Classifieds.co.zw introduces daily emails to consolidate its leading position

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By   
March 14th, 2012

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Local classifieds website classifieds.co.zw announced in an email yesterday that they will be introducing daily email digests for all or selected categories depending on your subscription preferences. The move comes at a time when several other websites have sprung up following the successes of classifieds.co.zw and they’ve all come for a chunk of what’s arguably the most trafficked website in the country.

The announcement email says the adverts will be “all neatly categorised, and show the advert title, price and company name if it has a storefront (new)”. The beauty for subscribers lies in that we are reminded daily lest we forget to visit the site, and deals can be scooped earlier since the reminder comes in the email inbox which for many is now an integral part of morning coffee. For classifieds it means they can keep their audience engaged and have better conversions.

As of last year, the site was registering upwards of 165 000 visitors a month and 8 million page views, 67% of the total traffic coming from foreigners: mostly in the property section. It’s quite a milestone how they have endured competition from other startups founded during its prime such as Dariro.com and Umuntu Media.

Classifieds also faces stiff competition from the local email based classifieds service Dipleague. Dipleague has proven very popular especially amoung professional Zimbabweans and its popularity has resulted is the service facing spam problems, which the administrators are currently fighting against. The latest move by classifieds.co.zw may be an attempt to tap into the email-based classifieds market that Dipleague has all but conquered. Who knows, maybe we’ll see Dipleague venturing into a full web based email classifieds to complement the email platform.

Classifieds services have gained popularity across the continent with big companies such a Google setting up classifieds websites in a number of countries. The search giant has set up Google Trader in Ghana, Uganda and Kenya. Google has also been pushing for local Africa businesses to have websites through program called “Africa Get Your Business Online” that is currently running in Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Nigeria.

Despite its successes on the web, Classifieds.co.zw still lacks a mobile version in a country where access to the internet is increasingly via mobile devices. This has left a gap in the startup’s service offering.

You can learn more about the history of the classifieds.co.zw here, and subscribe here so that you get an alert as soon as that job you want is listed.

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  • http://twitter.com/cmutambo Clinton D. Mutambo

    Email still won’t trump mobile.

  • JamesM

    Email on my Android beats any push ad service/application hands down. Particularly so if you have have a gmail account. And just about everybody who uses the net has a gmail account.

  • JamesM

    Surely besides classifieds there are other forms of viable online businesses that techzim can delve into for its audience. You have carried this classifieds story a couple of times in the past. It’s time to explore other forms of online ventures, albeit many will be specialized into the industries they operate. There’s a tip for ya!

  • http://www.techzim.co.zw L.S.M. Kabweza

    Thanks for the feedback @975d4e81e739d9fdb6006fdb91c7c7e1:disqus . We have written about classifieds.co.zw twice ever. The article says it’s “arguably the most trafficked website in the country.”
    I think we should be writing about these guys more. How they persevered, how they got it right, what they plan to do, what other startups can learn etc…

    Please do suggest the examples of online businesses you would like us to write about.

  • Prosper Chikomo

    My ever faithful opponents in the joomla debates will be happy to know that Classifieds, which they says uses joomla, proves my point.

    As of last year, the site was registering upwards of 165 000 visitors a month and 8 million page views

    It is far much better to run one profitable business than to keep churning out joomla website after joomla website.

    Perhaps Webdev could tell us what they would rather do, or which enterprise is more profitable, keep making websites one after the other or just building one monster machine.

    Our friends at Project Brandify coulds learn many things from studying Classifieds.co.zw as a business case: http://www.techzim.co.zw/2012/02/project-brandify-will-build-you-a-website-for/

  • DigitalZ

    Some articles needs detailed research. iZimbabwe (Umuntu) is mainly a news website:-they do that well. Dariro.com is not a classifieds website. Classifieds.co.zw is a classifieds website and it will make sense for the article if it is compared against similar services also. More like comparing a bus and a lorry for the same service. This just shows how uninformed we are or how we just generalise things hoping that we have ignorant readers.

  • DigitalZ

     Classifieds does not use Joomla! Don’t iterate a wrong. check http://www.classifieds.co.zw/admin you will see what they use

  • http://twitter.com/samchipangura Sam Takunda

    Thanks for the comment and correction. The oversight was due to that the three provide branded pages for businesses to list and advertise their products. You are right though that startups like finditfast.co.zw ad the numerous other such products would have been a better comparison.