Have you ever wondered how many “exclusive” online retailers the MENA region can handle? They’re popping up like crazy, one would assume that they’re giving it their all in order to win market share. Sadly, that’s not the case, some are willingly handing over their share to the competition.
While this is no rant like the one I wrote a while back about how Etihad Airways made some mistakes with their website and communicating on social networks, (although in all fairness to Etihad they replied to all the comments I’ve made in that article and have since updated their website, but not because of me they were already working on their website, so it was just unfortunate timing for them I guess.) I recently received a tip from a friend about another online startup doing things… well, kind of annoying. Here’s the exact message:
I think u would like this one:
http://wysada.com
An e-commerce website that pushes me to subscribe to be able to see its products!
Horrible!“
I think the message says it all but still I had to check it out, so I went over to Wysada’s website to see what they were doing. At first the homepage seemed like every other e-commerce retailer with big ambiguous product images and titles, but then I tried to go deeper than the homepage with no luck! I kept getting this dreaded screen: 
After a few minutes on the site I tried to be smart (with no success), clicking on different links trying to see if maybe somehow they’ve forgotten to lock out a section or category, still that login screen showed up. I switched to the Arabic site and guess what the screen was there, only translated! As I browsed the almost locked website, I found three things I really had to share:
1. Even the “Calendar” link on the main menu is locked
To me that was odd, but I figured ok maybe they have some “exclusive” events that they don’t want to share with us “normal” folks.
2. My cart was empty!
No sh!@t!!
3. Finally, and this was my favorite
Huge LOL moment, this is one of the few pages that I could access and it was Ironic that the second link was how a user could register on the site! What a useless link, If someone found this page by some sort of miracle and didn’t know how to register on the site then they need help.
Seriously, we understand the exclusivity aspect, but didn’t Wysada learn from the acquisition of Sukar about a year ago by a sister company? Being acquired by a company in the same group doesn’t really inspire confidence in the way they worked! If you’re going to copy their concept at least Sukar show us how of big of a discount we were getting on each of the products on the homepage which is a little more than what wysada displays on their homepage.
Just because you’re exclusive doesn’t mean you have to lock us out of everything, people want to know how much “Turkish Delights” costs and what they are. Look at Marka VIP, they claim to be an exclusive shop but still let us go all the way to see the product and ask us to register or sign in when we want to add an item to our baskets. And P.S. Sukar was acquired because of the onslaught in competition from the likes of Marka VIP.
Maybe if people saw more details they would like to register and purchase more, what’s the point of having people register if they never come back again?
I don’t understand it, what I do understand is that online shopping should be as simple as possible because there are other major hurdles to tackle such as shipping, taxes and payment.
Wysada please make it easier on us and let us see the products. (That way the second link on the support page wouldn’t end up being so useless).
Well, I guess it turned out to be a rant after all.