LO1: Analysis of Gumtree

https://www.gumtree.com/

A) Purpose
The purpose of Gumtree is to advertise and sell items, this can be useful for people want to sell their items or people that want to buy seconded hand items. The target audience for this website is 18+ this is because if you want to create an account you have to be 18 or over to use a credit card or to have a PayPal Account. Below is an image of the audiences that visit gumtree. As we can see the gender split that the amount of males versus females that visit the site are around the same, this connotes that this site is aimed at both genders. The social grade of Gumtree is also shown below it tells us that 63% of the users from Gumtree are in the social grade of ABC1, this tells us that most of the visitors on the site are working class. The image below also states that 44% of Gumtree users are aged between 25 to 44 years old. The image also shows what the users like to look at when on Gumtree.

B) Visitor Needs
The visitor needs of Gumtree is to buy, sell or browse through items, this is met be the users being able to buy and sell from each other. When the visitors first arrive on the Gumtree website the visitors are instantly directed to the homepage which is usually of recommend items or items that the visitors have already looked at if the visitors are a user. If the visitor is just a guest then it just shows the visitors the latests adverts for items which the visitors can click on to view the full information on the item. On the homepage the visitors can also use the search box in the header of the page to help the visitors find a specific item.

C) Information flow (User Experience)
The Gumtree website is quite basic making it easy to navigate within the website quite basic and is easy to navigate throughout the website. The search bar can be found in the header of the website page which is the colour green which is to match the logo theme, in this search bar it says "I'm Looking for..." which is also a way of informing the users what the bar is meant to be used for. Next to that such bar is a scroll down menu of different categories the visitors can choose from, this is there so that when the users are looking for an item they a narrow the results down. The users can also choose what location they would like to search in to make their browsing easier to do. Next to the location search there is another scroll down menu this is for the users to choose how many miles they would like the item to be from where their location is.


D) Features - 100 words
The search bar on Gumtree is in the middle of the header, this means it is easy to find for the visitors. The visitors will also recognise this search bar as it says "I'm Looking for..." The navigation bar is used so specify items that arch for certain news stories it is not going to be too complicated. There are pictures on most pages, this is a way of the audience seeing what it is about without reading the full article, this is the same with the subtitles for each article, this is to save time for the readers as they can find an article they are looking for quicker.

E) Benefits

Gumtree can only be found online as it doesn’t have any high street stores. The website lets the audience buy and sell different items that are new and old. The producer started this website as they can reach every body because they have a wide audience and they can update the website whenever.

F) Content

This is a screenshot of Gumtree in 2001. The website is very basic however it still has some of the same features such as a search bar. However there are no photos of items that are for sale on the home page but there are still hyperlinks to navigate the users to other parts of the website.

This is a screen shot of Gumtree in 2015. The website has changed quite a bit since 2001 as it is more advanced now with 2 search bars and photographs so the users can actually see what they are buying instead of just relying on the  description of the items.