eBay-owned South African online classified platform, Gumtree, an OLX competitor has launched a version to capture the country’s feature phone user base who make up to 70 percent of phones used in the country.
Dubbed Gumtree Lite, the version for feature phones or “non-smart” phones is aimed at making it easier for users to access the site with only basic capabilities and quiet light and streamless for acess and not as annoying as when try to connect to the full web or mobi sites.
Gumtree SA MD Johan Nel says the company recently examined its customers and their devices, and found the feature phone audience was larger than anticipated.
With this in mind, the MD said that, Gumtree took key learnings from its 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 10Kb in size. “The smaller the page, the faster – and cheaper – the experience,” says Nel.
Gumtree was founded in London in 2000 and according to e-bay, it was made to help Aussies, Kiwis and South Africans find a place to live, a job, and everything they needed to settle in to the city”. It was later launched in South Africa in 2006.
Nel took the South African office in June, giving the company a truly local presence for the first time, with two offices opening in the country around the same time. This brought to an end the legacy of the local operation being run out of eBay’s international offices.
Gumtree is also available as an app for Android, Apple and Blackberry smartphones.