# Tsvaga Basa: pre-launch benchmark and improvement plan
Reviewed 7 October 2026. This is a comparison of public pages and official product guidance, not a hands-on assessment of signed-in accounts, competitor speed, security or market share. It does not establish a ranking or claim superiority.

## Reference patterns
| Reference | Observed pattern | Tsvaga Basa decision |
|---|---|---|
| Indeed | Job filters, company research and salary information | Make relevance and transparent salary disclosure clear. Never invent salary data. |
| LinkedIn | Location, date-posted, experience and employment filters; saved-search alerts | Add date and experience filters now. Email alerts remain a later feature requiring consent, unsubscribe and delivery handling. |
| The Muse | Date and experience filters, company profiles, career advice, apply-on-company-site links | Maintain direct employer applications; expand practical local career advice. |
| BrighterMonday Kenya | Job seeker and employer services; employer job posting and promotion | Keep employer submission simple and approval-driven before introducing accounts. |
| VacancyMail Zimbabwe | Jobs, categories, company browsing, jobseeker/employer registration | General jobs and category browsing are already familiar locally; compete through accurate listings and ease of use. |

CV People Africa was identified, but its site could not be opened successfully during this review; no detailed feature assessment is claimed.

## Improvements included in this package
- Date-posted filters: last 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days.
- Structured experience dropdown and matching public filter.
- Newest-first or closing-soon sort, preserved through pagination.
- Posting dates, experience and salary disclosure visible on vacancy cards.
- Closing-soon label for deadlines within three days, including today.
- Skip-to-content link, keyboard focus states, mobile application controls.
- Existing essentials retained: approval queue, deadline enforcement, duplicate warnings, optional logos, reports, source records, bookmarks and sitemap.

## Differentiation to pursue
Positioning hypothesis: a straightforward Zimbabwe portal for current opportunities with complete application instructions and free browsing. Validate this with actual job seekers and employers.
- Strong coverage of attachments and entry-level jobs as well as experienced roles.
- Location names standardised to Zimbabwe towns and provinces, with aliases where useful.
- No forced job-seeker registration for reading or applying.
- Low data use: compress logos and avoid autoplay/video or oversized promotional graphics.
- Employer identity checks with explicit evidence and dates. Approval must not be labelled verification.
- Complete adverts: required documents, destination, reference, deadline and source.
- Report handling with an internal one-working-day review target.
- Sponsorships clearly separated from organic relevance; never obscure Apply controls.

## Launch gates: targets, not measured results
1. PHP lint and real MySQL installation pass on staging. Test submissions, admin login/logout, CSRF, logo validation and private contact separation.
2. Test pagination at 0, 1, 10, 11 and 21 matching jobs; filters and sorting stay active on every page.
3. An expired vacancy is absent from listings and direct detail access. A job without a deadline cannot be published.
4. Test on a small Android phone and desktop. Keyboard navigation and 200% text enlargement must remain usable.
5. Performance targets: Largest Contentful Paint <=2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint <=200 milliseconds, Cumulative Layout Shift <=0.1. Measure after deployment with realistic mobile conditions; these are targets, not results.
6. Ask five job seekers to find a suitable role and reach its application destination. Ask three employers to submit a vacancy. Record failures and completion time; fix repeated friction before public promotion.
7. Set a monitored contact email, review public policies, enable HTTPS and confirm backup restoration.
8. Publish real listings with checked application destinations. Do not use fake testimonials, fabricated counts or unearned verification badges.

## Next development priorities
- Real PHP/MySQL integration testing and mobile visual QA are launch blockers.
- Admin pagination beyond the current 200-job/100-report limits.
- Postal/province and remote-work fields, structured salary ranges and qualification filters after agreeing data rules.
- Related jobs and employer profiles based only on actual stored employer information.
- Google JobPosting structured data: only on individual real vacancy pages, required fields accurate, expiry handled, no fake salary. Current package does not implement it.
- Opt-in alerts and application-link analytics. A click is not an application or hire.
- Improve original-advert workflow and employer corrections without unnecessary accounts.

## Sources
- https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/tips-on-how-to-get-better-search-results-on-indeed.com
- https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a507441/filter-and-sort-job-search-results?lang=en
- https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a511279/job-alerts-on-linkedin
- https://www.themuse.com/search
- https://www.themuse.com/advice
- https://www.brightermonday.co.ke/employer
- https://www.brightermonday.co.ke/job-seeker
- https://vacancymail.co.zw/
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/job-posting