How Much Money Does Require To Develop An App Like Gumtree?

Classified ads have been popular for years and are crucial in promoting business brands across niches. Classified ads have been promoting businesses since the beginning of capitalist civilization. With the onset of classified ads, street shop display ads began to look primitive. Soon, classified ads were given a place in leading newspapers and magazines, and later on, there were dedicated publications for classified ads, such as Yellow Pages.

In the digital era, classified ads made their presence on the web through sites like OLX, Quikr, Groupon, and several others. Dedicated apps closely followed it for classified ads, and the popular websites featuring these ads turned to apps for pushing user engagement and business conversion.

In recent years, some classified ad apps, such as Gumtree, gained huge popularity and are widely considered the ideal platform for business promotion. You already want to build an app like Gumtree and want to hire a web application development company, right? And, of course, you are trying to figure out the cost of building such an app. But wait, first, let us explain how classified ads work and then how Gumtree works before moving on to the features and cost considerations in detail.

How classified ads work?

Classified ads represent businesses and business brands across all niches. The platform displaying classified ads builds up a marketplace for a diverse range of services, jobs, products, real estate properties, etc. With the classified ads platform, people can easily connect with different business brands offering the services they need or the products they want to purchase. Through these ads, buyers can also look for better deals or discounts or purchase benefits from various brands.

Since web and mobile apps began to emerge as more effective publication channels in recent times, they easily replaced the traditional printed classified ads in newspapers or publications. Now, people mostly browse classified ads on the web or just download their favourite app to stay tuned to the classified ads of their interest from time to time.

As we have already mentioned, the Gumtree app has emerged as the undisputed champion among classified ad apps all over the globe because of its sophisticated user experience, user-centric features, and continuous value additions. The app presenting ads from businesses across several countries gives us the best example of what a classified ads app should be like.

What is Gumtree?

At first, there was Gumtree.com, the dedicated UK-based website for classified ads. It is run by the UK-based online classified advertisement company of the same name. Headquartered in London, Gumtree became the most popular community platform for all kinds of free or paid ads across all business niches. After dominating the digital ads space for more than two eventful decades, it became the most popular website in UK for classified ads. It became one of the most popular web platforms in the world, with millions of regular website visitors and users.

Gumtree started its journey in March 2000, just like a local site for classified ads in London. From the early on, it aimed to get the attention of people from South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. The website helped millions of newcomers in the city to find accommodation, jobs, local acquaintances, or needed services. It was created as a community website to link people from different places and their required services in a meaningful way.

It is quite natural that people will try to follow this huge success story of Gumtree and build their own platforms to take on the increasingly popular classified ads market in different parts of the world. If you hail from the UK, you must be wondering how to hire app developers in UK to develop an app like Gumtree. But building an app like Gumtree should begin with considering its business model. Let’s explain this at the very beginning.

The Business Model Followed by Gumtree

Gumtree follows a simple business model with two different functional layers. The first layer of the app only facilitates customer onboarding with a free account and search function designed to allow them to search for the desired services and products in a location-specific manner.

There is another layer for the businesses to display their products & services in a customized way. This requires the businesses to pay a small fee. In case the seller business wants to enhance the visibility of their ads, they may need to pay an additional fee.

As for the app owner, there are three distinct income channels to make revenue from the app. These revenue channels are advertising revenues, listing fees and revenues from paid or premium accounts loaded with additional features.

Key features for an app like Gumtree

Ultimately, features and functionalities are the key building blocks for any app product. The cost depends upon the number of features and how challenging and unique a feature the app will offer. Do you want a clear idea about the crucial features of an app like Gumtree? You should concentrate on this before deciding to hire Flutter developer or React developer for your ambitious project.

Allowing access to the huge volume of relevant ads

This is the core value proposition of any classified ad platform, and it cannot be compromised. People land on your classified ad page or the app to explore as many ads as possible relating to what they are looking for. Secondly, it is also important to show how effortlessly and easily you allow users to see the ads they need.

Some products and services, known for their complexity and many features, need to appear in layered details to give the users a clear view of the products and services they purchase. For example, providing small audio clips can be very effective for audio devices and the music industry.

Fast & easy transactions

Another core value proposition that no classified ad app can undermine is the ease and speed of completing purchases. The posted ads should also facilitate easy purchase commands and instantly streamline the transactions through verified channels, including e-wallets, cards, net banking, etc. In the case of classified ads, a few seconds of delay in processing a transaction can ultimately lead to the complete loss of sales.

Robust & rich search function

The app's search function should be exhaustive enough to cover all products and services and be intuitively capable of delivering the most relevant results against every search with minimum effort.

It is advisable to integrate several relevant filters to ensure optimum ease and flexibility in searching for the products and services. Apart from multiple filters, it also allows users to save their search results for quick access in the future.

Integrated social sharing option

People like to share anything they like with others. This is why every web or app platform allows users to share content and commercial products and services with their peers and connections on social media channels. The social sharing option also helps the app acquire new users and get the attention of businesses who haven’t considered your classified ads app yet.

When it is about facilitating social Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. You can also provide other social and chat options to help people share and reach out, but keep the number of channels at a maximum of 4-5 to reduce distractions.

In-app messaging

The ability to receive and send messages within the app boosts interactions and engagement on the part of users. The feature is useful in reminding users when they leave the app midway through a search action or transaction.

In-app ads can also open up marketing opportunities as businesses can send you offers and deals based on your previous searches and interactions. In the case of transactions, the in-app notification messages can help the users stay informed about the transaction status. Lastly, the in-app messaging feature can also allow users to communicate with each other and stay informed about any deal or offer they are likely to miss.

Consider the key cost factors for developing an app like Gumtree.

There are several different cost factors associated with developing an app like Gumtree. To assess the cost of building an app like Gumtree, it is essential to examine these factors closely.

The chosen OS platform & app type

If you want to build two native app versions of the app for iOS and Android, the development cost can be a lot higher, but you can get the advantages of a fully native user experience. Building a hybrid web app that runs on all platforms can be cheaper, but it will make you compromise on user experience and app performance. A balanced approach between the two is cross-platform development, ensuring native UI for both platforms while reusing the maximum code across platforms.

App size & Complexity

The size of the app and the number of features and capabilities will play a crucial role in the development cost. One way to take a measured step and gradually increase features is to build the app incrementally through feedback-based value additions and updates. This approach, widely known as Minimum Viable Product (MVP) will also help reduce the initial cost of development.

Developer location and rate

The final cost factor depends on who is building your app, the team size of the developers, where you have hired them, and how competitive a rate they are working for. Hiring experts of the required tech stack from some countries can easily get more competitive pricing than many others.

Wrapping Up

So, your wish to shape a success story with a classified ads app like Gumtree is fully achievable. As for development cost, it is always advisable not to compromise on the quality just because of reducing the development cost to a minimum.