The Find

Description:

 Shopping Search by The Find is a one stop shopping experience that lets you look for, browse, find, and purchase just about anything you could think of from a handful of different catalogs, stores and online merchants all within one easy to use and manage application so you neither have to go out shopping in person and lug around a bunch of bags, nor drive all around town from place to place. The app focuses on making it easy for you to get all your shopping done from one app while buying things from all of your favorite stores and it seeks to alert you to a multitude of deals so you never miss a deal again.

How It Works: 

Before you can start shopping and finding all the best deals on items from your favorite stores that you already shop at, you’ll need to download Shopping Search by The Find from the Play Store.

With Shopping Search by The Find, you can browse tons of different items from various stores, whether you’re looking to shop locally or online. Just switch between the online tab, the local tab, and finally the map tab if you want to see where locally you can pick it up on the map so you know how far away you are.

You can also find things that are on discount for 50% or more, all you have to do is browse through the “special offers” category down at the bottom, which has a few feature items on the front home page, and then a banner image for viewing all items in the special offers category which you can browse through alphabetically.

Searching for products and items to buy is easy, you can do a simple search up top by typing in the item or product name you’re looking for, and if you’re already out and about shopping you can even scan barcodes to see if you can find it at a better deal or price somewhere else online or locally.

Integrated voice search makes it easy for you to search for the things you want to buy or shop for hands free, just in case your hands are already filled with bags. Browse for things by store catalog, with items from top stores like Best Buy, Nordstrom, Crate and Barrel, Guitar Center, Lumens, Express, Merrell, Bed Bath and Beyond, World Market, and more.

If you’re not really sure what you’re looking for and you just want to shop for stuff, you can always browse the popular deals section towards the top of the app, which displays trending items and things that other people are shopping for the most, making it easy to see what others are buying and what’s popular.

You can personalize your shopping experience by logging in with Facebook, Gmail, or Yahoo Mail, that way you can save products you like and go back to them again. The app also saves your searches so you can pick up where you left off the next time you launch the app. 

There’s also a share button so you can share deals with friends via Facebook or email, just in case you want others to be able to get the same deal or you simply just want some feedback on what you’re interested in buying. After all, you value opinions of your friends and family right?

Opinion:

I am usually not a huge shopper, whether it be online or locally, and I tend to order things from Amazon when I do buy online but sometimes you can find stuff in stores at a great deal and you want to pick things up immediately, and this is where I found Shopping Search by The Find to be of a great use. It allowed me to search for the things I would want and find them locally on the map so if I wanted to grab them I could run out and get it. I found the user interface to be nice and easy to navigate, even without a Material Design interface which I am now more accustomed to. The app makes things easy to find and easy to search for, and the special offers deals seem great. Overall a pretty decent app experience.

Conclusion:

As I stated above, this is definitely an app you should keep on your phone if you do any shopping and like to get the best deals. There are loads of offerings from tons of the top stores, and great deals often in the special offers section. Big images make it easy to see the things you’re shopping for and finding things locally makes it easy to get that immediate gratification when shopping for something you want right now.

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Groupon

For the uninitiated, Groupon is one of the most popular destinations for coupons on a wide range of products, ranging from restaurants to massages. There are two types of deals: 'Daily' and 'Now!' 'Daily' deals are offered for a few days and expire within several months, and are only activated when enough people purchase the deal (typically the next morning). 'Now!' deals can be used immediately, but they can only be redeemed within a set time frame. However, if you don't get a chance to use the deal, Groupon will refund you.

Groupon brings all the features of the Web application to your Android device, but adds geolocation and print-free redemptions.

The app requires permission to track your phone, which I know bothers our more privacy-conscious readers. The reason for this is to display nearby deals based on your location. As soon as you sign in, the app displays a map with markers of nearby "Now" deals. A scrollable menu at the top lets you see deals by topic: Nearby, Featured, Getaway, Goods, Our Favorites, and Rewards. 

As someone who always has problems deciding which mediocre place to grab a quick, cheap lunch, I found the geolocation feature useful. Instead of going to my usual mediocre deli across the street, today I redeemed a $6 for $10 voucher at another mediocre deli I hadn't been to a few blocks away.

If you've synced your credit card, simply tap "Buy" to, you guessed it, buy a Groupon on the spot. There's no printing necessary to redeem it as with the desktop Groupon—simply show the vendor your order number on your screen, or store it in the app for later use. By default the app also pushes notifications for expiring, unused Groupons.

Every Groupon member sees different deals when they open their accounts because Groupon takes into account all your past purchases and click-thrus. You can also refine the deals you see by "heart-ing" categories from dozens of deal types. Choose from deals like Foodie, Just Dance, Tee Time, and much more.

This year Groupon added a Rewards loyalty program that lets you collect points to redeem exclusive Groupons, by using your credit card at participating Groupon Rewards stores. Participating stores will have a green Groupon sticker at the cashier. Interesting idea, but I have yet to see this sticker anywhere in New York City.

Despite its disappointing IPO, Groupon is still one of the biggest players in the market and reportedly commands 90 percent of the daily deals space, along with Amazon's Living Social site. Google Offers (beta) is also making strides in this crowded category, and recently launched its first Android app as well. However for now, the mature Groupon 2.0 for Android offers more features and better organization, so if you had to go with just one daily deals app I'd recommend Groupon's.

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Ebay

eBay is the world's biggest online auction house, so there can't be many of us who haven't used it at one time or another, whether to scoop a bargain or make a few extra quid in time for Christmas. We tried the site's official Android app for buying and selling, and were mightily impressed.

In fact, we'd go so far as to say it's more straightforward to use eBay via the Android app than it is the full-blown desktop site. eBay's My eBay menu structure isn't perhaps as intuitive as it could be in the desktop version, for instance, with it often taking several clicks to find items you've won or are selling under its various sub-menus. With the eBay mobile app, you can quickly find your items grouped under its Watching, Bidding, Won, Didn't win, Selling, Sold, Unsold and Scheduled tabs. See also: Best Android apps.

The Official eBay Android App Home screen has three large tabs, offering access to 'My eBay', where you monitor items you're buying or selling, 'Browse', which lets you find any item listed for sale on the site, and 'Sell an item'. Below this are links to Saved searches, Favourite sellers, Reminders (that you must pay for or dispatch an item, for example), Messages, Deals and Settings. The latter lets you set up notifications for such things as when a watched item is about to end, when a buyer wins your item, and when you're outbid on an auction. See also:Five of the best Android apps for shopping.

For searching eBay's catalogue you can use the Search bar at the top of the Home screen, or click on the Browse button to choose a particular category and, if necessary, sub-category. You can also scan a product's barcode to see if it's listed for sale on the site. We managed to find two copies of The New Oxford Dictionary of English by scanning the copy we had on our desk. Although you probably don't need a second copy, this feature is useful if you want to sell that item and need to know how much it's worth.

For switching between the Home, My eBay and Search menus you use your handset's Options button menu. This also offers access to a Help menu that answers frequently asked questions, Settings, and a Refresh button. We watched the items we were selling in My eBay during the last few minutes of each auction, and found that the time remaining automatically refreshed but the bid amount did not - the Refresh button is useful in such circumstances.

Pages load surprisingly fast, even over a 3G connection. This is despite the eBay app returning all its search results within a single scrollable screen. When you click on a specific item for further information, the first screen displays image thumbnails that you simply tap to view in full-screen mode, plus a summary of the auction information; a second screen shows the item specifics and description. You can contact the seller, view their feedback profile, place a bid and, if you're successful, even pay for the item via PayPal using the eBay mobile app.

The Sell an item menu uses eBay's basic auction builder to let you create a new listing, finish one you began previously, or revise an active item. It uses your handset's camera to let you add a picture, or you can browse to the file in the device's gallery. We found it simple to use in adding several new listings.

There are a few actions that can't be completed via the mobile app, however. We couldn't find a way to view our Account details, and pay the fees incurred for selling items via the site. And when one member bought three separate items from us, we were unable to find an option to send a combined invoice with reduced postage - in fact, we couldn't find a way to send an invoice at all. There's no option to report an item as unpaid; neither could we browse completed listings (unless we happened to be Watching them in My eBay).

Once you've sold an item on eBay, the mobile app lets you see the buyer's address details, leave them feedback, mark the item as dispatched and add a tracking number if you have one. You can also relist or sell a similar item, and share the auction via Bluetooth or email.

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