Marketplace · Senegal
A classifieds marketplace for Senegal: listings, a job portal and a services marketplace in one product, in French and Wolof, with AI that turns a sentence into a complete listing.
Role
Product, architecture, development, technical SEO
Context
Classifieds platform for Senegal, based in Dakar
Period
2026 — ongoing
Platform
Web, mobile-first · 4 languages incl. Wolof
Links
The challenge
Classifieds in Senegal are spread across generic sites and social media groups. Listings are hard to find and say little, advance-payment scams over mobile money are common, and jobs and tradespeople live on yet other channels. Most people browse on a phone, many prefer Wolof to French, and what matters locally—imported cars, rooms rented by the week, food sold in bulk—rarely fits templates built for other markets.
The approach
Yess brings three marketplaces under one account: classifieds for goods, property and vehicles; a job portal where companies publish offers and candidates apply with a CV; and a services marketplace where customers describe a job and providers send quotes. It is built around local habits: the 14 official regions with their departments, imported ("venant") versus local cars, daily and weekly rents, and Wave and Orange Money badges. Every listing is reviewed before it goes live, and one admin panel runs moderation, reports, content and settings.
What was built
- 01
AI listing assistant
Describe the item in a sentence; Gemini fills in a French title, description, category, price and details such as brand, mileage or rooms.
- 02
Chat in Wolof and French
Messages between buyers and sellers can be translated between French, Wolof and English in a natural, conversational tone.
- 03
Job portal
Company pages, job offers, applications with a CV snapshot and a pipeline in which employers sort their candidates.
- 04
Services marketplace
Customers post a request with category-specific questions, providers send quotes and are reviewed afterwards; registered companies can show that they issue official invoices.
- 05
Moderation and trust
Listings are approved before publishing, users can report listings, profiles and messages, and admins can request changes or suspend accounts.
- 06
Local SEO at scale
Pages for cities, city and category combinations, brands and models, guides and a blog, with structured data, a dynamic sitemap and noindex for thin pages.
The outcome
Yess is live at yess.sn. Classifieds, jobs, services, chat, a CMS for the blog and pages, e-mail notifications and the admin panel run on one Next.js codebase with Supabase, and the French SEO pages are built for searches such as "voiture occasion Dakar" and "immobilier Dakar".
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