Explore.pk is an online portal which provides an opportunity to advertise products. The users have a wide range of categories to choose from such as cell phones, cars, motorbikes, tourism and accommodation to scholarships, books, furniture, clothes and dresses, cosmetics, computers and electronic appliances.

The portal has gone one step ahead by offering a database of videos, ‘celebrity pics’ and SMS specimens – maybe to attract a ‘large’ number of traffic. The videos are embedded from YouTube and therefore comes under the copyrights infringement category.

The portal has got a reasonable activity. One can sign up for free and post adverts about any sellable item. As the contact information is given in the ads, I don’t see any tracks of buyers activity on the Web site. Coming to the appearance and outlook, it looks too cramped and run-of-the-mill to me. Small fonts with no proper links and GUI makes the browsing really a strain to your eyes.

Pakistan has seen a rapid growth in auction portals like Bolee, Nilaam and Lootmaar. Explore.pk, however, is different from them as it simply displays ads for the items. In Pakistani context, this looks better as even on auction sites we don’t see a lot of activity and users mostly prefer to contact directly (contact numbers are present in most of the cases). The RSS feed and blog of Lootmaar sets it apart a little, though.

Explore.pk runs on google ads and I don’t see any intentions of the owners to build it up for business like the above mentioned portals. If the owners can improve the outlook and add more features like proper categories and detailed profiles – and a business plan-  then the portal can be a success.