Online Auctions Come of Age

Lots of things have been said about online shopping and auction web sites. With millions of products and services at your fingertips, online shopping is an experience anyone can afford to indulge in, without having to venture into the hot sun. While the eBays and the Amazons of the world can rule the globe, one web site that's shaping the Arab e-commerce revolution is Souq.com.



The site claims to be the world's first Arabic/English online auction, and was launched as MazadMaktoob in 2000. It then slowly evolved into the present Souq.com. The online auction site then went onto to add an online payment service called CashU in 2002, and currently claims to be generating millions of transactions worldwide. I have been quite fascinated by the idea of online shopping for quite sometime. I have been a frequent user of an auction web site called Baazee.com in India, which was later transformed into eBay India, when online auction giant eBay decided to buy it.

Souq.com follows a similar business strategy, except that it needs a little bit of tidying up to do, as far as the interface of the web site is concerned. Nevertheless, the web site does its job quite well. The best part about the web site is that there are no subscription charges — you neither pay for putting your product up for sale, nor do you pay any charges to Souq.com for buying any stuff off their web site. One of the things that caught my eye was Souq.com's offer for free shipping of products that weigh up to 5kgs. This essentially means that I don't pay a single fill to get the product delivered to my doorstep. Now that's neat!

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Via PC Magazine Middle and Near East