I am sure you know this feeling – You have just popped to the shops to collect a few things and surprised with the relative ease of your latest shopping experience, you return home. As soon as you enter the house the sudden realisation that you forgot something dawns with an almighty explosion of anger and disappointment, forcing you to let off steam by slamming down your recently purchased goods knowing full well that you failed in your simplest of missions. Of course, some of us write down a list on a bit of paper and then forget to take it along with us – leaving you to fend for yourself and try all kinds of memory recall techniques such as tapping your foot, scratching your head or admitting defeat and calling your loved one.
To put it simply, the shopping experience can be an agonising one and with even the best planning in the world things can easily go wrong. As we are all becoming dependent on our mobile phones though, why not store this information within an app – an app that helps ease your temper tantrums and will earn you some brownie points along the way.
Shoppy aims to do just that with its extremely simple list creating interface and additional features that saves you time and leaves you feeling relaxed at the end of the experience.
Currently at just 59p, Shoppy allows you to catalogue your required items. The most basic examples including Apples, Bananas, Bread and so on are already listed to which you can select to feature in your list. You can easily add your own items by selecting the plus icon and filling in a title. You can dig a little deeper if you wish and specify additional information, so for example the title of the item may be bread but you may wish to enter a quantity as well as whether you require white or brown and so on.
Once you have your list of all the items you need on this particular shopping trip – it’s just a matter of walking around the store, collecting the items and with an immense feeling of satisfaction, ticking a box within the app next to the one that has just reached the inner protection of your basket or trolley. Shoppy then moves this acquired item to a new category indicating its collection, leaving the remaining ones in clear view.
At this point you are probably happy with the features already mentioned, but there is a little more to it than that.
The Shoppy app learns the order in which you pick up items from your list. On future occasions, it will cunningly list them in a slightly different order based on this new information – avoiding the hassles of going from one end of the store to another repeated times. A simple feature, but one that makes such complete sense and this is why it’s important to label your list with a store name so any newer lists you create all benefit from what the app has learned for each individual location.
If with all this wonderful technology your loved one goes shopping alone and doesn’t have your own created Shoppy list, well you can email it to them through the app which reveals the items required and if they have Shoppy as well, they can even import that data into the app.
The last feature worthy of mention is the ability to add notes. Pick up the dry cleaning can be a typical additional task during your trip and one easily forgotten among the hustle and bustle of shopping, however you can make a note of this within the app to help remind you.
Conclusion
Shoppy is an incredibly simple app that guides you through your usually traumatic shopping experience, by identifying the items you need and logging them as they are collected. As a nice touch, the app also collects data to aid you in gathering your items in an order that suits the layout of the store. Add to that the ability to specify additional information, quantities and even make notes – Shoppy is an obvious companion to ease your typical shopping woes.
[xrr rating=4/5]
iTunes Store Link: Shoppy