Interesting Kenyan Sites #16

We found all of today’s sites on Facebook. Most of them were being advertised on Facebook. I must say that if you are going to spend money advertising your website, please make sure that your website is actually a good representation of you/your business. otherwise, you will just be making Facebook rich and wasting money.

The Good
eManamba – eManamba promises to make travel simple and hassle free. How? Well, through eManamaba, you can book and purchase a bus ticket to many Kenyan, and East African, destinations. You can even choose a seat from those available at the time of your booking. I love it, and I will be sure to try it when I next travel. The site is well done, and it seems to work. Kudos!

BidhaaTele – is a massive marketplace where you can find bidhaa tele to buy – though right now there is not so much probably because they are just starting. The site feels really well done and we must congratulate and thank the site developers for a breath of fresh air: a site that looks good and just works. Kudos, and good luck on the business.

50-50
Kamata School – I like the idea behind this site. Kamata Entertainment are using a blog to market their services (a music school, a DJ academy, and Salsa lessons) online. It is a very good strategy. Kudos. However, I feel that their site is letting them down. I do not particularly like the way the site looks and I think it could be better. However, the main problem is that the site feels a little cluttered and it feels like there is not a strong call to action i.e. they could sell their services more efficiently.

Flops
RimSite – this one is hard to figure out. It looks like a local social network (like facebook) but it also includes a job board where job vacancies are listed. It is a good idea, in principle. But I do not think the owners have executed it very well – the site right now looks like it is a little dead and feels like an adult (X rated) social network? Was that the intention? I do not know. But I do know that the owners did not intend for spam to flourish on their site like it does now. It is hard to build a social network, and I hope RimSite can overcome their current challenges and rise above them.

Ayanah.co.ke – this is a furniture store. Basically it is a website set up by a furniture shop in Nairobi to promote themselves online. Nice, eh? The only problem is that their website could – and should – have been so so much better. The design is really poor – especially the site structure and the use of images instead of text (which means your site fails in SEO). Bad job by the guys who made the site.

epur.biz – this is a kind of online marketplace where sellers can list items on the epur platform and then, one hopes, make money and be happy. The site is badly done, though. I would argue the design itself is what lets epur down the most – it just does not inspire any confidence in me. Couple that with the fact that the site looks “unfinished” and you have a good idea done really badly. The saddest thing is that epur is supposed to be a marketplace but I cannot find any products to buy….