Web usability of Aarong, e-commerce
Abstract
In 1972, BRAC, largest NGO of the world was established. Then in 1976, BRAC dedicated to reduce poverty and empowering the underprivileged people. As a result it started a small initiative to promote sericulture among the women of Manikganj. In 1978 Aarong was born in need of helping the disadvantaged, poor silk farmers. They started their journey to change the lives of artisans and unprivileged rural women. Aarong enlighten them by encouraging their arts and crafts. They product design of Aarong symbolize the Bangladeshi culture. Aarong was established to help the marginalized people of Bangladesh. The reason is most of the people in Bangladesh live in the rural areas. They are the most disadvantageous and marginalized people and Aarong has developed a ground for these people. According to this organization, lack of working capital, marketing support and opportunity for skills development are the three main obstacles for gainful employment in the rural areas. As it is a social enterprise, it provides some services to the low income and marginalized people in the rural areas to overcome the three main obstacles.
At the beginning their target buyers were a few merchants of Dhaka. Soon enough, Aarong started to grow and spread throughout the whole country, from one single shop to the biggest retail chains of Bangladesh. They have variety of product line. It has all products under one roof. At present Aarong have 15 domestic outlets in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Moulvibazar, and Khulna and 1 franchise outlet in London. Since 1984 this organization is exporting their products in Italy, U.K., Spain, Canada, Japan and other countries. The target customers of Aarong are middle and higher socio-economic classes, expatriates, foreign visitors (tourists and business travelers) and Bangladeshis living abroad .They have established many outlets all over the country still they are planning to set up more outlets.
On 16th July 2014, Aarong’s website was launched nationally. In 2012 Aarong had a vision to launch an e-commerce site by 2013. The slogan of Aarong E-commerce is ‘Shop Online’. Aarong is one of the first organizations in Bangladesh which brought Western website design to Eastern audiences by providing a high-class user experience. They placed their all product in their site. Their main motto is to reach internationally. Here, in the report I will be discussing mainly about their website usability of www.aarong.com.