Souq.com has a new interface, it’s more like a bit of tweaking but still a lot is missing and the whole essence (experience) is still lacking. I know I know, “…but it’s working”.
Personally, I believe that it should go through a simple cycle, “functional, fast, pretty” It is functional (technically speaking); fast (again, technically speaking) but not pretty (usability/ux wise)
The dominant tool on souq.com is the search (you have two types of shoppers, the searchers and the browsers) the kind of feature that makes the ux geek in me smile!
I always love a dominant search box in a website like souq, BUT, here’s the deal: 
Take a good look at it, you have on the far left “all categories, Stores, Motors, Property” I clicked on “Stores” thinking that the search bar will change and will only search the stores. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. it’s just a link to the stores! Same deal with “property” BUT (a good but!) the “Motors” link changes the layout, search, pretty much everything and searches only in “Motors” (with sub categories such as boats/cars…) consistency folks, consistency, the tiny search bar on the left is not enough to change, let the main search change!
Anyway, I thought that maybe “All categories” refers to where the search is done (since they have a menu right under it and a second search bar too…wait! a second search bar? errrmmm oooook) 
The categories, again, is just a replica of the same functionality of the left menu, it does nothing to the search, changes nothing. It reminds me of Ebay, double menu, double search, only the small left sided search changes when you click “stores/properties” Remove the branding from both sites, you have the same interface and layout. It may be working and saving “design” time, but cloning is never a good solution, plus who said that ebay’s interface is perfect? Souq cleaned up the header, it’s “neat” now, kudos for that !
Before
After
The overall landing page is less cluttered now, clean. It still needs a bit of work, the flash component doesn’t add anything valuable to the website, it’s just “cute”. A “hot deal” or featured product carousel would’ve been better for the seller and buyer alike.
again, it’s just cute and non comprehensive.
Nothing changed in the flow nor the checkout process which is a shame.
Overall, it’s better than before, but still, the “essence” is missing, search behavior is still the same…fingers crossed, and hopefully we do see a change in the flow.
Before signing off, I tweeted a few weeks before the whole Yahoo/Maktoob about the acquisition, here’s another one, souq.com is hitting the Egyptian market soon and hopefully we will see the service in Lebanon.
Links
by dotone
28 Oct 2009 at 12:50
I think they’re swinging between bigger search n’ search locations, don’t have any idea based on what metric they’re applying that. But one thing I noticed is that categories and sections are mixed up. Sometimes a category is elevated to a Section level(Motor) n’ then you find it in categories too.
It shows that design is more of a hit-driven(pageview driven) rather than thought n’ research. That makes it a statistic driven website that serves to grow the hits but not the quality of the hit because it makes it hard for the shops n’ people who post and makes it easy for those who view. Not a win-win for both.
All in all, it’s come a loooooong way and it’s getting there…
by Soupy
28 Oct 2009 at 12:53
you hit it right on the head! Thank you!