Curated website offers multiple online stores in one location

Customers can begin their online shopping journey with choice and browsing power in one central place and access to deals and promotions, based on their unique interests.

According to uAfrica.com, online shopping is still relatively small compared to the UK and the US, with annual sales values of between R6-7 billion, however it is growing at a rate of between 25-35% year-on-year, which presents an opportunity for retailers.

“Our retail partners are already enjoying a new customer base,” says Good Buy Jo co-founder, Pierre Dorfling. “Shoppers are being driven through targeted traffic to the point of purchase, which means we don’t take any sales or traffic away from existing online stores. We enhance their customers’ experience and offer shoppers a ‘sales alert’ feature where they can get notified about sales as they happen across multiple stores, on brands they like.

As digital marketers by trade, the founders designed Good Buy Jo as a marketing tool for retail marketers, using a built-in relevance engine. This learns from shoppers - their behaviours, browsing history, interests and likes and helps brands target customers based on a series of psychographics.

“For example, research insight shows us that people who love pets are often more into gardening. So a brand selling pet products can use Good Buy Jo to target not only pet lovers, but also cross-sell to garden lovers and vice versa.”

Good Buy Jo is a free solution for online shoppers and offers a risk reversal solution to e-commerce owners. Advertisers should do more to help e-commerce owners convert traffic into sales and not just rely on PPC and CPM to earn revenue. E-commerce startups are suffering severe advertising fees and battling to get off the starting blocks with the exorbitant rates of campaigns.

“We believe that a closer partnership should exist between e-commerce brands and their advertising partners, where we share the risk and successes alike and work together to help move e-commerce in South African forward,” concludes Dorfling.

Existing partners include Loot.co.za, &Threads, Catch of the Day, iLuvStuff.co.za, iToys, Mango, Mantality, Spree and Zando.