Myoffstreet.com – a goto destination for business listings
Share this Article
Author:
Guest
I just came across this great local community based store-listing site Myoffstreet.com. I have to say, this could not have come out at a better time – with internet awareness amongst people gradually on the rise. With the old directory system and the notoriously-poor-service of 17 – it used to be a nightmare to look for business phone numbers in Pakistan.
With an easy to use interface it makes this site a great place for women to explore shopping deals or product listings. By letting them interact directly with the store-owners at such a personal level, they’ve in effect taken the whole experience of store listings to an all new level for local customers.
Apart from the listings, what sets this site apart is the “Market†– where companies can show their products, announce sales and discounts, add photos and engage the users on a personal level. People can add friends, discuss trends, ask the community members for service recommendations. This has a huge potential of growing since no other site in Pakistan is currently offering such levels of social interaction on a single platform.
You can find stores catering to all kinds of markets from contemporary clothing lines to home fixtures. But I think the best market for them are home-based businesses who want a place to market their products/services, and women who want the whole ‘walking in a store’ experience without necessarily having to leave the house. From wedding theme designers to your local grocery stores – you can find them all there.
If they can offer a way for people to be able to subscribe to the “Deals” (perhaps by routing them via Twitter to cellphones directly), that would make the site infinitely more useful. Another small tweak would be to show ‘similar’ options in the search results. So even if you don’t remember the name of a specific store or product you should still be able to find it by browsing through other options.
On the whole, its a good effort on the part of the myoffstreet.com team.
9:40 pm
MyOffstreet.com is a service with great potential and knowing the guys behind it I have no doubt that it will continue to improve and mature, and add tremendous value to internet users in Pakistan!
I really like that GnW encourages guest contributions and adds new writers to it’s author list, but I do feel strongly that any product/service ‘review’ (like the one above) should not be anonymous because it loses credibility.
What do you think?
11:14 pm
Hey Mahmood – I can understand that it *could* lose credibility…. but sometimes writers just prefer to stay anonymous for other reasons.
You’d have to trust me to make sure that the story isnt biased and that the writer doesnt have any vested interests there.
Trust Green & White, eh?
2:29 am
Mahmood – does this author bio help with your concern?
2:58 am
Much better
But still, though I can understand some writers preferring to stay anonymous it seems that, ideally, “guest” authors on GnW should not write reviews (positive or negative) in order to maintain the reputation of being consistently “unbiased”. Don’t know why I’m going on about this… it’s really not a big deal
The trust remains! Thanks for listening.
2:43 pm
myoffstreet is a good site
but there should be an option of advance search
for finding phone numbers, addresses etc.
–
Ahmedij