Wap Review

Soccer Laduma (soccerladuma.mobi) is yet another new African based mobile website.  It's the mobile web edition of a weekly newspaper that's the country's largest soccer publication.  South Africa has  twice as many people using the mobile web as the fixed web so it's no surprise that Soccer Laduma's four month old mobile site gets more traffic than its fixed web counterpart.

The site is very rich in features yet is easy to navigate.  The front page is simple and fast loading with just a photo and three breaking news headlines.  Everything else is accessed from a bottom navigation menu. When you drill down into that menu you find virtually the entire content of the PC web site; live scores, domestic South African and international soccer news, fixtures and results from around the world, blogs, columns, a schedule of upcoming matches on South African TV, league standings and a photo gallery.

Soccer Laduma  is also building a soccer fan community with social networking features; readers can vote and leave comments on every news item, and there's a comment "wall", polls, a forum and a  user driven "predictions" page. The site also incorporates a full fledged social network called Ayoba! were each member has a profile page, friends list, photo gallery and their own "wall" where their friends can leave public messages and comments.  There's also mobile web based private messaging between members.

Page size is generally well managed with under 10 KB of text and 15 KB of images per page except for the "Make Your Point" page were readers leave comments on a seemingly ever growing page.  "Make Your Point" weighs in at 180KB, far to large  to load on most feature phones.

This site is an example of the sort of deep, content rich, but highly usable mobile web design that I like.  Mobile users want the whole web not a subset. The mobile context also demands simple intuitive navigation  which Soccer Laduma delivers. Each page is self contained, a logical destination in itself, and the bottom menu, which is on every page, makes it easy to quickly jump to another section.

Why "Laduma"? According to Wikipedia, it's a Zulu word meaning "he thunders" and a popular cheer at South African soccer matches. Source: Mobility.mobi

Filed in: Wap Review Directory - Sports/Soccer

Ratings: Content:  Usability: 

Mobile Link: soccerladuma.mobi

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