With more than 7.5 million Americans counting on ShopSavvy we decided we needed to a) increase our IP bandwidth AND b) improve our redundancy. To that end we have added two IP connections in our data center that use different physical and logical routes to reach the internet. Our new fiber optic connections mean that even if a road crew digs up our first connection our backup connection will keep us running as normal until the first is repaired. Of course even if a second road crew were to dig up the OTHER connection we still have our backup servers/connections in the cloud at Amazon. Check out our new setup in the pic to the right.
Each week we savvy shoppers can enter our weekly scanner contest where we randomly select someone to win a $100 Mastercard gift card. This week’s winner is Valarie Fitzgerald from Maryland. Congratulations Valarie! To enter visit the deal tab in ShopSavvy, enter your email address and scan at least one item (you get one entry for each scan).
It seems like you can’t pick up the Wall Street Journal without reading about mobile payments here in the United States. This weekend the paper wrote about Google’s mobile payment deal with MasterCard and Citigroup. Then again this morning they wrote about American Express and their new digital payments platform aimed squarely at PayPal. Upstarts like Zong are helping consumers buy digital goods using their phone. PayPal is even trying to innovate around mobile payments despite their mobile guru, Osama Bedier, leaving the company to join Google to build yet another mobile payments system. Why so much interest in the market? Generator Research reports that mobile payments will increase from $68 billion to $633 billion by 2014.
Here in the United States (unlike Asian countries like Japan) consumers haven’t used their mobile devices to pay for goods, but everyone believes this is about to change. I can recall analyst reports from the mid-90s asking consumers if they would be willing to give their credit card numbers to retailers on the internet. Much like the movement from brick and mortar purchasing to online purchasing, we believe more and more Americans will begin to use their mobile device to pay for goods and services. This belief is driving our development efforts at ShopSavvy.
Since launching our partnership with PayPal and Cardinal Commerce in 2009 we have learned a lot about mobile payments. Unfortunately we have mostly learned what NOT to do. Here are some of the lessons we have learned:
• do not require consumers to use a single payment form
• do not require merchants to use a particular processor
• do not require merchants to use a particular integrator
• do not depend on the merchant to do anything
Consumers have their favorite payment methods. The key is to allow them to use ANY payment form inside of your system, while removing as much payment inertia as possible. Amazon has done an excellent job doing this. Their ‘wallet’ allows a consumer to pay with any payment form, while making buying as simple as ‘one click’. Of course in mobile there are rarely any ‘clicks’, instead you have ‘touches’ and ‘swipes’.The holy grail of mobile payments is to create a system that will work with ALL merchants.
This is where ShopSavvy comes into play. Consumers are already using ShopSavvy moments before actually buying the product they are scanning. ShopSavvy reveals comparison pricing information about other retailers helping the consumer make an informed purchase decision. If the consumer could use their payment data already stored inside of ShopSavvy to complete the purchase – i.e. a one tap payment – we believe our solution would be as powerful as Amazon’s solution with one important distinction: neutrality.
Our data shows that Amazon’s prices are the lowest only 6% of the time. That means that in 94% of scans our users are seeing better deals from other retailers. With a single scan consumers can be sure to find the best deal and with a single tap they can complete a purchase. QuickPay 2 makes mobile payments for products a reality.
Investors have been asking me how ShopSavvy will compete with all those other wallets from Google, PayPal, Zong and AMEX. The answer is relatively simple: we will support any payment form that is popular. ShopSavvy isn’t building a wallet, per se, instead we are building a shopping platform with payment integration.
The folks from Lexmark shared pictures of their latest ‘Scan with ShopSavvy’ program. These will be seen in retailers like Sam’s Club.
We launched our ‘Scan with ShopSavvy‘ program a year ago and told retailers and brands they could use the program for free. As a result hundreds of retailers and brands are leveraging QR codes in their product and store packaging. Use of the ‘Scan with ShopSavvy’ badge around a QR code can increase the scan rate by up-to 30%. Most Americans are still in the dark about QR codes and need a little help understanding how to interact with them. The ‘Scan with ShopSavvy’ program is a very simple way to provide a ‘hint’ to consumers.
Are you a retailer or brand? Here are the program details: QR Codes are all the rage in retail, but most consumers have no idea what those strange 2D barcodes are all about. Our Scan with ShopSavvy program helps consumers bridge the gap between 1D and 2D barcodes. Retailers and Brands who have used our branding program have seen interaction with their QR codes by 30% or more. There is no cost for the program, simply use the ‘Scan with ShopSavvy’ badge over your custom QR Code (we can create the code for you if you like for free) and you are ready to go. The program helps promote the use of ShopSavvy which is good for us and helps retailers instruct the consumer how to engage with your QR codes. Download the ‘Scan with ShopSavvy‘ art today (we love to see the program in action so please send us a picture of how you used the badge).
The Home Depot is now using QR codes in their shelf and circulars. The DIY retailer uses the codes to help consumers link to additional information about their products. Just open up ShopSavvy and start scanning and the app will deliver you directly to the information. Here is an example of their latest QR code (Update: Scanlife has announced they are doing clickthru tracking on the codes):
ShopSavvy was one of Amazon’s picks to include in the launch of their Android Appstore. We are pleased to announce the app is now live in the store and currently ranked #4 in the Shopping category. Go ahead and download the app and then give us a rating in their store.
According to a new study by Chadick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technolgies almost half of smartphone users have used apps like ShopSavvy. Here is a quote about the poll from internet retailer:
A poll of 1,491 U.S. adults finds of those who have used a smartphone app or mobile browser while shopping, 44% have used a bar code scanning app such as RedLaser or ShopSavvy that lets them compare prices and learn more about products and services in stores. 38% have used a discount or deal app such as those from Groupon or LivingSocial that offer deep discounts, typically on local goods.
I finally got around to tweeting that we had hit the 200,000 downloads per week mark when Jake showed me the Flurry data. Turns out we are doing more than 287,000 downloads per week now! Wow. The downloads are combined from iOS, Android and Windows Phone 7 (they do not include Nokia as we aren’t tracking downloads there right now).
More and more produce items are sporting scan-able barcodes and we thought it might be cool if consumer could figure out where a particular fruit was grown. Did you know that 27% of produce is grown by family farms? We decided to partner with Top 10 Produce to help ShopSavvy users ‘Know Your Farmer’. The program is brand new, but over the coming months hundreds of farms will be added to the system. ShopSavvy users who scan produce will find pictures, maps, Facebook Pages, Twitter feeds and related to the farmer who grew the fruit or vegetable.
The ‘Know Your Farmer’ feature is delivered through the HTML5 powered AdOns framework. Here is an example (just scan it with ShopSavvy):
Matthias Shapiro, the developer who gave birth to our Windows Phone 7 version of ShopSavvy, has just ‘released’ homo sapien shaprio 1.0. Congrats Matthias!
