OLX

Fuss-free online classifieds

By Earl D.C. Bracamonte

Classifieds lifestyle site OLX promotes its updated online platform to more Filipinos. Steering towards helping their users become active advocates of the buy & sell mindset, the former sulit.com portal has also introduced their newest content platform, OLX Yaman. This is where interested parties can get first-hand information and insightful tips about online purchasing and vending. It will also be featuring user testimonials as well as articles that cover various topics like motoring, realty, travel, fashion and technology.

“Naspers (Myriad Int’l Holdings) acquired sulit.com in 2009 and OLX acquired the business in 2010. We have 25 international markets across the world or 70 if you include counting existing areas with no local teams operating in a physical office,” shared managing director RJ David.

A year after consolidation as a new entity, OLX established an office in Cebu to reach out to more users in the Visayas and Mindanao regions. Earlier in 2015, it also merged with another classified ads platform to widen its portfolio. Through these changes, OLX continues to expand its reach and make online buying/selling accessible to more Pinoys.

“With the level of reach that OLX is attaining, we want to continue making it easier for more Filipinos to experience online buying and selling; from the occasional enthusiasts who are selling stuff for the first time to street-smart buyers who maintain practical lifestyles,” he continued.

To keep the online buy & sell community vibrant, each ad comes with an improved report button that users can simply click in case they find suspicious ads. This is then directly sent to the OLX support team for investigation. Moreover, the company has removed its feedback system and reduced the number of free ad slots.

“Implementing a limit to the number of free ad slots and removing the feedback system gave us more quality ads and an equal selling opportunity to all types of sellers. At this point, our focus is to spread the buyer leads to as many sellers as possible. Removing the feedback tool has increased the number of sellers getting buying inquiries by 17 per cent from 51,000 to 60,000 and the implementation of the paid limits has also resulted to a 38 per cent jump from 43,000 to 60,0000 hits,” explained David.

OLX has also implemented several product changes to make the experience more pleasant for their users. For instance, the platform is now highly optimized as the loading time of pages has sped up by as much as 70 per cent. The sellers form has also been simplified, allowing vendors to accomplish more in less time. Selecting specific locations, too, for targeted queries and choosing item categories therein becomes faster through the auto-suggest feature.

“Our casual sellers or account holders have now fewer fields to fill up unlike before. And there’s no registration needed as well. Registration needs a valid email address where oftentimes passwords are forgotten, precluding people to use their email addresses. So we opted to let them use their phone numbers instead because while they may forget their email passwords, they’ll never forget their phone numbers. We have removed a lot of duplicated content as well.

“We don’t have listing fees too. Sellers only pay beyond the free slot allocations because now they have become an active business. OLX encourages each seller to put only quality ads so as not to waste the space,” concluded David.

Amidst the changes, OLX remains to be a free online classified ads platform where all its sellers can still post items at no cost. Paying for additional ad slots is just an option since account holders can either delete items that have already been sold, or simply remove inactive ads.

Ultimately, all these changes contribute to the company’s higher purpose of providing an opportunity for users to make smart and practical choices that can lead to an improved life. For more information, simply browse their Web site through www.yaman.olx,ph.