dubizzle marks a decade of buy-and-sell in UAE

Emirates Business

Recording over 270 million page views per month, dubizzle — the country’s leading classifieds platform — celebrates 10 years of transforming the UAE’s second-hand market place and consumer behaviour as a whole.
“In the space of 10 years, dubizzle has completely redefined the culture of ownership in the UAE by kick-starting the country’s second-hand economy, and bridging a gap the market didn’t realise it even had. dubizzle has been offering the residents of the UAE more choices and a wider range of price points to choose from when making a purchasing decision,” said Barry Judge, General Manager of dubizzle.
In 2005, classified transactions were 100% offline, with buying and selling taking place through the main local newspapers’ dedicated classifieds sections. The introduction of dubizzle has since facilitated millions of postings – from 200 ads placed in 2005, to 16.6 million ads in 2015; equating to almost two postings per resident of the UAE in 2015 alone. The total value of the postings over the past 10 years was calculated to be worth just under 5 trillion dirhams –enough money to build one thousand Burj Khalifas.
“We are the biggest online market place in the Middle East. To look at it another way, in 2015 Dubai Mall had around 75 million visitors, dubizzle had 65 million visitors! Anything you can buy in Dubai Mall you can find on dubizzle… in addition to this you can also sell your house, buy a car and find a new job!”, Mr. Judge added.
According to alexa.com, dubizzle was the 6th most visited website in the UAE in 2015, dubizzle.com has over 2.1 million unique visitors a month, with an average of 2 visits per week per visitor and the average duration of the visit is 16.5 minutes. In December last year, Google announced that dubizzle was the 6th most searched-for local brand via the search engine in 2015 in the UAE.
“Since our launch ten years ago, we’ve seen a change in user behaviour, witnessing the e-commerce ‘desktop’ industry shift to ‘m-commerce’ mobile purchasing and we’ve evolved our offering accordingly. As the leading classifieds platform in the UAE, we’re constantly aligning our growth strategy with the needs of our users, highlighted by regular upgrades on our website and the introduction and success of the dubizzle app in 2014,” added Judge.
As well as introducing the second-hand market place to the UAE, dubizzle has also introduced a level of transparency in buying and selling. For example, the dubizzle property estimate gives users an honest representation of the average property value by area, size, number of rooms etc. by calculating and comparing against average costs in the market, empowering users so they can make a more informed and smarter purchase decisions.
The dubizzle journey has been one of continuous success with 2015 being a key year for the platform. As well as reaching record numbers in its 10-year history, it also made its first external investment into fashion marketplace app ‘Shedd’, which was conceptualised by two former dubizzle employees – Tariq Zabian and Alex Hutley. The m-commerce app provides the perfect platform for fashion lovers to sell their pre-loved items, making money and room for their next purchases.
Judge wrapped up: “l’m proud of dubizzle’s history and of our diverse, talented team who have worked hard to build a brand that’s at the heart of the community. dubizzle has helped people at important junctions in their lives; buying a home, upgrading their car, finding that ideal job, and settling into their new country. We look forward to continuing the journey, here’s to the next ten years!”.