Mobile Comparison Shopping with Ease
loricunningham
OK, so you're out shopping and you find just what you were looking for, a toy for your child called "I Can Play Piano." Perfect. You look at the price tag and YIKES! The toy cost $150. Should you just go ahead and buy it or shop around? Nowadays, who has the time to shop around? You're lucky you had time enough to go to the store in the first place.
Without wandering aimlessly around the mall, you can comparison shop right there in the store on your smartphone. In my mind, there are three ways to comparison shop on your smartphone:
1. Visit price comparison websites - pricegrabber.com, NextTag.com, etc.
2. Visit Amazon.com - Amazon.com frequently has great prices on products I have reviewed.
3. Visit eBay - of course!
Price Comparison Websites
Sites like PriceGrabber.com, NexTag.com, bizrate.com, mysimon.com, Shopzilla.com, comparisonshopping.com, and others work well for comparing prices. You can search online to see if the product you have in your hand can be found cheaper. You often find better deals online but you have to watch the shipping prices to ensure it's still a good price. Depending upon the location of the merchant, you might even skip the sales tax. These sites are great - but still require that you type in the product name. Although I find these sites useful, there are a number of clicks you need to go through before you get a comparison of your product across numerous sites.
Amazon.com
I list Amazon.com because I have often found Amazon.com has lower prices on items I have searched for - often much less than the MSRP suggested price. In addition, a lot of the gadgets I have written reviews on just so happen to have super saver shipping at Amazon.com – which equates to free shipping! In using Amazon on my Tilt2 I found that although a lot of information doesn’t show on one screen, Amazon.com's website displays pretty well on my smartphone.
eBay.com
I have to admit I use eBay to check pricing on things more than I do PriceGabber.com or other comparison sites. I love eBay for the thrill of the chase. eBay does have mobile apps for iPhone and Android to make shopping easier, but for us Windows users, we have to shop the old-fashioned, cumbersome way. Unless you have an eBay mobile app, eBay is not the easiest to use in on-the-spot comparison shopping.
A Smarter Way to Comparison Shop
I have found that taking the time to type in the product or product barcode into my smartphone takes a bit of time. There must be a better way. At last! A solution that makes comparison shopping a breeze. Similar to what I shared with you about QR Readers, Barcode software can be downloaded on your smartphone for free and used along with your smartphone to take pictures of a product's barcode. Once a picture is taken, the program will then identify the barcode numbers in the picture and search for it on the Internet for you. One program I tried called, BarcodeZilla, searches the Internet and pulls up results on Google.com. Barcode Readers work well because you don’t need to do any typing – they are the best kept secret for smartphones! Barcode Readers are fast, easy-to-use, and could potential save you quite a bit of money.
I used BarcodeZilla on my TIlt2 to search for the toy, "I Can Play Piano," and found that online, I can buy it cheaper for $80 plus shipping. Hmmm, since I have the time, I decided to buy the gift online instead of purchase it in the store.
Using a barcode scanner is a very handy way to search the Internet with minimal typing. However, the program is not without problems. Sometimes the picture you take with your camera is not legible and you might have to take a couple pictures for it to work. I have had some cases where the code was not recognizable. So it's not a sure fire way to ease mobile comparison shopping, but it sure is sweet when it works.
You can comparison shop with barcode readers on any product - from peanuts to DVDs to phones - anything that has a barcode. Go to your app store and download a barcode reader for yourself - you'll find that it's a lot of fun. Happy Shopping!
Lori writes about making technology simple for busy moms and can be found at WellConnectedMom.com. Follow Lori on Twitter @wellconnectdmom. Please vote for Lori which also gives you a chance to win a Tilt2 smartphone and a $500 Amazon giftcard. Thanks for reading!
June 30, 9:43 am