WEBSITE DESIGN • USER EXPERIENCE • USER INTERFACE • RESPONSIVE DESIGN

The Challenge

Gumtree is well known as South Africa's most popular Classified Marketplace. It boasts various categories to browse through as well as the ability to post an advert for buying or selling goods or services. With all that Gumtree has to offer - the interface does not do it any justice in comparison to it's UK counterpart. The challenge I gave myself was that of taking Gumtree out of the 1990s and bringing it into the year 2020 to benefit all those in need of a classified site during this global pandemic.

My Role

My design challenge started with asking a number of people what they thought of the current site - those that were interviewed noted the fact that it's not user-friendly - especially on a mobile phone. It was also noted that the colours weren't very appealing in shades of brown and mustard yellow, as well as the current layout which is very busy - which in turn reminds them of a cheap newspaper. One person noted they weren't too fond of the long list of categories that took forever to scroll through on mobile. Taking all the feedback I had gathered into account, I embarked on a journey to redesign the website structurally and determine the best hierarchical layout that would benefit the user and their needs. The design evolution started with the wireframe stages - working to determine the most important features of the site - and how to display them in a more user-friendly way. I introduced new and fresh colours in a minimal way making use of black and white with touches of blue in the colour palette. The colour green was used as the primary feature colour that was used sparingly in CTA's and links etc. The mobile design features a bottom navbar which makes navigation a lot easier for the user. The categories section was reworked into a carousel design which is easy to navigate and cuts down the amount of scrolling on the mobile design. In order to eliminate the cramped and cheap feeling - I took the categories section and redesigned the cards into a sleek format with big visuals and information in order to showcase the most important things first.

The Result

The end result is a fully responsive site that is user friendly on desktop and mobile. When the same users were asked to provide feedback on the new design layout, they commented that the site looked sleek and modern, the colour palette was very fresh and clean and the site was very orderly in comparison to the original site.