Q8Ba7th Official Blog

For sometime now, Urood.com has been down and it seem to be long gone. I’ve really liked it in the past, although I’m not a heavy user of classifieds. Having tried it only once, the site was easy and nice to use. Alas, Kuwait is a small market, and getting a community around any Kuwaiti site is no easy job.

Shame to loose such a site.

Popularity: 5% [?]

7arai.com is yet another classified ads site for Kuwait and the rest of the Gulf. However if you give it a look, I am sure you will like the effort that was put into the design of it. According to the site though, the seller and buyer get to negotiate the price and you can make bid for the item you want.

“7arai.com is an online marketplace where everyone can buy and sell via classified ads. Just a simple way for buyers and sellers to connect and arrive at a deal. Our technology provides both buyers and sellers with online management tools to organize and track their offers and classified ads. We help you with everything from image hosting to online marketing to record-keeping.”

The ads are under categories and subcategories. So for example, to reach Birds, you would go to Animals & Pets -> Birds. What I think would be more convenient and bring more exposure to the advertiser, is to have featured Animals & Pets ads when you click that category, and then get more specific to the subcategory you like. So for example if I love animals, and was looking for Birds, I may like the cat featured on the Animals & Pets section. Sign-up to the site is FREE, however there is a corporate fee based sign-up that is coming soon it seems. That would be nice if they can secure some corporate sellers.

One thing I would really like to see changed is the mandatory mobile number for registration and for feedback. The site doesn’t look scam at all, but still the mobile number is a bit of personal information for registration or just sending feedback. Another thing is, if they ask for my mobile number, I assume they are going to use it somehow, even if legitimately, I might still not prefer it as the mean of communication. Perhaps when I want to seal a deal with someone, I may need to give it.

All in all, I loved the site, which is still brand new. Wish them all the best.

If you like and want to vote for it on Q8igg, click here.

Popularity: 31% [?]

The famous Kids Kingdom shop Baroue have already started showing online Google Ads for their upcoming site.

I still haven’t been there I am waiting for good quiet time to visit this shop everybody seems to be talking about. I have a question though. At first, I thought this Baroue is worldwide brand that is coming to Kuwait. Then I came to know Baroue has a meaning as Kuwaiti word, and the site is now Coming Soon. Searching for the shop worldwide I was not able to spot it. The reason I assumed it’s global brand is their nice theme, the strong idea to have the largest kids shop in the largest mall in Kuwait, and the way they presented their brand all over Kuwait and now almost no one doesn’t know it. I’ll have to say, if this is all coming from a Kuwaiti mind, it’s really really great.

Other nice things to see along the way are:

1- Companies are realizing the importance of having online presentation of their physical store. I would love also to see some online shopping there from such a big brand. It could do great in holiday season. Send Gift to someone’s child online!
2- More and more people are realizing the power and importance of online ads rather than just relying on expensive non-targeted TV, newspaper and street ads. In the end, this is good for many other Kuwaiti existing and upcoming sites. Means you can give the service for FREE and rely on the targeted Kuwaiti ads served by Google, just as the case with this site and Q8igg.

Popularity: 42% [?]

Waseet newspaper is the most popular ad newspaper in Kuwait, and probably the gulf as well. It has also publications in other Arab countries like Egypt. Posting your small ad there to sell a car, PC or anything else will get you large exposure. But for me, there was a bit of a problem. I tend to find it tiring to go through all those small ads, and there is a big chance I could miss the ones I want. Last year, Waseet have made a very smart move with their revamped eWaseet site. Quick loading, organized, split into categories, and include the thousands of ads that are in the weekly Waseet newspaper. Gives you everything you need and more. You can chose what you want very easily. For example, you can select real estate, lands, for sale, and specify the area. There you got it. The load and search time of the site is very good, unlike many others that crash for simple queries you make, or simply return no results always. You can also select your version of Waseet from 9 different countries.

Registration to the site is also possible, and upon authentication, and if you go an extra step to authenticate your mobile number by filling the 5 digits code you received on your mobile, you will get an extra set of useful services if you are a regular user of that service:

• Add Pages to your Favorites for future reference.
• Weekly eMail newsletters (OK, we already get lots of junk maybe)
• Ability to post your ads online and pay via credit card. See Thumbnail. For each ad type, you get a set of fields to fill up, guiding you through what you need to put, and making it easier for others to search based on different criteria, like price, area, # rooms for example.
• Get instant Email and SMS notification for your Favorite searches. I love this feature. Rather than having to worry about missing any ads, you resume your normal life until they come and tell you.

What do I still want from the site? Well perhaps against it’s own good, I would love to have an archive of old ads. From their point of view ofcourse, this may slow down new ads and decrease their profit. But if it’s in an archived section that is not directly accessible, it already has the drawback of not being presented in normal search pages. So I am thinking there could be a smart way for doing it. Q8soog is a site that has promised to post the daily newspaper ads online for you to read, but it’s still not fully live. Another service they could offer, that would create customer loyalty and encourage online use of the service is discounted renewal rate. For example, I posted my ad this week for 5 KD but no one called, or I didn’t sell the item yet. Perhaps I won’t feel like posting again in the same source, Waseet in this case. But if they give me special %50 discount for renewing the same ad, well maybe I’ll do it. This will also attract other people to use online ads rather than manual process. This is less headache for Waseet employees in the end. It saves a lot of time as I’ve seen how long those small ads take to finally agree on.

The site also has a survey on most desired type of ads, and surprisingly it’s Jobs. I thought it would be cars or real estate.

Popularity: 46% [?]

Q8Phones is the site for people looking to buy/sell used phones in Kuwait as the name suggests. The site is not limited to used phones, however you will see that this the majority of available phones there. The site design is fairly simple, nice and clean. You will need to register to post your phone ad. You can browse through the available phones without registration. Shall you be interested in a phone? You will fill a simple form to contact the seller and he shall reply back via email then. This is to maintain the privacy of the seller not anything else. I like this concept rather than posting my email or phone number. Registration and posting is all FREE. The site makes it revenue through ads on the side.

Community? There are currently 23 mobile phones only. But I am sure if anyone sold a phone there he will be getting another customer to use the site. Last time I checked there were only a handful of phones. Now there is a bit more. Hopefully, the community will grow. We are one of the fastest mobile changing communities in the world aren’t we?

WARNING:

From buyers side, after listing few items, I immediately received a purchase request from the US that was welling to add 40 KD to the item price to cover shipping. Something didn’t make a lot of sense. The buyer insisted on paying by wire-transfer, saying she was scammed by PayPal. Lots of people would think it’s safe to give away your bank account number to anyone, but BE CAREFUL. This is their way to money laundry affairs and will get you into trouble. If you wanna use the site, stick to local sellers, and cash payments.

Popularity: 61% [?]

I will have to second Kuwait Mac Community on that one and add a little to it. Urood is a new site for classifieds in Kuwait. It’s design is pretty simple, but it’s also straight to the point kind of sites. Just what I like. You can post your ad by a quick and simple registration process, or you can even post directly without sigining in. You will just receive an email to confirm your post and for future update.

The site has sections for real estate, items for sale, and jobs. The site is only in English, and a look at it’s Privacy Policy you can see the site is owned by a US limited liability company. This kind of explained why the site is built using Perl, as I don’t know many in Kuwait who would know and use it right now. As a matter of fact, I know one geek only who was studying in the US. I thought for a second, this could be him! Alas, the site as many others in Kuwait seems to have no popularity at all, although other than that, they have everything to kick a top classified site in Kuwait.

if you like it and think this could help you and others, try to spread the word about it. It’s what the site needs right now if you like to get the most of it.


UPDATE: Site has gone down for a while now and is no longer in operation.

Popularity: 45% [?]