Until last month almost twice as many Android users downloaded ShopSavvy than iPhone users. Two weeks ago we hit a peak of 50,000 downloads in a single day – approximately 25,000 downloads on iOS and 25,000 downloads on Android. The trend is continuing. Nielsen is reporting that Android’s lead over iOS has stopped growing – perhaps this is why we have achieved parity.
In the old days (i.e. a couple of months ago) if you wanted to increase your ranking in the iTunes App store all you needed to do was to pay folks to download your app. Apple put a stop to the manipulation by negatively impacting your rating if your users never used your app. Our primary competitor’s rank fell through the floor and we moved from #11 to #2 in the market. Something happened a few days ago to our ranking – dropping us to #5. We have a small number of 1/2 star rankings for ShopSavvy right now, the HUGE majority are 4/5 stars and very positive. Apple has a feature that allows you to mark a review as helpful or unhelpful. We think someone is trying to manipulate our ranking by “Liking” our negative reviews. With as few as 10 “Likes” a review will move to the top of your reviews. No one seems to like our 5-star reviews. Anyway, we have reported the activity to Apple and hopefully they will be able to determine who is doing it. In the meantime we are asking everyone to go to their desktop iTunes installation, search for ShopSavvy and “Like” our 5-star reviews and “Dis-Like” our 1-star reviews. Click Here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/shop-savvy-barcode-scanner/id338828953?mt=8
I asked the guys to give me an understanding of how many API calls PriceNark (our inventory and price system for ShopSavvy) is handling per day and per month. While we aren’t in the API Billionaires Club, we aren’t doing that shabby. PriceNark currently handles more than 3.3 million API calls per day or just over 100 million API calls per month. These calls are just for ShopSavvy. Earlier this month we opened up our API to third parties in an open beta. Later this summer we will start releasing data around the number API calls we deliver outside to third parties like CNET. My biggest question? How much is an API call worth?
ShopSavvy, the leading mobile shopping assistant, and ShareSquare, the leading self-serve QR marketing campaign platform, announced today that they have joined forces to offer the optimum QR Code experience for marketers and consumers alike.
As part of the agreement, ShopSavvy will recommend ShareSquare as its QR Code campaign creation, content management, and deep engagement analytics tool of choice for participants in the popular “Scan with ShopSavvy” program.
“Many marketers have experimented with QR Codes only to make mistakes that have undermined or crippled their campaigns,” said Alexander Muse, co-founder and CEO of ShopSavvy. “ShareSquare removes the guesswork and enables agencies and brands to deploy a mobile-optimized experience tailored to their campaign objectives.”
ShareSquare offers an intuitive self-serve CMS that empowers the marketer to craft an effective QR Code campaign in minutes. Following initial successes in music and entertainment, the ShareSquare platform is now driving offline-to-online audience engagement in retail, consumer packaged goods, brand advertising, non-profit, and more. By capturing the consumer’s interest with rich media, special offers and contests, the ShareSquare QR Code can convert into a captured email address, Facebook Like, and soon, immediate purchases.
ShareSquare QR Codes now prominently promote the “Scan with ShopSavvy” program and are optimized for the ShopSavvy app.
ShareSquare CEO Matthias Galica said, “We’re thrilled to be able to recommend a single barcode scanning app across every device: iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, you name it.” He adds, “With 18 million downloads, ShopSavvy has emerged as the top barcode scanning application bar none, whether that’s UPC or QR Codes.”
ShopSavvy launched the “Scan with ShopSavvy“ program last year to encourage retailers to incorporate QR Codes in their marketing efforts. Through the program, brands overlay a badge on their QR Codes to alert ShopSavvy’s installed base that they will find helpful product information by scanning the code. Brands such as Ford, Gold’s Gym and the Washington Metro have participated in the program.
“We believe QR Codes have great potential in the United States and worldwide, and we are actively working with retailers, brands and partners to leverage this technology in creative ways,” Muse said.
About ShopSavvy
ShopSavvy is the leading mobile shopping assistant, with 17.9 million downloads and 9.3 million active users as of April 2011. ShopSavvy empowers smartphone users to quickly and seamlessly locate, research and buy products at the point of sale. When users scan a barcode or input a product name, they discover where the item is sold locally and online, where it’s in stock and at what price. ShopSavvy aggregates product data, deals, ratings and reviews from retailers, partners and its own users to provide the most comprehensive source of information and advice for mobile shoppers anywhere. For advertisers, ShopSavvy delivers “hyper-relevant” deals, promotions, warranty offers, and other UPC/GPS-targeted content to consumers. For more information, visit http://shopsavvy.mobi.
About ShareSquare
ShareSquare is a platform for connecting offline audiences to the bands and brands they love, via immediate calls-to-action & rich engagement on mobile, with real-time analytics. Using the self-serve CMS, marketers can enhance their promotions with a QR code corresponding to a custom HTML5 mobile web app. This makes a consumer’s interest actionable: posters, stickers, packaging, t-shirts, and even billboards become gateways to video, music, contests, social media & more. For more information, visit http://getsharesquare.com.
They are all working together to make ShopSavvy better. More than half a million people generate content for ShopSavvy – adding pictures, retailers and prices to our system. Want to join in on the fun? Just scan a product and then click on ‘Options’ in the upper right hand corner of the app. You can edit the name and image or add a local price (only add prices when you are in the actual retailer).
ShopSavvy is ranked NO. 1 in the Tools category and between NO. 20 and NO. 30 overall in the Windows Phone 7 market. Since December ShopSavvy has been downloaded 105,878 times. We estimate about 10% of Windows Phone 7 users have ShopSavvy on their phones compared with 13% of ALL smartphone users (we are on a much higher percentage of iOS and Android devices). Here is a graph:
Our friends at AppFigures decided to include downloads from Android market alongside Apple’s market so for the first time we have a fairly universal view of our daily downloads. According to them we had more than 51,102 downloads yesterday – we assume this is an all time record for ShopSavvy. Of course the 50,102 number does NOT include downloads we get form alternative markets – perhaps 20% of our Android users come from these secondary app markets.
According to HTC, their latest update will fix almost all of the Thunderbolt’s various problems except LTE. We are not sure if this will prevent ShopSavvy from crashing on the device, but we are hopeful. Please take a minute to update your phone and see if ShopSavvy is working (if it is let us know).
You can download the HTC Thunderbolt update from Verizon:
http://support.vzw.com/system_update/thunderbolt.html
Here is the PDF explaining why you need to update:
http://support.vzw.com/pdf/system_update/thunderbolt.pdf
Here is the PDF explaining HOW to update your Thunderbolt:
http://support.vzw.com/pdf/system_update/thunderbolt_instructions.pdf
DOWNLOAD SHOPSAVVY HERE:
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.biggu.shopsavvy
Engadget has more on the update here: http://engt.co/jtJzXo
Our Community Rocks!!
Post by Matt Weathers, Head of Product for ShopSavvy Inc. (with updated pictures):
I spoke on a panel on Wednesday at the ShopSmart Summit in New York. We mainly talked about our relationship with our amazing community of users. ShopSavvy helps our community shop. In return, they help each other. It’s a great set up!!
Our users seek the real story behind products they find in a store. They hunt deals and quality. When holding that item in their hand, they ask “Is that a good price, is there a better deal, is it a good quality item, and are their better alternatives”. We’re fortunate to be one of the leading services they turn to. That’s because we’re totally focused on getting them everything they need to make the right decision. We spend every waking minute getting most comprehensive and accurate assortment of real time local and online prices, reviews, nutrition info, movie trailers…. etc. It’s hard work, but it pays off. As a result, our users are increasingly turning to us verses alternatives. Our community numbers show we must be doing something right.
But our relationship doesn’t end there. While we’ve spent almost 3 years tapping into every resource we can find to get realtime information, our data is only as good as what we get from merchants. It’s right most the time, but not always. When we don’t have the right info, our users help to fill in the blank. They make the essential corrections and fixes. Our users have added more than half a million products since we gave them the power to change and add content. By doing this, our users help each other. The next user who scans an added product sees the right image, price or title. It’s a great relationship! Thank you to our community!
We also learned about the awesome things RueLaLa.com and Quirky (our fellow panelists) are doing with their communities. If you’re an inventor, go check out Quirky! If you like exclusive deals join the RueLaLa community.
Consumer Reports gets A+ for 75 years of Advocacy
ShopSmart (the fast growing new sister publication to Consumer Reports) held its ShopSmart Summit for journalists and bloggers at the Consumer Reports HQ. We at ShopSavvy love Consumer Reports because of the unfailing consumer advocacy. The lab tour demonstrated huge commitment they have for the real story behind products ranging from food to washing machines. No one else does such a thorough and scientific job testing such a huge variety of products. They’ve been doing this for 75 years, and the commitment is amazing. We just want to say great job guys!
Amazon’s view of the Future
We also got Amazon’s view of the future from Jeff Bezos at the ShopSmart Summit in New York. He was asked to predict the future…”what are the next shopping trends”? Jeff made the point that it’s impossible to predict and that he doesn’t like to make forecasts. Then, he went to on to emphasize one overwhelming shopping trend.. mobile shopping. Its his view that the next 5 -10 years will see rapid and transformative change in mobile shopping as phones get more powerful. Thanks Jeff! We agree 100%.
Several of you have emailed us asking when we were going to support multi-tasking like RedLaser. Ebay recently updated the application to support multi-tasking in iOS and claims it has improved the speed of the app. Great news, ShopSavvy supports multi-tasking on iOS and Android. In fact, ShopSavvy has supported multi-tasking on iOS since November 2, 2010 and on Android since November 3, 2008.
What is multi-tasking? Gizmodo wrote about it last year just before we incorporated it in a post titled, “How Multitasking Works in the New iPhone OS 4.0.”
