Going over Getfeatured.Biz with a fine-tooth comb

Getfeatured.biz is a website developed by ncodeDev Labs, a web applications development company based in Accra - Ghana managed by Alfred Rowe a fine gentleman I have known for a long time. Today however, I lay friendship aside and walk a mile in the shoes of a policeman or maybe a wicked proctor. 

Getfeatured.biz home page

Going by the official description posted on VC4Africa, "Getfeatured.biz’s goal is to provide relevant information to people in a fast, intuitive & friendly manner, that takes all the clutter away and focuses on the basic tools needed by the average person to find whatever it is they are looking for. Getfeatured.biz currently provides information on Jobs, Housing, Automobiles, & Businesses in Ghana. We are focused on extending our services throughout Africa in the long term". 

This article is not an interview with Alfred but instead a write up of my experience touring the website. I spent a total of 60 minutes on the website making sure I missed nothing. Now that my work is done I have good news and bad news. Which one will you like me to spill out first? 

Ok. The good parts. 

Getfeatured.biz on the iPhone

The UI is on point. Being a lover of the Apple finesse I find the website to be very visually appealing. To quote @KobinaSanni after I showed him getfeatured.biz he exclaimed, "charley I love this site. The UI is on point." I am in total agreement John. The UI sure is on point. Looks clean, sleek, elements are in order, jQuery animations are simple and minimal.


There is a mobile friendly version. Thinking in mobile mode is very necessary for any website developed these days and it's impressive getfeatured.biz has a mobile friendly version that looks equally appealing visually. The UI is very responsive on the smartphones I tested with (iPhone, HTC Desire, Samsung Galaxy S). 


Navigating is simple. You immediately know what the website offers once you get to the homepage and even on the subsequent pages.

Alswell is a fun way to search. This cool feature allows you to perform searches on getfeatured.biz content right from within your chat messenger. You just have to add 'getfeatured.biz' like you add a friend. If all goes well, Alswell will show up in your friends list and you can start telling it to find jobs, autos, cars, houses and more.  Type 'help jobs' and Alswell will tell you how to ask it to find jobs This pretty much reminds me of Siri for the iPhone.


The bad parts
Mono lingual. For a website that seeks to make inroads into every continent having things in English is not enough. Other languages have to be introduced. At least French. 


Can't do much with the mobile friendly version. It's good there is a mobile friendly version but it's not enough the things you can do in this mode. It's mostly read only. I couldn't post listings to the website. 


That dot biz gives me rashes. You know how there are some things that drive you crazy but you just have no control over? Like having an American embassy in your country and they still having the nerve to deny you a visa to America.  You can really do nothing about it and it's so painful. That's the kind of pet peeve I have with the dot biz in getfeatured.biz. I have to live with it. 


Help I am drowning in a pool of  data. Getting results when looking for information is great but when the the data is in super abundance things begin to get overwhelming and then using relevant information begins to become a painful process. I tried looking for a job and indeed got a lot of them (8,191 at the time of this writing). Cool. I wanted to further filter and get something more specific but couldn't.  Not cool. Oh wait! I see on my left boxes for me to search by title and by location. I entered accounting, accra and got data I could handle. So in fact, this thing I think is working backwards. Why not give me data relevant to my location to begin with and give me the option to see all or more.

Map deception. I clicked on a green "Launch MapMode Exclusive" button just because I liked the sound of mapmode exclusive. I really didn't know what to expect but it turned out I was moved into Map view. The map picked my location as "Manhattan" (I wish!!)


Link color inconsistency. On the homepage and the places page the links are red in color. When you move to jobs, cars, houses and classifieds the link color is blue BUT the category a listing is filed under is red which makes me want to click them even though they are not links.

Sign up form visual deception. The sign up form marked "Your FullName" as the only required field but on submitting the form it expects me to put in an email and password. The error message also sounds a bit too technical or 'advanced'. In Ghana the word 'prohibited' mostly goes with you getting a fine should you falter. "hawking here is prohibited", "urinating here is prohibited. Offenders will be charged a fine of Ghc50".


Show counts in 'places' categories. I clicked 'places' from the top bar and clicked on a few categories only to find they had no listings in them. The page didn't tell me there were no listings so I was waiting thinking the content was still loading. Will be great if also the categories could have a count next to them to prevent users from clicking on categories that have no listings.
Example: Aerospace (5), Education (0)


In Conclusion
The time spent on the website was not a waste at all. I personally love this website and get a lot of aesthetic inspiration from it. The service it provides is also very useful and I use it often enough for me to want to dissect the website to help make it better. I know Alfred and his team at nCodeDev Labs will do a good job to address where necessary the concerns raised.