Designer marketplace Hello Pretty revamps site for mobile-friendly audience

South African designer marketplace Hello Pretty has recently relaunched its website geared for the country’s mobile-friendly designer folk.

Head of strategy and social Lee Geldenhuys explains in a recent media release that the online shop receives over half of its traffic, and that a responsive site simply became a no-brainer.

“We look to global ecommerce trends for inspiration, and while over a third of the site visitors are international, we’re most excited to see how South African consumers respond,” explains Geldenhuys.

Launched in 2012, Hello Pretty has spurred an impressive community of designers, crafters and the like. Today, it boasts over 19 000 products with about 40 000 Facebook fans. Sometimes reminiscent of a South African Etsy, the platform is somewhat similar to sites like MzansiStore, Utique and Africandy.

Hello Pretty says that it continues to strive for excellence and innovation in the South African ecommerce space, focusing on assisting the growth of other local small businesses.

A few months ago, the ecommerce company introduced its Facebook embed feature called Pretty Portable. This would enable its current base of about 1 288 design entrepreneurs to embed online stores into their websites as well as Facebook brand pages.

But of course, seeing that Hello Pretty is for and of designers, a lot of attention is given to the site’s layout. Over and above the responsive design, search features and new categories, the most noticeable change will be the much larger images and the human-curated homepage.

“Designers aren’t selling products — they’re selling photos,” mentions Geldenhuys, adding that image quality is of the utmost importance in online shopping.