Today I am going to kick start a new series on this blog. Its called “What’s Wrong With:”. In these posts I will be taking a look at a website (preferably Pakistani website) and give my 1 rupee worth of analysis on what are the good parts and the bad parts of that website.
My first target is Rozee.pk. Rozee has been a very successful job portal in Pakistan. I like to think of them as Monster.com of Pakistan. They are the place to go for job search. However, when I visited the site, I felt like a huge chunk of data was just thrown at me. I have taken a screenshot of the whole webpage. The page has a height of 2500px — that is ridiculous!
I have marked the image with few numbers (the awesome paint skills) which I would like to touch upon:
- What’s with the side banner? I never understood why the heck do they have a side banner. It not only looks ugly, it is completely useless. Complete waste of space.
- All this wasted space on the sides. Main content has a width of 776px which does not include that side banner. I would prefer that the site used flex width layout. That will not only make it look good on the new resolutions, it will also give more space for content.
- Do I really care about all your top employers? Talk about wasting prime real estate. The list is huge! It takes the prime spot and conveys nothing to me. Yes all these top companies are hiring but really what does that tell me? Rozee should’ve listed a top 10 employers list in a carousel fashion with an option to see “more” if I needed to.
- Hot jobs are not so hot. So the next piece of wasted real estate is taken up by “Hot Jobs” section. Again too much information cramped up into a small area and on top of that it tells me nothing about the job itself. The title for most jobs is cutting out and its very easy to ignore.
- Recent Jobs. Ah, finally what I came to find on Rozee — JOBS! This list should be at the top of the site since these are the most recent jobs and most people looking for jobs are always checking your site day-after-day, this is the section that they are interested in. Which are the recent jobs that they can target.
- Localize options. It is beyond my understanding why this little feature is sandwiched between everything else. This should be at the top of the site so that the user can easily customize the location on the whole site and everything else around me should be sensitive to this.
That was a long list. Overall Rozee seems to be doing a good job. I have been browsing around jobs on the site and it has a lot of them. It being the only major player in this field.
How can they improve it?
They need to create specific “activity centers” which will allow their users to be classified in different categories. For starters the two main type of users coming to Rozee.pk would be Work and Schools. People who are in universities/college/school would be looking for job and people who are already in the workforce would also be looking for a job. These two categories will provide a starting point to more targeted job advertisements.
They need to improve the UI layout. As always, the key thing in all UI designs is to keep it simple stupid (KISS). A rule that we should never forget.
You read it right — 12 million customers are waiting for your business. These are 12 million internet users in Pakistan who are waiting for you to create the next big business online in Pakistan. The question really is, are you up for the challenge?
Now you might call me the most optimistic person on the planet earth, but I really truly believe that in the middle of all the crisis that our country is going through, there is hope for future. Because, if us Pakistanis won’t hope for the best then who would?
So lets get our positive thinking cap on and see how we can tap this market. We already have a few brave startups tackling online auction. Its a good start, lets take it a bit further.
I came across a really interesting article on CIO Pakistan which talked about “Pakistan Consumer Internet Marketing Report for 2008“. Some very fascinated stuff in that article. What caught my eye was:
Demographics:
- 87% fall in the 18-30 age range thus capturing a fresh wave of consumers entering the market
- 94% have a graduate or post-graduate degree.
- 34% are “financial heads” of their household.
Simply amazing! Look at that watering 87% users in age 18-30. I think we will have some very positive years ahead of us and it will be great to see how local businesses capture this fast growing market. Don’t forget there is also a huge segment of NRP’s who are very well versed on Internet based services.
How would you like to tapp this untapped market? Go to IdeasHut to check out what other smart Pakistanis are cooking and share if you will.
So it isn’t a surprise that Rent-a-Coder has posted a warning message for their buyers about the electrical shortage in Pakistan. Sad day indeed. If you are a developer who used rent-a-coder, what other avenues are you going to use now?
There is a huge amount of talent in Pakistan and the reality on ground is that most of these talented developers have purchased UPS
(backup power) sources to help them continue working for hours.
Photo credit: Well i am not sure where this image is from. It has been in my email for a long time. If you are the original author please let me know. Thanks.
If you do and you want me to review it publically or privately, get in touch with me. I am always interested in meeting and talking with talented people. So email me or go to the about page (loook at the top menu) and fire off your quick intro to me.
Paktive - Pakistan on the map
So this mornings coffee chai got a bit interesting with an article on GreenWhite about Paktive (what’s with the name?)
Okay, so what is Paktive all about? Well this is what I found on their website:
“Paktive.com is an experiment to compile and present map locations of Pakistani places of interest like restaurants, parks, landmarks, services and businesses in major Pakistani cities. Currently, it uses satellite imagery from Google maps.”
Interesting eh? Well GreenWhite author Saad Khan has written them off today. According to him its a dead venture. And sadly I agree with him.
The problem with Paktive is that it is not designed for the masses. Nerds like to draw polygons, normal people (and we have a lot of those in Pakistan) do NOT like to draw polygons and identify places on the map. They would rather use the old method of dumping text based data into a database and query it.
Think about it, how many of you have gone to Google Maps custom map section for Pakistan and drawn or identified any location? (did you even know that Google Maps had that feature?)
We need to think about the business plan around it. I know community based contributions and web2.0 is all WOW but really this WOW can never become a real WOW without proper business model behind it.
In Paktive.com’s defense they do call it an “experiment” so I will let them go without a attack plan.
Alright this post is not to generalize a trend but it is my personal vent. (that’s what this blog is for isn’t it?)
GreenWhite has been doing an excellent job of introducing us to a wealth of startups from Pakistan. I have been amazed at the passion of these startups and I know that the market is big enough for them to survive if they plan correctly. But one thing that has been bugging me for a while is the lack of proper User Interface design for these services.
Seriously, here is a list of few startups recently mentioned on GreenWhite and check out their UI.
These are just few examples from the recent posts at GreenWhite.
My advice to all these startups is simple: think of your users, make your site simple to use and learn from a thousand and one resources available online. OR better yet send me an email to review your site before you launch. I would be more than happy to give you my personal opinion on your user interface for FREE!
Also, I think it is very easy to igonore the user but really almost all of these startups depend heavily on their users as they are the driving force behind their success. So do pay attention to them.
If I get chance, inshaAllah, I will post a review of a few sites and how the user interface can be improved.
If not then you better get started! Blogging is the easiest way to let your users know what your team is upto. This creates a small but very involved community around your startup. You will get to hear first hand reviews of your work instantly via your blog. You can also communicate updates, releases and much more to show how well organized your company is.
So what would it cost you to have a blog? Well apart from few hours per week to update the blog, it is important to get a professional look and feel for your blog. You can use Wordpress to setup your blog. Its dead-simple.
Having a professional looking blog is very critical. Its an image of your company to the outside world. You want it to be as easy to use as your product. You want it to reflect the true image of your company. So an investment in your blog is like investing in advertisement. It pays off!
If you company is looking for a blog design or if you are wondering how you can use your blog to target your audience, get in touch with me. You can find out more about me via Deensoft’s website.
Over the recent years, I have been blogging on Deensoft’s platform. I have had a pleasure talking to very smart and talented people via that blog but I always found that I needed a personal space to write about my musings.
I love talking about Pakistan and its potential. I have been reading up all the material that I can get my hands on about Pakistan — by material I mean blogs. GreenWhite being my main destination to read about startups in Pakistan.
Hopefully in coming days, I will be posting a lot more about Pakistan, food, startups, programming and much more.
If you want to get in touch with me you can always click on the “About” page (above) and leave a comment.