does not exist.
When you buy a product you love from a vendor, you are a satisfied Amazon customer. When you find an answer on the web, you are a satisfied Google user. When you have a great vacation, you are a satisfied Airbnb customer. You had a fantastic driver? That's because Uber is amazing.
When the return goes wrong on Amazon, that's because it was a scammy vendor. When the driver is weird, you leave a one star review. When you don't find answers on Google, it's because the answer does not exist.
Loyalty is to the platform. Anger is to those who provide the service.
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Comments(4)
Martin :
Well thought article. Thanks.
All that you have described seems very real and it is disturbing. Makes me feel like opportunities are getting limited after the initial wild west stage of internet.
Also every exposure of businesses to customers is getting more and more costly, as more and more businesses are trying their luck on the internet (competion for ad space and for users attention drives marketing prices up).
Any ideas how to combat this non loyalty? :)
Ibrahim :
Thanks for reading Martin. To tell the truth I don't have an obvious answer to this problem. But I think it's a first step to recognize that it is a problem.
The answer that I have been thinking about lately, is to educate users on what happens behind the scenes on the web. Most people never ask themselves how any of these things work. I think creating a behind the scene series that shows who are the people behind amazon, google, facebook, instagram, anything to demistify the web will help.
Ilka :
You're absolutely right, Ibrahim. We should thinking about this problem. Recently I read an articles about Amazon's goals. They want to built a great imperium where the customers are able to get everything they need.
I have to admit that Amazon is my first choice when I am searching for anything, because its easy for me. I type a few words for a product, and later the machine suggest me more of them, a lot of varieties of them. That saves me a lot of time. Further the return works without any problems, because Amazon takes over all the costs. That's a helpful service that smaller companies cannot provide.
It seems to me as if the big ones eat the small ones bit by bit and we don't notice that, because we are so happy with the great service we get.
Ibrahim :
Hi @Ilka
It's true Amazon provides a great service, that's why they are popular incthe first place. The only problem is that in the long term they'll be the only option for selling a product online.
Let's hear your thoughts