South African online shopping application Laudable went live on Monday after just two months in development.
The e-commerce site lists various products from a large number of retailers in South Africa and keeps track of users’ online shopping trends.
Speaking to HumanIPO, Ian Marvin, director of Laudable said it is more or less similar to the social platform Pinterest, except it features products, which are available locally.
It utilises a bookmarking tool, which is installed into the user’s internet browser.
When users are “surfing the internet, or checking out for products… you click on that button (the bookmarker) and you can add that to your profile on Laudable,” said Marvin.
Marvin said the name was inspired by wanting to establish the fact that the products featured on the application are “worthy of praise”.
Users are also able to laud a certain product and the application has recorded 2,602 lauds so far.
Since its launch, Laudable features 96 stores and 1,442 products, and these figures are “growing every day”.
Regarding the realisation of a market need for the services offered by Laudable, Marvin said: “If you’re trying to buy stuff online in South Africa, you’ve got channels that people go through – maybe Google, asking your friends… It’s actually quite difficult to find nice products that you would like.”
Furthermore, Laudable helps users make the right choices by providing them with the most popular and relevant product options, based on their online and social media trends.
Marvin added: “If you sign up to Laudable, you can follow the people whose tastes you like.”
Laudable is completely free for users. Marvin said the intention at this stage is not to monetise it, but rather to grow Laudable’s user base and essentially create a platform users will find effective and easy to use.
However, Marvin said monetising Laudable may come in the future, but will mostly be through charging affiliate fees in terms of Laudable generating traffic to the sites where the products are initially sold from.
Laudable was created through responsive design, which means the application is available for both computers and smartphones, especially on iPhone and Android platforms.
Marvin said though he has not tried the application on a BlackBerry, it should operate on the smartphone platform.
Although Laudable is only operational in South Africa, Marvin said there are plans to roll it out within other emerging markets.
