Gumtree marks 10 years with major site rebrand
Popular second-hand marketplace, Gumtree, is celebrating ten years in the Australian market with a bold new look and support for new features, including 24/7 customer support.
Launching today, the rebrand brings Gumtree Australia’s website up to speed with those in the UK and South Africa, where the modern logo and colour palette have already been introduced.
The local site also sees technical improvements, ranging from better search functionality, to the addition of 24/7 customer support via live chat, to the ability to pay for purchases online via PayPal.
Gumtree Australia’s general manager Martin Herbst told Internet Retailing that theses changes were primarily driven by user feedback and have been implemented across the website and app.
“We’re always listening to customers and what they’re asking for. The challenge is to prioritise the biggest asks, and that’s what we’ve done with live chat and PayPal integration,” Herbst told Internet Retailing.
Gumtree already draws more than seven million Australians every month, making it a top 20 digital destination, according to 2016 data from Nielsen Digital. But Herbst said improvements to the user experience will help propel it into the top 10.
“One in three Australians come to us every month. We thought, why couldn’t we make that two in three?” he said.
Changes to the user experience for sellers include the ability to save drafts of ads before posting and reminders to complete those drafts at a later date. Sellers can also now attach photos in messages to prospective buyers.
Meanwhile, buyers can refine their search in certain categories. For instance, they can now search for clothes and shoes by size and for cars by make, model and colour.
Herbst acknowledged that most people don’t associate Gumtree with car sales, but with over 170,000 used car listings, he said the site has more than almost any other site in Australia.
Indeed, traditional classifieds – cars, jobs real estate – are one of the largest categories on Gumtree Australia. As part of the rebrand, the cars category has been made more visible and the jobs category now has a dedicated app.
The rebrand comes at a time when second-hand peer-to-peer marketplaces are growing. Facebook Marketplace and Singapore’s Carousell app both launched in Australia in recent months.
Gumtree will be making its case as the leading buying and selling destination directly to the Australian public over the coming months, with a major marketing push around the new brand proposition: ‘This is Gumtree. Australia’s local marketplace.’
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