Connecting engineers and manufacturers (continued)

A continuation of our interview with DirectIndustry founder and CEO Corentin Thiercelin, which appeared in the July 2006 Viewpoint column.

-- Test & Measurement World, 7/1/2006

Click here to read the first part of the interview.

Corentin Thiercelin Founder & CEO Directindustry.com Marseille, France In 2001, Corentin Thiercelin founded DirectIndustry.com, a “virtual exhibition” Web site that helps engineers find information on industrial equipment and components. Previously, Thiercelin founded AllAccess and Access Technology—a free quarterly journal distributed to the automation sector. He served as the head of research and development for quality-control machines in commercial agriculture for MAF, and he has also worked at ELM Leblanc in France on the development of industrial gas heaters. Thiercelin earned a degree in design and engineering at the National School of Advanced Design and Engineering (ENSAM) in Paris. Chief editor Rick Nelson recently exchanged e-mails with Thiercelin about the role of the Web in purchasing decisions.

A: If you search DirectIndustry by the key words "infrared sensor," you get a list of product images in order of keyword relevance. Do the same thing on other industrial portals, and you get a text-only list of company names in alphabetical order! That makes no sense. You're only going to select companies early in the alphabet that you already recognize because there's nothing about the products to draw you in and compare. What's more, other sites mix up distributors and resellers with manufacturers so you don't really know whose products you're enquiring about. It just a fancy paper directory slapped online and not at all what the engineer's Internet is really about.

DirectIndustry is different. We don't clog up the site with local telephone numbers, pricing information pop-ups, promotions, content partnerships, forums, etc. We're simply a comprehensive hub connecting the sources of products with their manufacturers. We only show manufacturers.

Searching is easier because we prioritize images of products and logos over pure text. They act as signposts for navigation and comparison to create an incisive picture of the competitive landscape. We're confident that it's easier and faster to find new products and brands on DirectIndustry than anywhere else on the Web.

Of course, none of this would mean anything if the vast content wasn't up to date. Keeping it so remains the ongoing priority of our already large and growing technical team.

Q: What is your policy toward visitors—do you protect their information, and is access free, or is there a membership fee?

A: DirectIndustry is a free access site open to anyone, anywhere. No fee, no cross selling, and no registration. You can search as much as you like without anyone knowing you were there. Other specialized search engines require you to register before you can even get past the home page, resulting in spam from companies you never contacted!

Q: Do you charge a transaction fee for users who make a purchase based on the information they find on your site?

A: No.

Q: Where do your visitors come from?

A: 49% come from Europe, 21% from North America, 15% from Asia, 11% from South America, and 4% from other continents. By country, 17% come from the US, 10% from France, 8% from Germany, 7.5% from Italy, 6% from the UK, 5% from Spain, 4% from Canada, and 3.5% from Netherlands.

Q: How are you promoting your site?

A: We have an ongoing and growing campaign in the industrial press comprising 11 US titles and 30 European titles in the UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany. We will be maintaining a monthly presence in all these publications year after year, becoming more and more specialized as we add new titles. We maintain very strong referencing on all major search engines. In addition, we have a number of partnerships with trade shows and industrial portal sites.

Q: What projects do you plan for the future?

A: We resist the pressure to constantly change and add new features to the site in order to make bit of noise. Our aim is to become the most comprehensive and authoritative industrial portal in the world, PERIOD! The basic model is highly effective, so we need to keep growing while keeping the fundamentals in place—keeping it fast, intuitive, and focused on the products. Just keeping the exploding content up to date is a daunting undertaking and easily enough to keep us busy. We're always listening to engineers, and we'll keep evolving by anticipating their needs as evidenced with the virtual technical library idea. We won't lose sight of our own engineering roots—that's our unique insight and the litmus test for building on our success.

Click here to read the first part of the interview.