bluesting.co.za has been in development in one form or the other for over 2 years, as stated by their site. From what I can see this period of development has been well worth the wait and considering it is still in beta I can only see good things happening.
bluesting is currently focused on tech products and I must commend them for showing restraint and not trying to cover every vertical straight away. The result is a fast and easy to use site which plays to it’s strengths. The search function is one of the most intuitive I have used, by any standard, and the results are provided instantly with exceptional relevance.
bluesting have not necessarily followed the ‘international template’ in terms of layout so for me it took a bit getting used to, but this must not be seen as a negative as I (as a user) have been so indoctrinated by international sites. For new users the learning curve should be very quick. The topic of layout brought my attention to another interesting aspect of bluesting. They have positioned themselves as a comparison shopping solution, rather than an out and out price aggregator. While I feel this works perfectly with the type of products they are displaying currently, it will take some serious tweaking to get the same use out of it when comparing other product categories.
The site is definitely been built with the South African market in mind as it lacks omits the bulky ‘web 2.0′ fonts and graphics, which while practical, doesn’t appeal to me. (Damn AdWords again) A simple redesign could fix this however, and my guess is that once more users obtain broadband that bluesting will feel that they can make the site look better without sacrificing the speed and usability which at the moment seems to be the focus- and rightly so.
Commercially bluesting operate on a CPC basis, and as I’ve explained this model in previous posts I won’t go through it again, just suffice to say that it is very much a standard in the comparison shopping space worldwide. The AdWords which irritate me so much are unfortunately a necessity at this stage, and I hope bluesting reconsider their use as the site grows.
From a sales/marketing point of view I do feel that bluesting do go a bit over the top when describing their technology. This is not to take away from the obvious advanced system they have built but to claim “exact geo-location (country) of banner clicks” is a little exaggerated. Geo-targeting has become standard practice amongst online marketers, and by highlighting this point using that wording comes across a bit like a Verimark ad.
The message I get from the ‘about us’ page reads a bit like a VCR instruction page. Lots of jargon and buzzwords which at the end of the day don’t aid the user but only intimidate them. Considering that most merchants in South Africa need to be educated, and most budget holders/marketing managers are not familiar with this technology perhaps bluesting should consider cutting the crap and just telling merchants the key advantages (insert USP’s fella’s) in plain English. This was disappointing, because when I emailed bluesting fishing for information for this post, the response was excellent and honest.
This aside bluesting is still a good service, and should be very interesting once out of beta.
