Since UAE (Dubai in specific) has the majority of the items listed on eMapia, we decided to set the default zooming level of the Full Screen version to Dubai.

There was another slight change as well, the Zoom in/out facilities were changed from being covered on the left side by the items thumbnails to the right side where it gives easy access for our visitors.

Users within UAE have shown increased activity in recent days by adding more and more items. Items within UAE add up to more than 75% of available stuff for sale covering different categories.

Dubai has clearly the most items with over 55% of total items for sale reside in the city.

The number of available items for sale on eMapia exceeded 100 with 75% of them residing in the United Arab Emirates.

Recent added items varied from cars (29% of all items), furniture & mobiles, which shows how the market is driven towards selling second hand stuff at this stage more than brand new items.

We have added a new feature on eMapia that allows visitors to view the site in Full Screen mode.

This feature gives the visitor the ability to zoom by scrolling in and out. It also provides a summary display of every item available by only pointing the cursor on the selected item.

Using the Full Screen mode, visitors can click on Show Items link available in the header to be able to see all items within the current zoom level through their thumbnails, which allows visitors to filter the items in a very convenient way.

Let us know what you think about the new features!

Comfort:

This highly depends on the society or the nature of people around you. In western countries, people work for long hours and shops close “relatively” early, which doesn’t allow them (or limits the time) to physically purchase what they want. Online sites solved this problem as they can purchase what they want from any location and get their stuff delivered to them automatically.
In other countries, people go to the malls for many reasons other than simply shopping. They want to hang out with the family, take a break, have a rest from the work and at the same time do some shopping! This type of people won’t purchase online for their basic stuff (unless its unique or cheap) because they go to the malls for other reasons as well! They want to have a break from work stress or take the family for a short hangout, which won’t be availabel by purchasing online.

You should put this in your mind when selling online, focus on unique products with good prices. Hope these points help in increasing your chances to sell online through eMapia.com!

Uniqness:

The other factor that makes internet selling easier is to offer unique products that people can’t easily find around them. It is important that the products should add value to the customer in order to encourage him to buy from you.

Example 1: Selling water online. I can’t see how this will work! Water is “normally” available everywhere and people can find it in a matter of steps. Poor people that lack water won’t have a computer to purchase it online any way! Beside the fees of delivering water will make it really expensive to make it a viable business (unless you are targeting a niche market, that’s something else).

Eample2: Selling iPhones online! iPhones are not available in many countries and people are really looking to buy them no matter what the price is. Online marketplaces were a center point for people selling iPhones as many bought their iPhones from different sites. The main reason for that to happen is uniqeness, or lack of avaiability in normal shops. As the iPhone becomes officially available in different countries and in normal shops the acitivity of selling iPhones online will go down. People should think of new items that have the same characteristics!

Depending on where are you from and how people around you are familiar with ecommerce and buying from the internet, it’s very important to keep some points in mind when trying to sell online in order to increase the possibilities of having a succcessful business. This series will focus on 3 main factors that the internet selling depends on.

Price:

People are used to go and buy things from shops around them, and when the internet can it changed a lot of buying habits that people were used to. People in some countries resisted purchasing online for various reasons such as security and lack of credit cards.

In order to grab this huge audience (the ones that fear security and don’t have credit cards) you have to provide special offers to attract them. The price is one of the basic things that attract people. They normally compare prices between shops and the ones available online and decide whether they want to save some cash or not.

You have to offer a very competitive price in order to attract the general public or the targeted audience you are focusing on. As an individual you don’t have any rental costs or salaries or other overheads and should be able to generally sell things cheaper than the normal market prices. Focus on selling huge volumes with a small profit margin for each item rather than sellign few items with large profit margin. This is your main advantage so use it properly!

There are few points that sellers need to focus on to have a better chance of selling their items on eMapia.com.

First:

You need to mention as much details as possible. People want to know about what you are offering for sale. If you want to sell a car, write a lot about your experience with it, nature of usage, etc

Second:

Provide delivery options. You can either use darrb.com as a delivery option or mention the way you would deliver the items to the customers. You can say that you will deliver the item personally, or use a delivery company or simply using darrb.com. This will answer a basic question a potential buyer would have.

There are more tips to use when trying to sell items online, we will hopefully mention them on a regular basis.

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Any online marketplace requires a delivery service in order to finalize the deals. Many marketplaces leave this part to the sellers and buyers to decide on whether to use normal mail or couriers or just meet together if they are located in the same geographical location.

At eMapia we want to take this to the next level. We have a future plan of linking our sister company Darrb.com, the delivery services marketplace, to eMapia and provide the buyers/sellers the option of delivering the products using Darrbers.

The mechanism is yet to be defined and some time is required to get into the details of the integration. We will keep you informed about this whenever we have an update!

Today we completed our first month after launching on the 7th of August 2008. During this period people started adding their items to eMapia and its been a time where we need to mention some numbers:

• More than 90 registered users to date.
• A total of 59 items are available online.
• Items are distributed through 10 countries
• The UAE alone has 17 sellers, which is considered the biggest number of sellers per country.
• Cars are considered the most popular items for sale, which makes around 24% of the available items.

Not bad for the first month, hope things grow much faster in the coming period.