Never meet people from the internet
Now live as Pay & Ship · Nationwide
- The problem
- Gumtree is one of the biggest marketplaces in South Africa, and most deals still meant meeting a stranger with a wad of cash.
- The product
- Buyers pay on Gumtree, have the item delivered or collect it at a Pargo pickup point, and get their money back if it isn't as described. TradeSafe holds the money until the buyer is happy.
- My part
- I owned the buyer journey: checkout, returns and disputes, post-purchase tracking, make an offer and ratings, across desktop, mobile web and the native app. I also ran the usability testing for it.
- The team
- Me, another senior designer who owned the seller side, and a PM, working with TradeSafe on payments and Pargo on delivery.
- Extra hat
- The product needed far more illustrations than the existing pack covered, so I drew them (I am not an illustrator). Gumtree still uses them.
- Outcome
- The returns policy was thorough enough that a local competitor changed theirs to match.
Saw it on Gumtree
Old name, brand new problem to solve
Everyone in South Africa knows Gumtree. SafeDeal was a chance to make something that familiar feel new: a marketplace where you can pay, ship and get your money back without leaving it.
And Gumtree's users are everyone, including people on small, low-res phones with slow connections, and people who have been burned before.
Scroll the phone ↓
Meet me in a public place, bring cash
You spot something great on Gumtree. Now you have to draw a wad of cash, meet a stranger somewhere you've never been, and hope the item works when you get home.
Buyers wanted protection from sellers, and sellers wanted protection from buyers. Both were right to be careful, because this was people's money.
Is this still available?
When I joined, some screens were designed but the foundational decisions weren't. Having come from payment flows at Ozow, I paused the screens and worked through with the PM what TradeSafe, our payment partner, could and couldn't do.
One local competitor was already doing something similar. I spoke to people who had used it, and their frustrations became my checklist.
The hard questions were policy and logistics, and every day added to one side's timeline was a day taken from the other's:
No more parking lots
I owned everything the buyer touches, across desktop, mobile web and the native app.
Trust through familiarity. I kept Gumtree's green and brought in blue for SafeDeal, so it felt like the Gumtree people knew, with something new and protected layered on top.
Checkout
Checkout had to work for someone on a small phone typing an address for the first time. Buyers choose courier delivery or a nearby Pargo pickup point, and I designed for the Pargo and Google Places plugins failing too.
Returns and disputes
Returns and disputes were the most complex part, with a separate flow on every surface for refunds with and without a return, sellers disputing a claim, and items sent fraudulently.
Shipping confirmation alone could never start the refund clock. A seller could mark an item as shipped without sending it, and Pargo could take up to two days to log a drop-off.
Post-purchase tracking
It gave buyers something Gumtree had never had: an order timeline, delivery details and a collection PIN.
Make an offer
Buyers negotiate inside Gumtree instead of haggling off-platform, so the whole deal stays protected and tracked.
Ratings
Ratings walk buyers through rating a seller step by step, so they know what's expected at each one. The tags it produces, like Quick shipper and Great packaging, show on every ad (Object 2).
The illustrations nobody had budgeted for
In testing, illustrations made an unfamiliar, money-handling product feel approachable. But Gumtree only had its green and gold set, which covered a fraction of what SafeDeal needed. Rather than wait for an illustrator, I drew every blue illustration in the product as the screens needed it. Gumtree still uses them. You can see more in Objects 1 and 2.
A bonus for Gumtree Stores sellers
Alongside SafeDeal, I redesigned the Gumtree Stores insights dashboards. The old Gumtree for Business reports were spread across eight tabs of tables and empty charts. The new Insights page puts sales, leads, store performance, views, listings and traffic on one screen, on desktop and mobile, so business sellers can see what's working at a glance.
Testing meant leaving the building
- I shipped parcels through Pargo myself to see their correspondence, their timing and what a buyer actually experiences from drop-off to collection.
- I visited Pargo pickup and drop-off points to see what people find when they walk in: the signage, what they say to staff and what they need to bring.
- I ran usability testing on the buyer journey. Participants flagged too many notifications as a negative, and the parcel experiment showed me exactly where our messages should and shouldn't appear.
Testing also showed sellers wanted their money the moment they shipped, while buyers wanted two weeks to decide. That shaped the final returns window and the logic that closes a deal automatically.
One moment stuck with me. A participant said the best part of the whole session was walking to the Pargo store together to drop off the parcel. That's when you know the design lives in the real world, not just on a screen.
Deal done
Gumtree went from a place where you met strangers in parking lots to one where you can buy from anyone in South Africa, pay on the platform and get your money back if the item isn't as described.
- Live today as Pay & ShipWith buyer protection on every eligible ad and nationwide delivery from R70.
- A local competitor changed its returns policy to match oursThat outcome has nothing to do with pixels.
- The illustrations I drew are still in useAcross the product.
- Trust came first on purposeSafeDeal went ahead of Gumtree Stores because sellers' stores only matter once buyers trust the platform with their money.
