uCoz Media has completed the alpha testing and the launch of the Arabic version of its website building platform. The service is available through the address www.ucoz.ae. The company has not only translated the whole system within several months, but also has adapted the system to right-to-left writing.
Basically, the service has turned around its already popular international website design templates, to enable proper viewing on web pages created in Arabic. The system completely supports utf-8 encoding, which helps create websites in Arabic without any limitations or defects. Technical support for users is also available in the Arabic language. The company emphasized that at present, this is the only free service of its type available for Arabic users in their native language.
The system uses an advertising profit model, therefore the services are given to its users for free in exchange for a small advertising load — an advertising bar of 24 pixels on each page. The provided services have a high professional and technical level, proved by hundreds of thousands of users and by three years of work in another markets. The main advantage of the service is its ease of use and availability, innovativeness and technological effectiveness, as well as a high security level.
Besides the basic free features, some premium paid services are offered to users, but according to uCoz Media the majority of users do without them. They simply don’t need them — both amateur and professional websites are created on the basis of free basic features; however commercial websites use premium services more often. uCoz Media has ambitious plans concerning the Arabic market, as well as the rest of the world.
“We are sure that in the modern world a website is necessary not only for every company or nonprofit organization, but also almost for every person. Moreover, we are proud of the offered solution,” said one of uCoz Media’s company directors, Evgeny Kurt. “The service’s usability has been proved by time and by a great number of our followers in the markets where we have been present for a long time.”
The company expects to attract considerable traffic to its new service. There are a few things to keep in mind though. Since any website developed using the free service is actually hosted through www.ucoz.ae, uCoz Media controls the material posted online. If a company or individual owns an Internet domain, the viewer will have to be redirected from that url to the ucoz.ae hosting service. Additionally, users cannot control the advertising that appears on their hosted web pages. A representative for the company stated that there will be “sensitivity to local customs and traditions” in selecting the advertising that they accept for promotion on websites created by users of their services in the Middle East. The fact is that companies could find that products or services of competitors are promoted on their web pages since targeted keywords are used to determine which ads appear at any time. Web pages with a religious emphasis could find that their pages are being used to promote products or services that while not illegal in the Middle East, are not welcome within a religious context.
Nevertheless, this Bulgarian headquartered company is making a move that others in the region have not considered worthy of their investment. There is a dire need for locally developed content and an initial experience posting a personal website with uCoz Media may encourage individuals and small companies to take more of an interest in what the Internet can offer.