Research Report 1: Mocca.com

Mocca.com is an online classified advertising service run by MediaCorp, Singapore's main media company. ('MOCCA' stands for MediaCorp Online Communities and Classified Advertising). MOCCA is one of the top online classifieds site in Singapore, with some 8.4 million page views a month. It is essentially a B2C eCommerce providing C2C services to its customers, which is similar to E-bay in certain aspect. It sells advertising space to consumer for them advertise their products/services in the Classified section of their website (www.mocca.com) . However, unlike E-Bay, Mocca.com is not an online auction hosting website. Consumers can communicate with the advertiser using the 'Message Advertiser' service provided by Mocca.com. Example: if a buyer A wishes to buy a Toyota Camry from Seller B, he can negotiate the prices with Seller B & arrange to meet up with him to close the deal. Mocca.com does not act as a third party in the any part of the trade. Currently, only the classified advertising & online business listing guide components are in place, the online communities services are still in development.

There are numerous catergories available in its online classified section, with Property, Vehicles, Home Services, Jobs, Travel, Buy & Sell as its main categories. All classified advertisements can be posted on MOCCA for free at the moment, except for the property and vehicles categories, which is chargeable. But to post an advertisement in MOCCA, one has to be a registered user with MOCCA first, which is free of charge.

Its Online classified advertising also offers both seller and buyer many features, such as a very extensive & customized search engine. There is a search box on every webpage of MOCCA. You can do a keyword search across all of MOCCA or within a category. If you want to search within the Property and Vehicles categories, you can choose Power Search which lets you search by a number of fields. Example: you could search for a particular car by its technical specification, like its brand, model & submodel. Informations of the car will displayed, like its engine specs, performance, measurements etc. Photos of each car will be displayed upon availabilty. Users can also make one to one comparison between individual car models using Power Search as well. All mentioned features applies to motorcycles too. For property, users could search for their desired property based on the apartment type, district, the floor area, price range etc. Users can also sort your search results by the date the ad was published, the indicated price, and district. Other features of the Online classified advertising includes the Smart Calculator, Location Map & Transacted Data funtions. Users interested in buying vehicles can use the Smart Calculator to calculate loan amount based on the interest rate & monthly installemnts needed to service the payment for the vechicle. It also allows users to calculate the road tax per year/6mths based on the vehicles' age & engine capacity. For users interested in acquiring properties, they can use the Location Map function to find out the exact location of their properties, in the map satellite or hybrid mode. They can even check out for any nearby amenities such as mrt stations, dining outlets, clinics, hospitals, shopping malls etc, using 'Click to see what's nearby' function. The Transacted Data funtion allows users to see the transacted price history for a unit over a period of 7 mths in graphical form, enabling buyers to monitor the price movement of properties.

MOCCA also currently provides free business listing services to business owners/consumers through their business guide, OneGuide. It has a very broad database in its business listings & are categorised in different catergories like Doctors, Restaurants, Lawyers, Interior Decorator & Designer, Travel Agencies, Caterers, Escort service etc. Map & informations are provided for each listing. Business owners could use the 'Shopfront' feature to display thier main products and market them to other browsers. Users could search for their listings in 3 ways. Firstly, by doing a keyword search across all of OneGuide, or through the Main Search which allows users to search by Company Name, Classification, Product/Services, Phone Number, or/and Address.
And lastly, through Browse Classification by letter.

Browing of ads on MOCCA is free for public, no registration is required to do so. Users can also print the ad without having to register. But for users who want to save an ad for viewing later, or emailing to friends, registration will be needed.

The strengths of mocca.com would be its online classified advertising. It has a user-friendly intereface for users to search for products/services & many useful & interactive features which allows users to optimize their search. Its Power Search engine is definately a great addition to its interface, which is unique among other forms of classifieds. Perhaps due to this, MOCCA now has a wide database of classified advertising in its Properties segment & has become a popular choices among many real estates companies as the platform for classified advertising in Singapore.

The weaknesses of mocca.com would be its online business listing, OneGuide. Despite its multiple features & effective search engine, its current database of busines listings is currently too small, compared to competitors like Yellowpages or RedNano.com. In my opinion, it is only suitable for conventional users looking for regularly searched listings like restuarants, travel agents etc, but not for specifically technical listings like Industrial Welders, Machinery parts etc.