Unfinished job

For the past three months I was busy with dgMarket Uzbekistan project. dgMarket is a universal online marketplace for tenders. The project is created by UNDP's Gateway Foundation and operates in 171 countries. In 22 countries dgMarket has branded national websites, Uzbekistan is among them and I had to do smth with this moribund project.

The challenges were to raise brand awareness, to increase website user number and to make the project profitable. During the two years of dgMarket.uz functionning it had 6-7 active clients (who paid constantly), 300 daily visitors.

To shake things up I came up with three step strategy:

The first step was to improve the product (website) itself, particularly its usability and navigation. To say it was akward, is not to say at all. I was amazed how user did not get pain in using it. Maybe they did get but there was nobody to listen to them...

The second step was about improving client relationship. We let our clients feel we need them as much as they need us (by local laws every tender information must be published in media).

The third step was about changing the business model. dgMarket makes money by charging a fee for placing tender notice. As there were much more sellers who were eager to get up-to-date, reliable information about tenders, we thought it was financially attractive to charge a fee for viewing tender information instead of charging to place tender notice.

Good and bad results:

The first two steps went well although the website optimization process took unusually long. The main reason is that the website is managed from a development center in Moscow and it took a while till the developers act. Regarding the client relationship, we listened to complaints and wishes of almost all of the existing clients. Although we could not provide a solution to all their complaints and make happen all their wishes, this very attention to them helped them to strengthen our image as a reliable partner. We even got some big companies in telco, oil insdustries as well as in government agencies as our clients and there is still plenty of potential clients to acquire.

We had some problems as well. The visitors number grew twice the first 2 months but then fell catastrophically low due to very unstable work of the website during a week. We tumbled in Google organic search. It was a very bad news as 70-75% of users were coming from Google search.

We have not recovered yet from that disasterious week, but if we compare the statistics of this three months of my tenure to previous quarter we can see the the loyalty, depth, time spent on site and recency parameters of dgMarket.uz usage grew significantly. It means although we lost in quantity, we gained in quality of users (it is also a good news for clients who buy our media banner inventory).

When the time of the third phase was approaching, I had to leave dgMarket Uzbekistan. The reason is quite simple and disgusting: money. Pity...