Due to my interest to group buying industry, I try to watch regularly new sites that appearing in this arena in Australia. Today I made a search in Google and noticed new web site (in one of the Adwords), StarDeals.com.au
To my big surprise, when I opened it I see the next picture:
So finally it has happened, GroupOn came to Australia. All tells that the site was just launched:
- current deal as well as two closed deals so far and both looks like samples rather than real (same picture and dummy text, GroupOn Chicago address);
- today sample deal is marked as ‘sold out’ in the middle of the day and with just 20 coupon purchased;
- only Sydney is covered;
- contact emaisl weren’t set up (I tried to write them but get bounces);
- non-working links to Twitter, RSS and Facebook page (at the bottom)
Interesting to note that domain stardeals.com.au is registered by Groupon Europe GmbH.
We’ll see how it will develop, but if this is real attempt to launch in Australia, not a kind of exercise, it looks rather strange: why advertise in Google obviously ‘under constraction’ kind of site. Probably the reason is to start collecting subscribers database, but it can be done in a simpler way, with kind of “coming soon, leave your email’ temporary web page rather then unfinished piece of work with broken links.
Updates:
- BTW, registration is working, I have got a confirmation by email from … GroupOn Singapore;
- if you click to Adword (it is still active, use ‘deals melbourne’ as keywords to see it) in fact you will see a page looks more similar to pre-launch one (with email deals subscription), but after you enter an email you see the site as I described