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

• Souq.com
• Maktoob Yahoo

I don’t really consider Yamli as being a search engine (calm down) it is a transliteration service, making it easy for users who do not type in Arabic or have an Arabic enabled keyboard to search using GOOGLE.

It is what Google (and ALL Arabic search engines) missed!

Yamli’s service is; useful, usable, desirable, accessible, credible, findable and valuable (honeycomb anyone?)

People need to innovate, all I see around the Arabic web are cheap imitations (except a few, ikbis for example) and this is where Yamli really sets the difference and demonstrates an originality in the thinking, concept and offering something that is missing.

Anyways off to the interface…

Nothing major in the interface, focus is on the search (of course), search button in the middle, tabs, easy and straight to the point.

One thing I didn’t get (maybe it’s just me) is what they mean by “…  and get all the results” that needs to be clarified or re-written. (all doesn’t refer to all categories…)

Yamli took the “smart Arabic keyboard” further and offered an editor for long texts (I have to send a few emails in Arabic and it would be a pain to type a whole email in the search box!)

Yamli saves the day (and time/frustration and a few curses)

What’s really interesting and shows that the folks behind Yamli are paying attention to small details is the way they notify you about the editor, you have the classic icon with a link to the editor, and the nice touch, the notification you get when you type a long query in the search box.

KABOOM! (do you want to write a longer text? use the Yamli Editor)

These are the kind of things that makes me smile as a UX geek, they are not only making things easier for the user but they are also promoting another service in a way. I heart Yamli for that!

That’s basically a quick review of the interface.

Unlike other search engines (Arabic of course) Yamli makes it easy for users to integrate its API on their website/forum/whatever with a step by step guide and very detailed explanation, it really is easy.

What really shows the extra care and that extra mile that makes the whole difference is that the “Yamlians” did their research and homework perfectly. Images are provided by Bing (better than Google’s), videos by Youtube, Web by Google, Wikipedia by Google (huh?) and best of all, images and videos are categorized. Kudos to the Yamlians!

Search results wise, can’t complain, it’s Google and Bing (for the images) and that beats any given Arabic search engine for the time being.

That’s about it for the search (yup I am just too lazy) as for the editor, it has the basic functions that should be there , save print copy clear, nothing fancy, straight to the point and it does what it’s supposed to do. My only recommendation would be hiding the instruction box automatically faster when the user starts typing in the editor.

There you have it folks, Yamli and its goodies, make sure you download the Firefox add-on.

A great search engine (Google), a powerful browser (Firefox), the magician (Yamli), Arabic is no longer a problem or a hurdle online.

My top wishlist, Arabic for Mac applications and mobile applications.

Links

• Yamli
• Google
• Bing
• Firefox
• Yamli’s Firefox add-on