Aug 15
Product discovery and shopping apps
What's the big thing about these shopping apps? I don't get it. When I enter Fancy, or Wish, or Wanelo, 3Crumbs, et al, they do little aside from replicating what's already there, on amazon, or the multitude of web-app based e-commerce sites out there. I think their overall design shortcoming is that they are suffering from the Inner-platform_effect. Probably, it just me and a minority of shoppers, but I usually know what I want. Feeding me with an Instagram-like stream of products I might want, doesn't do it for me. We're talking about a decision to buy stuff here, not the simple act of "liking" a kitten image or re-blogging some other nonsense. I won't look a few seconds at something and then immediately hit the buy button in an app I know for 10 seconds. I'm not that compulsive. The result is: I experience these apps as limiting. Similar to the small screen they are presented on, the shopping experience feels like looking onto the world through an arrowslit. Where are all those larger than life, virtual shopping malls the 1990s promised us? Is e-commerce 25 years later really so limited? No to mention: these apps target the couch surfer, someone who uses the apps while being bored at home. They are no real world shopping aide, something you reach for while being in a brick and mortar shop, or while browsing the windows in a mall. I think, there's a misconception here. We already have desktop e-commerce shopping, we need mobile shopping apps, for mobile shoppers.