MouthShut May 3, 2007
Posted by Pallav Sharda in : Business , trackbackMouthShut is an review website focused on Indian consumer. It was started by Faisal Farooqui, a returning NRI, in 2000. The site claims around 80K members today (need to confirm this, I read it somewhere but can’t locate the source now) and is privately held, with some angel funding. Their compete stats confirm unique visitors to be consistently above 60K per month, which is pretty significant.
Let me start by saying that we need something like MouthShut. The average Indian consumer has practically no other way than word-of-mouth to research before shopping for products or services.
On the flip side, I’m disappointed with their user interface. Surf to the homepage and the first few seconds are spent absorbing the fragmented look-and-feel: inconsistent fonts, blinking graphics, numerous sub-sections, overloaded info.. the usual (see my post about hallmarks of an Indian website). I realize it’s hard to make a horizontal portal that has good navigation because there is simply too many categories and subcategories, but one can counter it by professional design. After 7 years of existence, the need for professional web design shows in various places at MouthShut. Maybe they need some good venture backing to go full throttle now. Content is spotty… good in some places (like website, cellphone reviews) where you would expect indulgence from net-savvy consumers, and not-so-good in others (like hospitals).
For sites that are horizontal in nature and go across the infinite sea of categories, I think the crux of usability is to know when to stop categorizing and consolidate. After one point, you tend to loose reader interest simply because it becomes a pain to navigate. For example, the main navigation bar at MouthShut (right below their banner) starts with the very logical categories of ‘Airlines’, ‘Appliances’, ‘Books’… but goes on to include ‘Microwave Ovens’ and ‘TV Commercials’ (!!).
Don’t get me wrong, I like MouthShut overall. It surprises me how much can one establish in the growing Indian internet space, even with a service that is not highly usable. In MouthShut’s case, maybe the key was to survive the initial four/five odd years and build up user base in a startup mode. We’ve got more than a billion people after all, even a fraction of that amounts to a lot 
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I want to correct you that mouthshut.com has 1.5 million users (watch a tv interview of faisal farooqui) and they have abt 30 million page views a month. pretty amazing nos. for an india based site.
about usabiliuty yes they r spotty in some places and perfect in others. can u imagine collating reviews on 1000000s of products thts wht they r doing so there was a big challenge…but they can improve no doubt.
as for me, i was a summer intern with them way back in 2002 and i loved the charisma faisal farooqui brings to mouthshut. he’s a true rockstar