Good Buy Jo aims to unify South Africa’s messy online retail space

If you think of price comparison websites or product directories, you’ll likely think of PriceCheck. But PriceCheck is getting a new competitor in the form of Good Buy Jo.

The site, which sounds like the perfect name for a folk indie band, “offers consumers a place where they can search for things they want across multiple online stores in one location,” according to a press release.

“It is where customers begin their online shopping journey, where they have choice, browsing power in one central place and access to deals and promotions, based on their unique interests.”

The site lists merchandise from the likes of Loot, Zando, iToys, and Spree, and provides a unified directory from which users can shop and search for products.

Good Buy Jo is effectively a unified merchandise directory from which consumers can shop multiple stores

It’s not a novel idea, but according to co-founder Pierre Dorfling, the website has “a built-in relevance engine” that learns consumers’ habits using a number of factors dubbed “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,” Dorfling explains.

Dorfling further suggests that the site has already had an effect on some merchants’ user bases.

“Our retail partners are already enjoying a new customer base. 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,” he explains.

You can get a closer look at Good Buy Jo over here.