Maduqa – Review
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The first thing that came to my mind when I visited Maduqa was, WOW!! Now there is a new concept for the local upcoming online community, a free online store platform.
All a user needs to do is create their store and host their products, so simple. Maduqa in the meantime do the actual hard work of promoting the site, for the end user that is a bargain.
Maduqa offers online presence for small businesses and individuals. You can create and manage your online business/online shop anywhere, anytime. The aim is to give tangible online presence providing bigger market and outreach for the small businesses and individuals.
The sign up process hardly takes 1 minute, once you input the details for sign up it automatically logs you in and takes you back to the front-end of the site.
Clicking on myAccount gives you the opportunity to place your ads (At this point I had no shop yet)
The concept is good so far, but still lacking on areas. Will maduqa be able to pull this off? They have the potential to.
Firstly Maduqa are the first with such a concept locally, so this gives them the upper hand on things, they will be able to analyze the market before others come in with a similar concept.
Secondly they have a great idea of marketers going out to try and capture and convince potential clients to use their services, currently with three marketers they could get a bagful of clients. A simple workout would show that if each marketer got 5 customers to sign-up per day you would have 15 new potential shops a day, 375 shops a month!! With the number of exhibition stalls out there, there is no reason why that number is hard to target.
Where Maduqa lacks.
For one the site is just too dizzying, with the scrolls at the top and bottom its simply too busy for the eyes and tends to distract you. A simple amazon sort of layout would do wonders.
I tried to visit a few existing shops and there was no integration to payment gateways. I was required to email the owner in order to buy.
The site does not contain security (SSL) of any sort, what are the maduqa management planning in terms of security? How about buyer/seller protection? What will they do to ensure all sellers are legitimate and that all sales are concluded? I found no disclaimers whatsoever.
Inability to go back to homepage from any other page on the website, you have to alter the url in the address bar.
Maduqa plan on going onto the mobile web platform real soon to target the ever increasing mobile web user.
Maduqa has got a good concept up their sleeves, however they have a long way to go with plenty of room available for major improvements and enhancements. Maduqa have a great platform to build on.
Hopefully the next time I revisit this review on Maduqa, it will have more features to boast about.


This post has 5 comments
April 8th, 2010
There is a phenomenon in any market known as noise! The challenge is, how do you create it on an online platform? I am tempted to imagine that the flashing points and the movements on the site create that effect.
What d’you think?
April 8th, 2010
Thanks Online Maasai for your review and especially the advice/suggestions; I would have thanked you in Maa language but I only know one word; ero! Anyway, I think it is this kind of positive critique that will build us -maduqa.com. I am working round the clock to have a solid online marketing portal for all the SMSs who for a long time have been neglected by the mainstream advertising platforms.
The homepage is a bit clattered for now but by next week I shall have modified it. The navigation links are there on every page; they indicate exactly what point of the site you are and your way back , step by step – check closer you will see them.
We are currently working on partnerships with some shops so that they GUARANTEE that they will DELIVER the products to the customers who have bought them from their e-shops on maduqa.
Watch this space; great things ahead.
Thanks again for the great review,
Mulutu
maduqa.com Admin
April 8th, 2010
Good stuff Mulutu.
I still feel your navigation links are not friendly, looking closer is what you do not want to tell a user. The links are meant to be mega friendly.
Homepage clatter should have been sorted before launch, however, better late than never.
All in all I wish you guys all the success.
April 10th, 2010
Thanks a lot OnlineMaasai for your encouragement. Let me work on the navigation to make them friendly.
June 1st, 2010
Great concept, very timely indeed. A reason to make one go out and get a credit card.
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