Ketaaby.com Review – Online Kuwait Bookstore
Name: Ketaaby.com
Type: Shopping – Books
Description: Kuwait online shopping bookstore that offers wide range of Arabic focused books with an English books section as well. The site is divided into one level of categories, e.g. computers, law, literature, English, but there are no subcategories. Home delivery is made within 48 hours of order placement, and it would seem that payment is in cash on delivery, which I personally like.
Pros:
FREE Delivery: I think the site needs an FAQ section as I was not able to find direct answer, but upon trying to checkout with 6 KD book, it showed the delivery charge as zero KD, which is good.
Regional: This is both good and bad, but looking at it from the bright side, the store is good for Arabic readers who prefer to read Arabic books only. It has a collection of English books, but their top seller majority is in Arabic.
Design: The look and feel of the site is appealing I find it and easy to load, focused and not cluttered with ads or anything else.
Unique: We really lack good large bookstores in Kuwait, and we lack online bookstores even more. The other online bookstore I know is Q8Books, which I discussed before. So I wish to see growth for them. Problem is, I don’t think Kuwaities in general are passionate enough about books to make strong market for them.
Cons:
Price: When I say this here, I am comparing English books at Amazon and local stores to this one. Usually novels are few KDs, could reach 5 KD at times. An example I looked at is “The Zahir”, which costs at Amazon $11, and local stores around 5 KD, while here it’s 8.5 KD. Novels are usually low priced, and light in weight, so shipping from outside the book would cost 3 KD, add another 3 KD for the shipping, you are still saving 2.5 KD. Ofcourse you are also waiting few days more. For some other books, the price may be a good offer though looking at book weight, or for Arabic books as well which you can’t find outside. So for your type of books, you should first take a look at the market and see if the difference is worth the trip to the store next time.
Categories: Having only one level of categories could make it difficult to find the book you are looking for. For example, in computer section I could be looking for software books purely. In English category, novels, history, biography, self-improvement and all other kinds are mixed together. It’s nice in a sense to browse through different collections, but not very helpful when you are looking for something specific. I think a better way would be to have same categories in English & Arabic. Or make it vice versa. When clicking on Computer, give option to include English, Arabic or both. Just a thought.
Search: The search feature did not seem to function as expected to me. I tried several searches for author and title, the results did not seem relevant.
Up to date?: Looking at my taste of books, computers, I did not see them so much updated. Maybe it’s because Arabic computer books are just not so updated, possible. I remember a big physical computer bookstore in Kuwait City that kept begging for customers till it went broke. Problem is, most computer book readers are welling to order from outside, and it’s difficult for local ones to compete with outside stores. I also notice this in Jarir Bookstore. But for Guinness World Records book, I can’t really excuse not having latest one 
.
Suggestions: I hope the store is doing good, but I’m not sure. I am sure though I do not see enough ads for it. People in Kuwait are ordering good amount of books from outside, are increasingly facing more difficulties with delivery couriers, so if local stores can deliver in 2 days, which is long for local delivery but still good compared to international one, then they would happy to buy the same book if it’s for a good price. Some targeted Google ads, or Facebook ads might be useful. Have it been tried before? I’m not sure I’ve seen it
Popularity: 49% [?]
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organic kuwait said,
May 10, 2008 @ 10:47 am
i tried to email then several times a while ago and i never got a reply..
Q8Ba7th said,
May 10, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
organic kuwait: Ohh
. Thats terrible. It’s those sites that died and was never taken off then. Either that or they’re not doing good online business.
Thanks for sharing the experience.
Ketaaby.com said,
May 16, 2008 @ 5:25 am
thanks dear for the summary you came out with for the 2,5 years old online kuwaiti bookstore. Dont worry, there are a good amount of customers to the site whom are mostly from the high income segment.
However, there is a re-branding happeing soon that for sure you will like.
Keep visiting! Thanks.
Q8Ba7th said,
May 16, 2008 @ 3:56 pm
Ketaaby.com: Thanks guys for adding your words here. I’m not sure if you read the other comment by organic kuwait about emails with no reply, not sure how that happened, but it would give indication store may not be functional. Just a note you may want to look at.
Good luck, and will keep looking.
oyunlar said,
June 17, 2008 @ 7:51 am
Thanks You All The Topic Beatiful
Best Regard