Umba.co.ke – Umba.co.ke is a website where you can purchase furniture online. It is also an example of an exceptionally well designed Kenyan website. Most Kenyan online shops are, quite honestly, poorly designed. Umba.co.ke is different, the design is very well done and gives one the confidence to make purchases online. Good job!
SokoPal – this is another Kenyan Groupon clone. I do not particularly like the site’s design but there is no doubt about the fact that a lot of thought was put into making this website – and it shows. The site is very well done and serves its purpose perfectly. Kudos to the guys behind this – may they find great success in their business.
Flops
Zuqka – Zuqka is a portal site for weekend entertainment around Nairobi, but with a social networking component as well (video, audio and blogs). It’s a cross-medium service too, marrying newspaper with the web. I used to think a lot of Zuqka. It strikes me as a service that should be a smashing hit as it is backed by the Nation Media Group. Therefore, I was quite surprised when a reader pointed out that Zuqka has degenerated into a “lonely spam farm”. Have a look at the comments on these pages:
Goodness, it is quite shocking that the people behind Zuqka have let this happen. Your website can fail for many reasons but with spam-fighting tools like Akismet available for free, it is unacceptable to have your site succumb to spam like Zuqka has. The fact that the Nation Media Group is involved in Zuqka makes this all the more shameful. Bah!
Infested Zuqka (click for larger image)
Posta.co.ke – well, the official website of the Postal Corporation of Kenya is pretty well designed if you ask me. But it does not seem to be very well taken care of. For instance, this page is chock full of adverts for viagra and other sex-related pharmaceutical products. Clearly, Posta Kenya has a spam issue that no one knows about (or that no one cares about enough to fix).
Rumbaa – I generally hear good things about Rumbaa – a Kenyan photography site. But over the last week I have not (not even once) managed to get the site to load up properly. The images seem to be perpetually broken AND Google warns you that some of the pages of Rumbaa.com may “harm your computer”. Someone do something!
I agree with your comments on Sokopal…idea & functionality is brilliant. The fonts however are another story…I thought we left “Times New Roman” in the Netscape era!
Zuqka. I was an active contributor writing articles until I got disappointed by the spam issues. Imagine 10 links in one useless comment. Surely can’t nation media do something. If they can’t fight the spam why not allow the contributors to moderate comments on their blog?