bog.so
A Somali-first platform that gets invisible businesses onto the web. In beta now.
- Org
- bog.so
- Role
- Founder, Research to Beta
- Timeframe
- 2026
- Tools
- Figma, React, Next.js, Cloudflare, Supabase
Gallery
Product
The Challenge
The businesses exist. The web can’t see them.
- of Somali businesses have no website
- 80%+
- major builders that speak Somali
- 0
Researching the online presence of Somali businesses, back home and across the West, I found most run entirely on Facebook pages, which are nearly invisible to search. Wix, Squarespace, and Framer don’t serve them: the language barrier turns every screen into a UX problem, and these owners start at “I need a website, not code,” a question those tools were never built to answer.
The Brief
I wrote it myself: meet them where they already are.
Nearly every one of these businesses had set up a Facebook page. That’s the interaction model they trust. The brief became a question: what if getting a real website felt like setting up a Facebook page, in a platform that speaks Somali?
The Approach
Bog means “page” in Somali. The name is the pitch.
- Setup modeled on the flow owners already know, not a blank canvas
- Somali as a first-class language: the interface speaks it, content is written in it
- SEO and AI-model discoverability handled by the platform, not the owner
- Marketing education built in, because getting online is step one, not the goal
I designed and built it solo, research through working product.
The Outcome
Live in beta at bog.so.
Not another website builder. A platform built to move a technologically sidelined community onto the open web, and the clearest proof of how I work: found the gap through research, wrote the brief, built the thing.