The COVID-19 pandemic has evidently caused widespread disruption, financial strain, and dramatic challenges to business models across the world. Whilst companies clamor to reduce costs and streamline their plans, one area that many want to address is their search engine budgeting.
While traditional search engines, such as Google, consistently provide searchers with a multitude of results within seconds, they don’t always truly deliver an efficient platform for the buyer’s needs. Searchers clicking on web search links that don’t offer the desired product. is very common-place.
Yet these platforms charge for the ad being clicked on regardless, resulting in sellers being charged extortionate amounts, with very little offset from purchases made.
Between 2016-2018, an estimated $7.2b was lost on PPC platforms to “invalid clicks”, such as click fraud or search errors. Such platforms incentivize clicks, creating a landscape where helping users find what they’re looking for efficiently, isn’t the main priority. From drowning in irrelevant search results to paying for low-quality traffic, buyers and merchants have long-sought-after a platform that focuses solely on providing what they need.
This is where Gollgi enters the market.
Start-up search engine platform, Gollgi, claims to easily connect buyers with sellers through an advanced open-market network, cutting costs and providing much more streamlined search capabilities than its competitors at Google, Shopify, and Wix.
However, with over 50% of initial product searches going through Amazon, rather than Google, if Gollgi plans to capture existing brand-following users and compete against Amazon, it will be no small feat.
“We are a search engine for B2B products, which provides buyers with exactly what they need by requesting instead of just searching for it.” Eitan Koren, Founder of Gollgi tells us, “Therefore, we don’t consider Gollgi to be in the same market as Amazon.”
Whilst focusing on B2B, rather than B2C, gives Gollgi a defined unique selling proposition, we observed that though the company proclaims to not be competing with Amazon, the site aesthetic suggests that the e-commerce behemoth has at least had some influence on its design.
Gollgi states that its search platform provides buyers and sellers with an open-market network. Whereby users simply make a request for a specific product and only relevant sellers approach them with offers.
They have designed the platform to not promote irrelevant products, collect user data, or waste the buyer’s time with hopeful searches. Unlike platforms such as Shopify or Wix, there is also zero cost attached to opening a store on the platform. Gollgi doesn’t charge commission upon each sale, nor does it involve itself in the trade – its sole aim is to connect buyers with relevant sellers. With much fewer charges to sellers than these other primary e-commerce platforms, we’re curious as to how Gollgi make money.
“Once the seller sends an offer – and is opened by the buyer – Gollgi charges the seller $1 per click, and our expectation is 5 offers for each request,” Koren said. “We neither intervene in the deal nor do we take commissions. Gollgi only charges sellers for a click (as opposed to Google AdWords, where sellers pay regardless of the quality of the click).”
If Gollgi truly is the answer to more efficient and effective B2B product purchasing, we can see a bright future for the fledgling company and if all goes to plan, what’s next for Gollgi?
“We plan to bring gollgipay.com to the market and to add another 2-3 percent to the deals for users who need extra protection in the process of money transfers,” Koren said. “We’ll also be adding more services to our market. We already have some sellers offering services like accounting, tutoring, etc., however, we would like to expand to additional services including, legal, gardening, tourism, and beyond.”
It’ll be intriguing to watch and see how this newcomer makes their mark in the e-commerce scene. The proof will ultimately be in the profit.
