Archive for February, 2011

Newer Entries »

Buy.com

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

The Buy.com is a mobile application for iPhone that help you find various products anywhere, anytime. Reviews of products can be readead but also it is possible to find video reviews for thousands of products
Useful features for Shopster:
– Voice search. Could help users use application while driving or doing something else at the same time.
– Can compare prices from this application and thousands of other merchants while shopping in local stores.
-Video reviews for products are preferred by some users.
-Can find Top Sellers or special deals of the week.
Pros:
– Big Variety of products in different categories.
– Community driven reviews can help in making the best purchasing decisions.

source: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/buy-com/id403446100?mt=8#

Posted in Existing Mobile Apps | No Comments »

DoTogether

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

DoTogether is a facebook application that is similar to a mall but digital and inside facebook. Friends can suggest disguss and give feedback on varius items that they bought. Rewards for users are given in form of discounts. Shop owners pay fees depending on the amount of traffic the shop has.

Useful features for Shopster:
-Rewards are offered to users in order to make them use the application more.
-Coupons in selected shops are provided from which users can benefit with discounts, shop owners can advertise their business and application becomes more popular.
-Users can filter search results based on price.
-Many search options including location based search.
-Can navigate through categories of items that have subcategories.
-Can make a post about something you are searching for on a social networks, so friends can help you find it.

Negative:
-Could have more categories for items.
-Complicated user interface which is confusing and difficult to use.
-Application does not have many users yet.

Source:  http://dotogether.com/Home/dotogether.aspx

Posted in Existing Web Apps | No Comments »

Payvment

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

Payvment  is a facebook application, which offers to shop owners space to host their products for free. Users can browse products based on categories or search based on keywords. This application has approximately 400 000 monthly users.

Useful features for Shopster:
-Two applications in one: one application for owners of stores to advertise items and one application for buyers.
Pros:
-Many users that can help the application to function properly.
-Users can shop directly from inside of facebook.
Negative:
-No location based search supported by this application.
-It is like any other eshop that sells various items, it does not suggest (other) shops.

source: http://www.facebook.com/payvment

Posted in Existing Web Apps | No Comments »

Cyperguide-Tour guide with GPS locator

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

This paper is about a tour guide which finds your location on the map (gps locator) and provides information about the nearest buildings to you.  Also there is a discrimination between indoor(if you are in a mall) and outdoor locations. Moreover, there are some screenshots from the prototype app which may be useful.

Available at: http://condor.depaul.edu/dmumaugh/readings/handouts/SE430/p421-abowd-97.pdf

Posted in Related Articles | No Comments »

Free OfficeMax App

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

Free OfficeMax App is another famous mobile application for shopping purposes

In this application, users are able to view exclusive offers provided by each store with sells the specific searched item.

As you can see from the screenshots, a category of deals has been created to view further information about the deals for each product. That can be classified in weekly deals (2nd screenshot) and it will improve the effectiveness of our project because user will be more satisfied.

Screenshots

Source: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/officemax/id384132666?mt=8

Posted in Existing Mobile Apps | No Comments »

Google Shopper

Saturday, February 19th, 2011

Google Shopper is a new mobile application for Android devices that offers a variety of different ways to search for products.

The basic feature in Google Shopper is the barcode scanner as the ShopSavvy which it retrieves the information about the scanned product.  Additionally there is a function which scan the covers of books and then finds the relevant product. So this can be added as an additional component into our project beside the barcode scanning.

Google provides the ability of searching by voice. It seeks a product according to the voice taken by the user using the internet. That feature makes the difference between the Google Shopper and the other published mobile applications related to shopping. Honestly, it would be great if it will be added to our application…

After a search of a product a list of items is presented for the specific item from various sites. Therefore, the item along with their price is being showed per stored shop in order to find the best price. Actually this feature belongs to the main requirements of our project and should be included.

The history of the search item can be saved and each user is able to give stars to their favorites. Obviously that will really assist the users to find all their relative products and handle them in the future.

Moreover, Google Shopper represents the nearby local stores which have the specific item and then via Google Maps there are directions how to get there. That specification will be helpful in our case because it will be a assistive way for the interactive users to get all the required information about the item.

Lastly, the social component that comes out from that application is sharing of all the resulted information with the relevant link to GMail, Facebook, Instant Messaging etc.. I think that integration will improve the social aspect of our implementation.

Source: http://www.google.com/mobile/shopper/

Posted in Existing Mobile Apps | No Comments »

ShopSavvy Mobile Application

Saturday, February 19th, 2011
ShopSavvyLogo

ShopSavvy 4 is one of the most popular mobile applications which provides significant ways to present item prices.
It takes the barcode of an item as input and searches for that product in some stores.
That feature sounds interesting and brilliant for our case because it could be great to be considered.
Coupon codes, rebates, weekend sales are being showed when a user requests for a specific item.
As we discussed in our ideas and specifications that will be definitely taken into account as a major component.
The social part of that application comes with the ability of sharing all the relative information obtained from the
search in order to forward it to another people.
Obviously, the item and its price  must be shared appropriately because that will keep the users in touch and promote
our application in the concept of advertisement.
In the search mechanism some issues must be considered such as some main filters and suggestions. An item-to-item recommendation system would be satisfies the user.
Additionally, ShopSavvy allows users to upload photos of items in a case of unavailability. Hence, rich content could be added in our mobile application so as to give that ability of providing more information for each product.

Source: http://shopsavvy.mobi/

Posted in Existing Mobile Apps | No Comments »

Hello world! (First blog entry)

Monday, February 14th, 2011
Hello everyone. We are group number 4 and we are interested in creating a mobile application. We had a few ideas and we also conducted a survey to get feedback from other people (results will be posted in detail at a later time). After evaluating the results and considering our options we have decided to choose the idea about a shopping guide application which will provide sales, discounts and offers from shops.

The idea is for an application where shop owners as well as users would be able to post information about sales, offers and discounts provided at a specific shop. We believe that this information is only available when people visit the shops or if they specifically search each shop’s website. By using this application, users could get informed on current sales and offers without the need to go to the shop themselves. Shop owners could also use this to promote and advertise their shops. By allowing users to post such information, other people can also read comments and rate the posts (sales, offers, discounts), therefore calculating how worthy or accurate a post is and perhaps find out about the variety of items offered on sale, their availability and their price ranges. Further details and features will be described in future blog entries.

Posted in Announcements | No Comments »

Newer Entries »