Q8Ba7th Official Blog

Name: Maachla.com

Following our initial review of Maachla.com, the guys at Maachla took the time to go through our opinion of the site and offer another chance for trying them out after the new enhancements, and after their award winning “Best Website in Kuwait” in Sheikh Salim Al-Ali Informatics Award.

Shopping Experience:

So we did give it a couple of tries. The first was for some item that was out of market for some time, and we found the item on Maachla.com and placed the order, interested to see the outcome. Shortly when the delivery time arrived, I got a call that I couldn’t attend to. Calling back their hotline, your number gets recorded and you hear a message telling you someone will call you shortly. Later on a real nice friendly guy called back and told me that specific item is out of stock, and offered an alternative if I was interested. I declined and thanked him for his call. This tells us a good thing about their customer service quality, and a bad thing about their inventory system. It’s not tied to the real Mishref Co-Op database.

The second time we ordered few regular items, including some beverages. The shortage in varieties, and availability of all size options in the beverages section did not make the experience as good as we hoped it would. Below we give quick brief about each part of the experience.

Registration:

Again, to try adding items to the basket you have to register. To register you have to give in your mobile number. How many people would wanna do that before they try out the site? Ask for these info at checkout only. Get users to try and love what you have worked hard for!

Delivery:

As explained earlier, you get to select the delivery hour up to two weeks in advance, but you cannot select the current hour for delivery. It has to be at least during the next coming hour, so even if it’s only 9:01 PM, you would have to select 10-11 PM delivery time sot. That’s the only bad part, and otherwise, their delivery is quite on time from my one time experience.

I would suggest however that in their schedule, unavailable time slots become non-selectable rather than reloading the page and coming back with a popup error message.

Inventory:

This was so disappointing for me, as it makes you unsure if what you place in your basket is available or not, which is really a bad experience. You have the option however per item to allow substitute product in case your preference is not available. Good to have, but I’m surprised this option is selected by default. Maachla should not assume I am ok with a substitute of their choice. I should be asked to approve it. So careful when you’re checking out. If you don’t want it, uncheck the allow substitute boxes.

At all rates, I believe effort should be put into tying Maachla inventory system live with Mishref Co-Op one for live item and pricing update.

Variety:

If they are operating from their own store, I would understand. But securing the deal with Mishref Co-Op should mean much larger variety of items, that is as close to shopping at Mishref Co-Op experience. In my case however, I had to browse between brands, select my second or third brand preference, because the item that’s available in Mishref Co-Op is not available in the online store. And I wish it ends there. Even when you find the brand you want, finding the size you want is another task. The squeezed item photo does not help identify it, and many sizes are missing. And with soft drinks, when you open a can, you either drink it now, or throw it away. You can’t store it for later. However even trivial items like PEPSI did not have all the common sizes, I had to go with another one, and I couldn’t even get a box set, I had to order individual cans. 7-Up was not available at all for some reason as well.

How It Should Be?

I think it would be best if a single item like PEPSI would open a PEPSI page, and I get to select per unit or box, and the size I want. All available sizes should be there logically.

Customer Service:

Customer service quality was really high, you would feel comfortable speaking to the guy over the phone and feel he’s happy to help. The idea of registering your number once you call the hotline for them to get back, while neat, is a bit inconvenient for me the customer however. When I call, I might want to talk to the guy now as I will be busy in 5 minutes or so, and this is exactly what happened to me. I called, they saved my number. I had to finish some work and be away from the phone when they called back. I call again, have to wait for their call, only to get an international call by the time they’re calling me back.

My guess is this method saves them the cost of having customer service people on the standby 24/7 when they don’t have that heavy load. This way they can arrange for the call at their own time, but it comes at a cost I guess.

Pricing

This is where is struck me hard. At checkout, you get to see this confusing message.

So what they are literally saying here is you have no way of knowing the final bill until the items are delivered to your door. At least that’s how I understand it, and the way I do, it doesn’t make any sense, and if I don’t like the bill, I have the right to refuse payment then. And to approve or decline it, this means that I have to be present and cannot just hand over the money to the housemaid and head out to work.

I most certainly do not believe this term is there for Maachla to abuse, but it shows a kind of uncertainty in their item pricing and lack of price update. But for me the customer, how can I trust such a system? If I sense a difference in the bill, I have to manually compare each and every item. This is also related to the lack of an inventory system.

e-List:

The e-List is a quick way for you to write down items you want, quantity, size, and brand. You can leave the size and brand open, go to checkout quickly, and they would try to match your preference.

This I believe is a nice and easy way to finish your shopping, similar to handing over your grocery list for someone to do the shopping for you. I bet you can even specify here small PEPSI can and get it as well! Problem is, you have no clue about the pricing once again! A call before delivery would be good to confirm the final price.

Conclusion:

We believe Maachla.com has got all the hard elements of the equation in place. The store, the physical items, the delivery capacity. What they need is just to tie it stronger together. Have an updated inventory system, even if it’s a nightly update only, that would still be much better than the current situation. Give people the same physical experience by providing what’s already there. Faster and more AJAXed experience is always better as well.

If the problem of varieties is at least solved, and a guarantee of price range, I guess I could rely on this service for at least pre-packaged products. Fruits and vegetables are a different matter I say for now.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Site: PIFSS.GOV.KW

Name: The Public Institution for Social Security

Name (Arabic): المؤسسة العامة للتأمينات الاجتماعية

Type: Government

Brief: PIFSS have started providing it’s online services as part of the e-government project a while ago, giving it’s users access to loads of information about their social security status and numbers, as well as allowing them to submit certain certificate requests.

Review:

Registration:

Sadly, for registration, PIFSS have decided to go with their own online user credentials, thus taking a step away from a unified government identity. Perhaps the reason for this is the slow progress of the unified identity, who knows. To start the registration anyhow, you first click the Electronic services link at the top left of the screen.

From there, click on New User? (مستخدم جديد؟), fill in your civil ID number and click submit. After that, you will have to complete a certain form with some personal information, secret question and such. Once you submit the form, you will have to wait for few days, after which they will notify you of the time to come and collect the password with an email like this:

Sadly, this is an after two weeks kind of period, which is too long just to create the account and deliver a password. Hopefully with time this process will get faster. You can go on the specified date or later, and you collect the password from the main branch, car parking building, Floor # 2. It was quite empty when I went there. You need to go in person and have the Civil ID with you, sign few papers and you’re done.

After that, just open the envelop to get your password and login. First thing I suggest is change your password to something you can remember, rather than rely on the numeral one given to you. If you forget the password, you can reset it online by answering the secret question, no more trips to Kuwait City.

Online Services:

The online service portal design is quite neat, pretty fast to load, and very easy to follow, renders on different browsers and operating systems properly apparently, as I was using Firefox on Mac with no issues. This is the main page with your personal information.

And from the side menu, you can access loads of information and certificate request forms, such as the allowance info, registration periods, retirement salary calculation if applicable, and your current salary and cut amount.

Summary:

PIFSS online service I believe is an ideal of how online services should be. Quite informative, neat and clean design, easy to read and follow, and quite fast as well. Ofcourse, other e-Government services are bound to have more interactive features, like paying the bills and such. For PIFSS, I’m sure there is also a long way to go, but this is quite a good start. My only concern beside the long time for password delivery is how each entity is delivering with it’s own user credentials, which will complicate unifying the user identities later on across all the government. But again, maybe they couldn’t spare to wait for Civil Service Commission to get ready, or maybe the latter was making it too complicated. Who knows.

Go ahead and try it I say. You will get quick access to your info, and be able to support further enhancements in the e-Government.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Name: Kuwaiter.com

Category: Community / Information

Language: English

Brief: Community driven site for Kuwait upcoming events, offers, and for people to express their wishes by demanding certain events.

Review: Seeing it emerge only less than a year ago, the site right now is covering quite a lot about the upcoming events in Kuwait, with the ability to comment and rate these events. This events list can be really handy for both consumers and business owners to see what’s out there and reach out. Another less populated section gives you the current offers available in the market, and it’s up to the business owners here to really fully utilize it. The neat part I see is the Demand section, which allows you to express your desire for a certain type of events, and then more and more people can share your demand. Business owners can then simply see the trend and desire, to fulfill what people already need. That’s a small market study for FREE.

Should You Sign-Up with Kuwaiter.com?

Kuwaiter.com believes so for the following benefits:

1. Keeping track and sharing events with friends and community members.
2. Adding your own events for “free” and promoting events to the entire Kuwaiti community.
3. Create groups and share similar interests with the community.
4. Easily export events via calendar widgets or tools.
5. Send the event to your email, print a copy and/or invite your friends to it.
6. You will have your own “personal community page” which allows you to see who your friendsare, what events and groups your friends are joining.

Warning About Registration!

My biggest frustration of the site came after I received a spam email from someone saying she found my contact info @ Kuwaiter.com. I was stunned and when I checked my profile, it seems my email used for registration was put on publicly without my consent. I checked their Privacy Policy page to see if I missed something, and no, they’re not supposed to do this.

I went to my profile page and realized my Profile info has been set to Public by default, which doesn’t make any sense. Even if I chose to make it public, usually profile information does not enforce sharing of user’s email account. So if you want to register, definitely make sure you visit the Profile page immediately after sign-up and adjusting the privacy to your likings.

Suggestions:

• Preserve user privacy: Simply allow users to opt-in for sharing their email and other profile info publicly. By default, private information should be, umm private!
• Tags for Events: If you go right now, you will see loads of events, many of which are for elections. Now you may be interested in Shopping events only for instance, so it would be nice to allow tags to distinguish event types, and help people see what they like. Yes there are categories right now, but they’re not really enforced nor followed, and I don’t see an easy way to filter events out.
• RSS Feed for Events: Right now, there is an RSS for the news only, which isn’t really the main content of the site. People would come here for events, and I bet they would like to subscribe for RSS of their favorite events, e.g. Shopping, Electronics or so.

Summary:

With the exception of the Privacy issue, I’m pretty impressed by the amount of content so far put in the site, keeping it always fresh, and would wish to see more extensibility and ease of reach for it.

UPDATE: I’m not sure if this is a coincidence or a response, but I received this email few minutes ago from Kuwaiter.com:

“Dear Kuwaiter.com member,

We hope that our email finds you in good health.

First of all we would like to thank you for registering and hope that you are enjoying Kuwaiter.com and its unique services.

We sadly noticed that some users are misusing Kuwaiter.com to spam user emails. We extend our deepest apologies for this unfortunate incident and assure you that we are in the process of fixing this error so it will not occur again.

Meanwhile, to ensure your privacy kindly switch your Kuwaiter account to the (private) setting instead of the (public).

Kuwaiter.com is open to suggestions as well as criticism. We are more than happy to hear back from you. Since its launch back in February of 2009, we were always aiming to develop to offer only the top quality online community to our users. Your input is highly cherished and will help in aiding our mission so feel free to contact us anytime on info@kuwaiter.com or on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=27853434920

Best wishes,

Kuwaiter.com Team”

So personally I’m always happy to see strong actions taken against spamming, but Kuwaiter.com should’ve been more careful about disclosing people’s email in the first place. Public email is an open invitation for spammers. Thanks though for starting to take corrective measures.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Name: Wazeefa1.com

Category: Jobs

Language: English

Review: New still growing jobs site for the Arab region, with current 121 jobs in Kuwait, most highest country in the site. Judging on that number, and the type of ads, one could guess it’s a Kuwaiti initiated site. The good thing about this job site is that job seekers and employers alike seem to be able to register and post for FREE, and you don’t need to be registered to see the available job listings and details as some others tend to do. To apply for a job however, yes this needs a registration. Still though, if you’ve got all the job details, including the company name, then you only need to register if you want to apply online. Otherwise just drive your car there and submit your papers.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Name: Q8Tutors.com

Business Type: Education

Languages: Arabic

Launch Date: March, 2009 (Beta)

Brief:
Q8Tutors.com is new idea in Kuwait for private tutors listing, still in Beta stage. The site has a design of it’s simplest form, and a very direct tutor search feature covering all education level from elementary school to Bachelors and Masters. You can filter by tutor gender, subject (which still needs to have more varieties), and educational level.

Tutors can also freely advertise and list their services for FREE and on the fly. People searching will not be able to see the name but only details and contact info.

The site is still fairly new and not fully occupied yet, but with time I guess it’s gonna be a big traffic with our classified ad newspapers full of such paid advertisements that are hard to find and filter. An advantage of having the listings online however would be more information about the tutor, like pricing, and the review of students who hired him/her. That would really give a great value for the student, as it’s one thing to find a tutor, and it’s a completely different thing to find a good tutor. This is what’s missing from the classified ads.

Ofcourse, one could also argue about the ethics of teachers giving private lessons, but that’s up to the single individual I guess.

Snapshot:

Popularity: 20% [?]

Name: Q8eGifts.com

Business Type: Gifts Shopping

Language: English/Arabic

Launch Date: First seen November, 2008

Brief: Kuwait online gift shopping site offering flower bouquets and chocolate gifts.

Review: Q8eGifts comes with a unique theme of it’s own, and a nice design aimed at showing best offers at the top. The variety and type of products offered so far are not so attractive, while I do notice some slight updates on the gifts collection, they do need a wider range to choose from, and it definitely needs more original or unique content of its own to separate it from the rest, rather than regular chocolates you can find at the grocery nearby you.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Another year and another P2BK event, an annual event for small-medium entrepreneurs to participate and demonstrate their businesses. The exhibition this year brought in more varieties after it’s been more recognized, and the quality and booth expenses have increased to a good extent as well, showing how eager and enthusiastic contributors were. Their hard efforts however were again over shadowed by an overwhelming crowd of visitors trying to pass back and forth in a human traffic flow inside the tiny corridors between booths. The small area separating the booths made it barely possible for people to move, let alone standing for a moment to know what the booth is all about. If a guy stops, he would basically stop the whole lane behind him. We had to go with the current all the way through. Best thing you can hope to do is grab a brochure while you’re on the go.

Overheating was another problem still existing from last year. Since the room is designed for events, one would only think it’s designed to accommodate all it’s needs as well.

We understand the restriction on space area with the event targeting small-medium businesses, trying to keep it as affordable as possible, but the huge demand, costly booths, and amount of visitors can only justify the expansion. I’m sure sponsors would cover up big part of the event under such big demand, and the other thing is, if space is a problem, last thing one would need is a main stage eating up the remaining area.

Not only did it take a big amount of space, but was a big source of noise as well. My friend was trying to discuss something with an exhibitor but instead just took the business card since we couldn’t hear anything.

Any good impressions left on the way out were also wiped out when some guy at the door raised his hand over my friend’s chest, rudely telling him the exit is the other way. The fact that no door has a sign of Entrance nor Exit shows a bad side of organization, and not taking good care of the qualifications of the people they hire is another thing worse. Have it been someone other than my friend, who is a highly educated, wise and calm person, things would’ve taken a different turn.

In summary, I believe the event is a great idea, there is a big demand for it especially at the boost of online business in Kuwait, however the execution could be made a lot better to give the best outcome for both the visitor, and the exhibitor, as I can only picture my self as an exhibitor loosing all those candidate customers. The environment should be suitable to discuss the business opportunities, it’s not a carnival after all. Also, serious care should be taken with the hiring, what happened to us on the way out was really outrageous.

Popularity: 19% [?]

With every new year people come up with their own new year resolutions. Targets they want to achieve, and things they want to improve on. A logical question is why does it have to be at the beginning of the year rather than whenever they really feel like it. Two main reasons maybe (besides following the crowd blindly :):

1- It would give the person a good time line to measure his progress over the course of next year.
2- New year gives the feeling of a new beginning.

At all rates, I thought of sharing today the new started blog of a friend. Personal Growth Map is not really a typical type of blog that we have in Kuwait, but is rather a blog focused purely towards the personal improvement and development. And in his words, here is what Haider wants to achieve from his site:

• To explain what personal development is, so that you can develop a more comprehensive understanding of the subject, and how everything else fits into it
• To help you make the best use of the personal development resources you already have, and the information you come across
• To propose a way in which personal development material should be presented by other websites, to make them easier for us all to use
• To present the Personal Growth Map, which is an approach that I developed for personal development that makes having a balanced life very achievable

The blog has only launched in December 08, but has recently been kept updated regularly on an almost daily basis. Hoping it will you you, me and others stay motivated throughout the year in pursuing our year resolutions.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Name: Wataniya Airways

Business Type: Travel

Launch Date: December, 2008
* Date we first noted site online. Could be different

Brief: Wataniya Airlines is the second private airlines going into business next February, and they are the first premium service private airlines, as opposed to the low cost Al-Jazeera Airways. Wataniya Airways have 2 planes so far parked at Toulouse, France, and have 2 more coming later. The two airplanes will be starting their back and forth journeys between their country of origin, Kuwait, and the destinations Dubai, Bahrain, and Beirut on the 8th of Feb, 09. Travelers can already book their ticket flights online.

via SOME contrast

Review:

While Wataniya Airways site has all basic features for travelers to book their tickets, it is still behind I say compared to Jazeera Airways and others. The site design is rather pretty simple and looks like a ready made template. Search box date selection could be improved. Rather than having drop down menu for each entry (e.g., day, month, year), the approach of Jazeera Airways showing dates in human readable format is more appealing. Site response time is also occasionally slow

Booking: Once you perform a flight search, a new full screen window opens up with a complete different URL, but within the same theme, to complete the booking process. This is the engine and service that is powering their online booking system, something that Al-Jazeera is also doing. The different however is that Al-Jazeera does it so transparently. No domain change, nor a new window for it. The Wataniya Airways’ new window is so inconvenient, and makes it difficult for the normal user to browse back and forth. It also forbids him from doing multiple flight searches, which he may want to do for comparison purposes. Any new search loads in the same previously opened window. Also, the redirection to a complete different domain (cat.sabresonicweb.com), makes the end user confused. A simple subdomain mapping would be sufficient to overcome this problem, and give much more confidence and credibility to the user.

Another thing is Wataniya site still does not seem to offer seat selection, nor even a preference. At least, I was not able to spot it. Jazeera on the other hand had it since it’s early launch days. Made a pretty positive impression as well.

Pricing: That’s where it all ends isn’t it? So I tried to go through flight search from Kuwait to Dubai from 9th - 14th Feb, 09 for Wataniya Airways, Jazeera, and Kuwait Airways. A first note is, for some reason Wataniya site returns the ticket price in the currency of destination country, e.g AED, rather than the origin. As a Kuwaiti company, it should be either in KD by default, takes the currency of origin, or at least have in USD as a global currency. Not for any reason would I want to know the price in AED when I am traveling from Kuwait, and the least is I should have the option to change to my preferred currency. At the time of writing, there just isn’t!

Now as for prices, keeping in mind Jazeera is a low-cost service, these are the price ranges:

Wataniya Airways: 50 KD - 129 KD (42 classes)
Jazeera Airways: 10 KD - 70 KD (2 classes)
Kuwait Airways: 105 KD - 230 KD (3 classes)

So Jazeera highest exceeds Wataniya lowest fare, and notice how Kuwait Airways, a struggling service, has it’s lowest class fare close to Wataniya highest, and how their highest First class rate is above by 100 KD. While Wataniya uses Airbus A320, and Kuwait Airways uses variety of models, it remains known to many how consumed and old the airplanes Kuwait Airways operates, especially after last time new airplane purchase efforts were turned down. That, in addition to the frequent Wataniya 2 per day flight to Dubai should put Kuwait Airways almost obsolete for such destinations I believe, except when all other airlines are fully booked. Despite the known fact of the competition, we did not see any corrective measures on the Kuwait Airways side as well. Another thing is, Wataniya Airways gives travelers their own Royal Aviation Terminal, and this includes all traveler classes.

Future Destinations:

• Cairy, Egypt
• Amman, Jordan
• Qatar
• Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
• Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Damascus, Syria

Summary: Competition is always good, and Wataniya is opening more seats to the hot short destinations, at a promising better service quality. The aviation terminal is, if as good as it seems, a marvelous idea. Their site still seems to need some work in terms of design, performance, and booking features.

In general, I expect Jazeera to remain the target for most frequent travelers for it’s competitive prices. Luxury and late flight seekers will be the Wataniya ones. I still believe with the different in service type we will see both airways trying to eat up each other’s share though. Kuwait Airways… So far it’s still in it’s long sleep, and I don’t expect it to wake up anytime soon.

More References:

Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wataniya_Airways
Jobs: http://www.bayt.com/job/company?xid=807752

Popularity: 28% [?]

Name: Maachla.com

Business Type: Grocery Shopping

Languages: English/Arabic

Launch Date: November, 2008

Brief: Maachla (which means in Arabic grocery items for house) is another online grocery shopping site in Kuwait, like Taw9eel.com, but unlike Taw9eel which operates its own storage area, this one seems to be coordinating with Mishref Co-op.

Review: Being a follower, one would think it has a tough competition to make with Taw9eel, which usually guarantees 1 hour delivery at all times, operating from their own stores according to what they say, rather than dealing with Mishref or any other Co-Op. This gives Taw9eel the lead in delivery time, and better control over the stock items. But it also makes them more limited with item variety, as they can’t keep large stocks of items that wont sell, and also at large extra savings cost. Maachla on the other hand comes up with much greater varieties with lower overhead cost. For example, Taw9eel has only 3 ketchup items of same brand, Heinz, while Maachla comes with over 10 items of different brands.

Price: This is where the credibility of Maachla have failed me. While item prices in general appear to be a lot cheaper than Taw9eel, 300 compared to 500 fils, the prices seem inaccurate and varying for the same product. For example, the below are two Heinz Mayonnaise of different sizes, with the smaller one 300 Fils more expensive.

This is most likely a data entry problem only. The other problem I noticed was price difference between search result page, and product details page:

Search Result Price of 340g is 300 Fils

Product Details page of Heinz ketchup 340g showing price is 450 Fils

So which one is it? This shows hidden bugs in the system and not data entry errors, and for me would keep me away from trying it out in the meantime.

Usability & Interface: Usability I believe is another weakness of the site. Grocery shopping is unlike other type of shoppings. Needs to be fast and easy to search, navigate, and go back and forth. Browsing the site content on Maachla however is rather difficult, as opposed to the AJAX rich interface of Taw9eel with the following shortcomings as I see it:

• Main page of the site is almost free of of any item listing, when it should be the kick off point for it.
• Clicking on category does not bring that category products, but rather requires another click on the subcategory.
• Side menu is taking large part of the screen, when you need to focus on the products them selves most of the time.
• Search function does not seem to be working.
• Registration is required to add items to the cart, when some stores compete to provide checkout without even registration. Registration upon checkout can be enforced, but not before I even try adding items to the cart. Especially when registration requires all my personal information, mobile number, and home address. A side note also is why does the site use the mobile number as the user name? Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me
• Thumbnails: The squeezed thumbnails of items really distorts the look of it, makes item less appealing, and misleading as well. There is the gram size ofcourse, but still the look of a pepsi can is much easier than comparing the gram size.

A revisit for the site design and usability I believe is in order.

Express Shop: This could be their answer to the usability of the site. Express Shop is a quick way to write the items you’re looking for, just as in the notes you carry with you along to the grocery store, and search. You will get list of all available items matching yours. That is a neat feature in my opinion, though still does not overcome all the shortcomings.

Delivery and Charge: We were not able to find any information about delivery charges, but the minimum order amount is 2.0 KD, which is pretty fair. They do not specify the areas of delivery however.

Company Info Missing: As an online grocery store, I guess many people would like some information about the company behind this service, and the way they operate. However we did not see any information like this, not an FAQ section or details about refunds and payments either. The only lead is that it’s “Designed by: Mag Web Technologies Pvt Ltd”, and dealing with Mishref co-op.

Enforce of SSL on all pages: For some reason, all site pages are enforced over SSL connection, which ofcourse means all pages are encrypted and take much longer to load. Not even Amazon takes that step. Encrypted pages are checkout and confidential information pages usually.

Conclusion: Overall, I think the market is big enough for new comers, as majority are still not depending on the high quality, yet very expensive service of Taw9eel.com. With little work on the site, and good market reach, I guess this thing could become handy for many.

Popularity: 28% [?]