After over 10 months of running its operations remotely, Saltside Technologies‘s online classifieds site Efritin is officially shutting down operations in Nigeria for real and for good.
”Efritin has left the building,” the firm announced on its website. ”It’s been a pleasure serving you all over the years, but we have now decided to close down the shop and go home. A big thanks to everyone for the support, and who knows – we might meet again.”
Efritin had announced in January that it would operate remotely after it shut its physical offices in Nigeria and the retrenching of its 50 staff. With the closure of Efritin in Nigeria, OLX and Jiji.ng take the center stage. The total closure of the site also gives users few options to sell their wares and shows just how there has been much hype about ecommerce in Africa without much consideration of several factors including skills, ethics and much more.
TechMoran is hoping that Salteside’s Tonaton Ghana won’t be affected. Saltside has made a perfect business decision to close down a loss making operation even if it was being run remotely as these would help it focus on its key markets and make a profit.
Earlier, the firm had said it wanted to sharply reduce its investment in Nigeria in a move to find evidence that the investment would be worthwhile. The closure means it was too early for Nigeria, needed much more investments and or Nigeria wants a priority to Saltside.
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BuyRentKenya has now been fully acquired by Ringier One Africa Media and will phase into ROAM (a joint venture in the making between Ringier and One Africa Media) in a move to build Africa’s largest classifieds group.
All the menus are placed on the slide out tab. To reveal it, you have to start the slide from the very edge of the screen; otherwise you will end up tapping a job listing. Some applications like Twitter allow you to simply access the menu by simply sliding your finger without paying much attention to where the action was initiated.
There are some inconsistencies in the application user interface, for instance, the ‘contact us’ page takes you to the website instead. The website takes your contact details and lets you type in your query or call their help desk. It would have been better if Brighter Monday made a consistent native UI experience through-out the app.
Speaking of applying, once you click a job post, you are taken to its description. At the very top, you get a small but crucial breakdown of the job, it includes details such as where it is located, salary, if it’s full time or otherwise and finally the date it was listed. This information will help you decide if the job aligns with what you are looking for, if it does, you can go ahead and read its full description; this feature really saves your time. Scrolling down the page brings the full description, responsibilities, qualifications, and what the employee is offered. Below it all is an apply button, when clicked, the user is taken to the employers website. It is good to note that the job descriptions can be shared with friends in case you get something that would interest them.
A profile helps employers to decide if the job seeker is well suited for a given position. The Brighter Monday app lets you have a very comprehensive profile. It covers everything from experience, education, associations, languages, skills and much more. It even has a completion percentage meter that lets you know how close you are to filling up all the sections.
Alternatively, you can get alerts for job that might suit you. These alerts are defined by the user based on location, category and work type. Any job that aligns perfectly with your defined alert will be notified to the user. This is really neat feature that would save people the time of skimming through endless lists of search results. It is a form of job list uniquely tailored to you.
All the pictures of the classifieds can get a bit unforgiving on your internet data but the app has a solution for that, on the slide out menu there is a setting labeled ‘Data Mode’. The mode has three levels, normal, light and extra light. The normal one leaves everything at default, which means big images on the classified list, the light mode uses small thumbnails and finally the extra light uses text only lists (you only see pictures after you click on an item to view its description). This is a very convenient feature not only for the data conscious but also for the places that have low network reception.
To post an item for sale, you first choose the category and the sub-category. You then add the details of your item such as pictures, price, condition and location. One feature I missed in this section is the one that asks you to choose which picture to have as the main one that appears on the classified list, PigiaMe simply picks the first one you uploaded. It is advisable to select your desired main picture as the one you will upload first. Note that you only get to post your advert free of charge for only 90 days. Alternatively, you can pay 1,000 to get your item given more visibility, to be highlighted in the search results and also to appear in the carousel of premium ads. The duration of the premium advert is only for 14 days. That price is very reasonable compared to the 2,000 asked by the competitors.
