Q8Ba7th Official Blog

For golden number fans, or also for people looking to buy a new normal number, Q8Numbers could be your first destination to check. A side from selling phone models and internet accessories, their main strong feature is the ability to search for your desired number, and see it’s availability. You can search for numbers by two ways:

1- Search by number pattern, e.g. I want numbers like 9**0000
2- Search by category: I want Golden Zain numbers ranging at this price.

Search results give you most information you need like number, owner, credit, line type, and contact number for inquiry. If you are looking for a number that matches yours, you can send a query to them and they will try to get it it seems. There is a section for advertisement as well if you like to place banner ads or advertise your number. I didn’t quite understand what they mean by “thabet” and “motaharek”. If they are referring to land and mobile lines, I think 5 KD charge for advertising regular number kills the purpose. But then again, if my number is regular, I will usually just cancel it.

Nice To Have: I think a neat feature the site could have is anonymous number price estimate. I fill in the number I may wish to sell, or buy, and see the estimated price tag based on the nature of number, is it ranked as Golden, Diamond, regular. How did such previous numbers sell. This could help people decide whether they want to sell or not before broadcasting their number to the public.

So what sort of numbers do you expect to find there?

Opinion: I like the general idea of the site, I see a good use for it, though I’m not a big fan of luxurious numbers, so I won’t be doing serious hunting there. I believe people will save my number and are likely to forget it after that. Heck I forgot the number I bought to my wife!. I know it’s not like that, but I look at it as my IP. Doesn’t matter how it looks, if it works well . Alas, the service keeps getting worse, so it doesn’t!

Popularity: 24% [?]

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: 65% [?]

P2BK is a new youth initiative to organize annual forum for small and startup businesses. A healthy and definitely needed concept I say for startups and small business who can’t afford to take place in big expos like Info Connect and others. Yesterday, 30th April, 08 was the first annual forum which I could not afford to miss. I have to say however I was expecting much more from it. Keeping in mind this is the first annual forum, one can’t expect things to be perfect. They were also very unfortunate in timing with the Islamic Conference traffic jam and the icy storm that struck in the same day. So anyways, the idea is pretty good in general and I would love to see more of it, and here I thought of sharing what I thought was good, bad, and add some suggestions to it.

Pros:

Concept: Great idea and very much useful for small businesses. The number of participants can only reflect how much people want it.

Pricing: The price was meant to serve the small business owners making it affordable to most if not all.

Awards & Surveys: What’s an expo without feedback really? A $1000 award was promised for best design, which is chosen based on visitor reviews. Ofcourse it’s kinda subject to fraud and biased thought, but the idea is good. Also, a lady came in asking for our opinion in the expo which I dont mind at all. Except that my hand writing is bad, and as you can see from the post, I have a lot more to say than a few lines can take.

Cons:

Timing: 1 day expo, 4-10 PM. 6 hours only. I arrived at around 4:30, left around 5:30 PM. If I want to recommend the expo to a friend, he only has like 4 more hours to go. The traffic jam these few days also would make him hesitate more. I understand how the low budget may had something to do with this, but still it’s a point I think worth looking at. 3 days I think is good. Big sponsors can take part of the hosting costs and make it easier for contributors and P2BK to afford 3 days expo.

Space: The large amount of exhibitors condensed inside the small area has made it very difficult to move around, let alone set and talk to exhibitors. To make the most out of these forums, area must be wide enough for a person to walk around and watch. See what he likes and go to it. But rather I literally had to watch my steps while walking, and it’s not the heavy crowd as much as the small areas to be honest. This may have also resulted in the extreme heat inside the place.

Media Coverage: I mostly heard about this expo from the blogs. I may have seen some online ads, not sure though. I also got one spam email somehow about it. But all people I talked to didn’t know about the expo, and I never saw anything about it in the newspaper or streets. Neither I did see any review about it today even in the newspapers.

Varieties: Big portion of the exhibitors were about fashion and food, which would appeal for females maybe, but not for the majority of males.

Preparation: We were there after 5 PM when at least one of the top brand exhibitors was still working out his booth. Taking into account the exhibition is only one day makes it even worse. I know every exhibitor is responsible for his area, but the overall image of the expo depends on it’s exhibitors. So proper time management and more control on exhibitors for the overall good of the expo is needed.

Suggestions:

Categories: Hoping to see larger expo next year with larger varieties, it would help both exhibitors and visitors if the expo is organized into categories. Say Fashion, Food, eBusiness, technology, etc. One would go to the section he wants, finding what he expects. As yesterday, there was almost a whole lane full of women clothes and stuff, for some reason we passed through it and found the car bluetooth hands free device on one of the booths. It was too crowded with women we couldn’t even make a stop and just left. If it’s categorized, people would go to their preferred sections, and exhibitors would get the target audience.

Talk shows: Just like western ones. Certain companies hire the stage to present their new ideas and services to the public. This would attract more attention I presume.

Even though I was in general disappointed, I still like the idea and think there is a potential behind it if some of the points are taken care of.

Last words are: Good luck.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Name: BasketsMadePerfect.com

Type: Gifts

Description: Online store to browse for category of high class gift baskets customized for your occasion. Site design is quite appealing I find it. From there you can select one of 14 predefined gift basket categories, like birthday baskets, corporate gift baskets, wedding, new baby, passion and others. The way to order is by selecting the type of gift you are looking for, after which the store will give you a call to further discuss the details of your gift basket content, look and final pricing. You get a chance to see the basket physically before sending it, or just do with a picture of it. Process is not 100% automated, and being custom made, I don’t think you can use it for next day delivery orders as well. But for custom gift baskets, I guess it’s very difficult to have it so, and you may prefer customizing it for the occasion, and check it before it’s sent over. Payment is possible in cash, money orders, wire transfer, or company checks. Some sample photos below.

USER EXPERIENCE UPDATE:

Sometimes things just happen at the right time. When I wrote about this site it didn’t come to my mind I have an occasion coming up, and I didn’t prepare anything for it yet. Soon after I realized this is the perfect easy way to have my gift ready while I’m at home, and give the site a shot as well. I didn’t use the contact form I just called the number directly, trying to figure if they can prepare something within 24 hours. It was as I expected, home based business but with professional and focused service. You get to talk to the lady, explain the occasion and kind of baskets you are looking for. Give an estimate of the price so that she can help in recommending the items inside the basket. I asked for a sample of similar baskets and got it sent soon after to my email.

Giving her the OK, next morning I got an email and SMS notice to check the photos of the basket. Due to my time constraints, I did it this way, but she offers a physical check of the basket before final wrapping as well. Delivery is available at no extra cost, but in my case, I chose to do the pickup from their home location. The basket was larger than I expected, looked really nice as well.

I have not compared the prices to outside ones, but it’s a good service that for me might be worth the money. Sorry I cannot say the price here, as it’s a gift and normally you do not disclose gift prices .

Popularity: 31% [?]

Q8Showroom.com is another new emerging car classified ads site, but is quickly rising in popularity. Currently ranked at 99,358, as opposed to famous Q8Car.com on 10,929. Big difference alright, but Q8Showroom is just getting started. A look at the graph below should give a better idea about how the status is right now, and keep in mind the time in market difference between the two:

Many other car ad sites have come up. Why did that one emerge? The answer is in the backing company, Future Technology (I could be wrong here. Read comments). This company’s been pushing real hard into the online business in Kuwait, seeing the potential behind it. Looking at the Company Info, it seems they are also the owners of Q8CV, the #1 place now for job postings in Kuwait, after it was nothing 1 year back. Being a big company, they can invest, they have links, and they can quickly convince companies into joining the new service.

But enough about that, the site allow users to post their car ads under 3 different categories:

• Express: 4 car pictures, show until sold for 5 KD
• Special: 9 car pictures, show until sold, 1 month feature on main page, submit to more than 50 Kuawiti sites for 35 KD. No details on which sites and how.
• Super: Same as Special, in addition to your own custom ad page for 50 KD.

I think most people would go for the Express, which is a fair amount for lifetime advertising. It’s good compared to others who charge the same price for 1 month of posting. But truth is, you are only selling one car, and for a site like Q8Car, usually if your car is wanted, it will get sold in less than a month and you won’t be needing that extra period anyways. A bad side of lifetime ad also is, most people are lazy and may not care to remove their ads. So the old cars may get left there for long time. I think the only motive to remove the car is to avoid intensive amount of calls from potential buyers. For the lowest 5 KD ad also, you get to post 4 pictures of you car, compared to one only in Q8Car. 10 KD is the price of 4 pictures of your car at Q8Car. While Q8Car might look at it as an added advantage to the advertiser and must be charged for, another way to look at it is what value am I giving to the end user. If I can make the buyers happier when browsing, at the expense of only 3 more photos, why not?

Providing multiple photos per car, and lots and lots of additional information, in an easy to include way, like does it have CD, phone, TV and more, all as checkbox options, makes it very useful for buyers. The site also offers it’s ads as RSS feeds and widgets to import to different sites, giving the ad more exposure. Sadly, they don’t give a reason for people to embed their widget into their sites. No financial reward or anything. The site also loads much faster than Q8Car, which has become condensed with heavy ads and is very difficult to browse.

Some of the things I didn’t like about the Q8Showroom is, their side indentation. The site is only taking the right side of the screen, leaving the rest of the area empty and useless. Centralized view of the site would have been better at least. The other bad thing is posting the car ad. I couldn’t find information about how payment is made, all they said is it only takes few minutes and simple steps. So I just filled up some junk data and clicked next, expecting to reach a payment page or something, but what I got was a message saying I will be contacted shortly. Now that’s not convenient or few minutes and steps. It’s kind of misleading information until you hit the submit button.

Popularity: 46% [?]

WardQ8.com is a very unique service in Kuwait that I’d love to see expand and get more of. As opposed to Q8Flowers.com, this site is an aggregator that combines current physical flower stores, present what they have to sell online, and allows you to shop and buy the bouquet you like from a central location. They seem to take care of delivering the order, settling the payment, and ensuring it gets delivered. The site is still kind of new and currently only consists of 3 physical stores, one of which is the famous Al-Bedaa flower store.

I am not a frequent flowers shopper, but if the site delivers the quality of service it promises, and can do so the same day. Still though, I think the bouquets are over priced a bit. What do you think?

Popularity: 20% [?]

I have been asked to visit and give Cash Art an honest review of my own. Although I like to pick the sites to review to avoid spammy requests, this recommendation was for an online fashion art shopping site that is a kind of new concept in Kuwait and I decided to shed some light on. Now before I go any further I want you to rest assured I am not a fashion guy at all and I hardly bare to shop for clothes few times a year. So I will leave the quality of the art review to you and focus on usability and service of the site.

Cash Art is the initiative of Fine Arts graduate from the American Intercontinental University in London named Alia Al-Naqeeb. The main idea behind this project is T-Shirts with artwork design on them driven from different currencies. Below shown is a sample back view of a Hummingbird T-Shirt that is priced at 27 KD.

If you ask me, I wouldn’t spend that much on a T-Shirt. But then again, I am not into fashion as a whole. The site allows you to see each Shirt from 3 different views for better feeling. You get to select the size of the Shirt, while some come in only one size. Payment is possible by Cash (inside Kuwait only), Knet, or Credit Card. Only item exchange is possible for Cash payment inside Kuwait. So if you are buying from Kuwait, perhaps Cash is your best choice. I don’t understand why other payment options don’t have exchange with them, even though I know Knet payments come with online interface for the merchant to reverse transactions pretty easily. Shipping inside Kuwait is FREE, but takes from 1-3 business days. My advise, in Kuwait, if you want to please your customers, guarantee next day shipping at the most. Worldwide shipping is also an option, that’s first time I see it inside Kuwait. International Shipping is through DHL and as per standard DHL shipping rates.

Site is mostly based on Flash, not my preferred choice. It’s pretty easy to browse though and the collection is not huge yet so you wouldn’t find problems finding your item. I think the Flash part though is adding a bit to the response time, and it could be improved.

To sum the goods and bads in clean list, we look first at the Pros:

1. Nice new idea to be implemented online in Kuwait.
2. Various payment options made available
3. Site browsing is relatively easy although I don’t like the small FRAME in middle with scroll bar. Most of the screen size is not used
4. International Shipping: She is thinking global so that’s nice.
5. Multiple sizes and thumbnail views

Cons:

1. Flash Based: For a shopping site, customer is coming to complete his transaction and the Flashy stuff will not make his job easier. Also, it will affect the Search Engine Optimization. Click here to see only 3 links are indexed by Google. That means most people searching the internet would not land on this site. SEO is an excellent way of continuous free traffic. I would suggest a light-weight text-based version option to users (and search engines). I think showing the T-Shirt in Flash 360o would be cool, but not browsing the site.
2. Price: This is just how I feel about it.
3. Return Policy: Online exchange for Cash inside kuwait.
4. Not utilizing the whole screen enforces the use of scroll-bar to browse even a single item. Not very convenient.
5. When adding an item to the cart, moving your cursor over it would display a friendly pop-up message with item description. That message flickers most of the time.
6. Registration Form: A bit long and blurry within the small border of the page. Also no highlight of required fields. Some people may not wish to put their mobile or home number. I suggest also a preferred way of contact: Email, mobile, home number.
7. Shipping speed in Kuwait is a bit long.

Sorry if I’ve been a bit harsh, but I was asked for fair review . I like to see new online businesses popping in Kuwait and review is hopefully a small way of helping them move forward. Good luck!

Popularity: 15% [?]

I finally got to order from Taw9eel and be able to give them decent review after they started shipping to Egaila. The site, while not best in design, is pretty fast and easy to use as it’s mostly Ajax based. Rarely you will see page refreshing. This makes shopping really a lot lot easier. Also, most products come with thumbnail, even if not best of quality images. For some reason, for Abraaj water cartoon they did not allow me to add more than 4 items! Seemed a bit weird but that’s OK. So I added 4 only and extra few items just for the sake of trying it. As you checkout from their site for the first time, few minutes later a Kuwaiti gentle guy calls to confirm your address for first order only. An indian guy wearing some home dress was at my door. The truck it self is Taw9eel branded but the indian guy was not dressed properly to present a company really. Who cares I said! They were gentle and gave me the items in nice clean bag.

Yeah beside water it was mostly junk . I just wanted to try something, and this thing definitely won’t be vegetables. You have to hand pick those stuff from the store your self eventually, but I am just saying, for large and/or frequent packed items, this service could come in handy. you can see the bag was organized nice and clean. I paid the driver on delivery, wouldn’t suggest Knet as you have the option of checking your order first here, and last time I checked, their certificate was expired!

So now I got my order home. What do I think of the service in general?

Pros:

1. The site is fast and easy to use relatively, even though it does not sub-categorize items properly. This will get difficult once they have too many items, but search is supposed to do the trick
2. Their delivery service is fast, clean and neat as you saw.
3. It would save me trouble of frequent and heavy stuff like Water cartoons and cloth washing materials.

Cons:

1. Price: Comparing it to normal grocery store, and even though they don’t charge separately for shipping, their prices are way too high, sometimes double the price. For example, Nice kitco is for 150 fils compared to 100 fils in grocery. Abraaj water cartoon is 1.045 KD compared to 600 fils approx. in grocery! That’s way too much for just a delivery. %50-%100 extra. Unless you really have excess of money and want to buy the luxury of life to that extent, or in really bad shape when you need certain items and can’t get it your self, there is no reason to pay that much extra difference. For me, I don’t think I coming near it even though the service it self was quite good and I would love to have such a thing at a reasonable price.
2. Variety: I told them about that before and they said they keep adding items regularly to their store, as they don’t pick up items from the grocery it self as it seems. But still, if I want to pay extra to get rid of shopping headache, I have to be able to find all items I need online. And all the brand I need. For example I don’t like Heinz Ketchup or that certain cloth washing brand just doesn’t suit me. If only one item is missing, that means I still have to go to the store, get it and stand in line!
3. Presentation: As I said, their truck, shipping bag and all are Ta9eel branded, while their driver looked like some freelancer. This is not a big problem though, but it’s still a point.
4. Some weird limitations on quantity when I wanted to buy 5 cartoons of water. There wasn’t any proper reason why I can’t. Is it Tarsheed .

Popularity: 27% [?]

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: 43% [?]

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: 47% [?]