Under the Gumtree

What bloggers think of the sneak peek site

We had a little meet-up earlier this month for a few bloggers and Gumtree fans to meet the team and walk through a sneak peek of our new site. We’ve had some great feedback, so we thought we’d share what some of our guests thought of the event and the new site changes.

Chris Prakoso, a web developer from London, has written a detailed post about Gumtree’s “coming of age”, and one new transformation he’s particularly excited about:

“Gumtree also said that they are developing an API (Application Programming Interface), which immediately caught my attention, and several other web developers among the audience. An availability of a public API would mean that Gumtree is willing to open up its data to the public for their perusal. We have already witnessed what happens with Twitter, for example, when they open their data via the API.  The result is often astonishing.”

Lee Stacey, a social media specialist from West Sussex, focused more on the visual developments in his blog post by comparing the new and ‘old’ Gumtree sites:

“The old Gumtree site has stuff everywhere and it’s not helped by inconsistent theming and navigation. To a new user, these things are intimidating and might be enough to put you off before you’ve even had a proper look around. The new site utilises space on the screen in a much better manner, is cleaner and is consistent throughout. Just simple things like having all your account controls top right all the time make a big difference.”

Meanwhile, Benjamin Ellis, a social technologist from Surrey, gives his opinion on the way Gumtree is changing, and how to still appeal to users during the transition. He lists ‘model examples’ of our methods, including:

• Giving early adopters the chance to opt-in
• Explaining the changes and gathering feedback
• Providing the option to opt out, with the chance for feedback
• Discussion forum for users to share their thoughts with each other
• Rapid iterations, based on customer feedback

Benjamin sums up his post with an excellent message about ‘the old guard’:

“The key is to win the old guard over, and bring them along. It seems like Gumtree are doing a great job of that and setting a great example for others to follow.”

If you’d like to write a guest post for the Gumtree blog, just get in touch and let us know!