Joko’s plan to power your shopping
Yesterday, we released a new version of the app that makes it possible for you to shop on any website using Joko.
I thought it was a good opportunity to tell you more about our vision for Joko, since this move brings us one step closer to our goal: building an all-in-one shopping app that powers your shopping experience.
Powering your shopping, starting with rewards
Since day one, our ambition has always been to use technology to make your shopping experience simpler, smarter and more rewarding, from discovery to payment.
We decided to start by building a rewards app. An app that pays you when you shop, and that now counts close to 1m users and more than 1000 merchants like H&M, Apple and Starbucks. What was new in our approach was to reward consumers on their spending both online and in-store. This was made possible by the development of financial technology and open banking. What also made us different is that we have always been laser-focused on offering the best end-to-end user experience possible.
But this is only the first step in our journey. We intend to build the ultimate shopping app that powers the shopping of hundreds of millions of consumers, wherever they shop.
It’s 2021 and buying online is still far from being seamless
Online shopping is still growing rapidly. It has even accelerated during the pandemic, and now accounts for more than 15% of retail worldwide. In the last 3 years, Amazon made more sales than in the 25 years before that.
But still, why is it so complicated? Why do we have to create an account, enter card details and a shipping address every time we shop on a new website? Why do we have to adapt to the UX of each website? Why do we have to scan the page for the information we are looking for, because it’s never in the same place? Why is it so hard to find good coupon codes? Why is it so hard to keep track of deliveries? Why is the whole shopping journey, from searching to comparing, finding the best deals, and paying, spread across dozens of different tools?
We don’t think consumers should accept that. And consumers don’t! This is why Amazon is incredibly successful. Because people know that on Amazon, they will find three things: an interface they are familiar with, an unlimited inventory of products, and good deals.
But Amazon shouldn’t be the only option. Our vision is to build an alternative. How do we do that?
Becoming the browser for your shopping
How do you offer an unlimited inventory of products? How do you provide consumers with the best deals on that inventory? How do you offer consumers a world-class user experience? It would take many years and many billions of dollars to replicate what Amazon has built.
Partnering with all merchants to get their inventory in the same place could work to a certain extent, but it would take years and billions as well, and the “unlimited inventory” would never materialize.
We decided to take another approach, a much more scalable one. We just want to be the browser. The browser you use for shopping on merchants’ websites.
But not just any browser. One that doesn’t simply display things like merchants want it to be displayed, one that displays things in the way that is most convenient for you. One that works for you. One that handles the checkout automatically so you can just relax. One that finds coupons and tests them for you. One that pays for you. One that basically removes all the friction in your shopping journey.
That’s exactly what we’ve started doing with our browser extension on destkop. It finds cashback and coupons automatically whenever you can get some. And it’s a hit. It’s probably our simplest product so far, but still, users love it.
We will bring that experience to mobile, and go way, way further. We have lots of projects in the making that will contribute to powering your shopping. But life would be boring without surprises, so stay tuned!
And if you want to join the journey and contribute to this mission with your talent, go check out our available positions on hellojoko.com/join.
