South Africa’s largest local classified, Gumtree.co.za, is catering to their feature phone audience with Gumtree Lite.
Despite the rapid adoption of smartphones in South Africa, experts estimate that close to 70% of all phones in the country are feature or “non-smart” phones. As theses phones only have the most basic capabilities, users can find connecting to the Internet and using mobi sites frustrating.
“Our previous m.gumtree.co.za was hugely successful, and we decided to take a closer look at our customers and their devices,” says MD Johan Nel. “Analysis revealed that the feature phone audience was larger than anticipated and we wanted to ensure that every customer – no matter how basic their phone – would have an excellent user experience. We looked at all of the key learnings from our m-site and made it even lighter, allowing for faster uploading of pictures and ads, easy navigation and an improved experience all around.”
Gumtree Lite pages are less than 10kbs in size, making it extremely feature phone friendly. “The smaller the page, the faster – and cheaper – the experience,” explains Nel.
That’s not to say that the company is neglecting smartphone users. “We’ve made huge strides in terms of improving our smartphone apps and the recent flurry of downloads proves that,” he says. “Customers can enjoy the full Gumtree experience via our Android, Apple and Blackberry apps – whether they are buying or selling, setting up alerts, or simply browsing.”
Nel says that Gumtree Lite has already seen a significant uptake.
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