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TRANSAERO №10 October 2013
E N G L I S H Apps
Top 10 Apps for Shopaholics These days travelling abroad is not just about seeking out new experiences – what about hunting down sales and designers’ new collections? This is when shopping apps come in handy. They allow you to cash in on sales and to buy directly via a smartphone, as well as to locate good deals within the device’s reach. KONSTANTIN SHIYAN SHAMIL GAR AEV
Apps for shopaholics are continuously growing in number and are becoming increasingly popular with the consumer public. According to a survey conducted by the analyst firm Research Now for Swirl, a tech company that is harnessing mobile marketing for retail purposes, 53% of female smartphone owners have at least one app to aid with their shopping. An opinion poll shows that 50%
Shoptimus
smartphone users in the US use apps from the “purchase/ commerce” category on average 17 times a month. All shopping apps can roughly be divided into the following categories: discount notifiers, “reminders” that come to life as we pass a store of interest, and apps that facilitate shopping by providing driving directions to the shop of interest.
Wizee Shopping
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of women are ready to share their location and other private information if a store offers them something valuable in return – a present or a discount. This means that half the female population are potential users of shopping apps. According to Nielsen Mobile analysts, 47% of American smartphone owners used shopping apps at least once in June 2012. Approximately 45 million
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FREE
Russian app Shoptimus unites hundreds of popular online shops, including all the largest ones in Russia, to offer its user one and a half million products. Thanks to its simple UI the app is very easy to understand. Products are separated into categories such as shoes, clothing, home, perfume andkids. The app tracks all sales, significant and less. You can ensure no major sale is missed by just going through the app once a day. A simple shake of the phone will refresh the catalogue. After you have identified the item, all you need to do is send it to your shopping cart and proceed to place anorder. The app has the option of creating wish lists so you can revisit the products you liked.
A pretty good app designed for the Russian market. The programme helps you find your way around the biggest shopping malls in Russia’s largest cities. The app helps you find the right store or a place to eat and is intended for those who have trouble reading layout plans at shopping centres. At the moment “Wizee Shopping” offers a guide to shopping malls inMoscow, Saint Petersburg, Samara, Nizhniy Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Voronezh, Kazan and Kiev. It is worth mentioning that only Moscow’s database is complete, whereas the app provides information on only half the malls in some of the other cities. Hopefully, this shortcoming will be fixed in the near future.
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Lokata
GPSReminder 2Free
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FREE
A handy discount aggregator. Its biggest advantage is that it employs a GPS module. The app alerts the user to nearby stores that have discounts that might interest him or her (the list of “interests” is created manually). Lokata can either list suggestions or locate them on a map.
The app is specifically designed for people who intend to revisit an item they liked in a shop but forget to do so and instead pass by the store without dropping in. Not anymore. With this app, every time you find yourself in the vicinity of the store you tagged, you receive a reminder l. Notifications can be customized according to categories and locations.
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