Yelp's Check-in Offers

Foursquare may have pioneered the idea of rewards and specials associated with checkins, but everyone from Facebook to SCVNGR has followed suit. Today, Yelp joins the fray, giving business owners the ability to add “Check-in Offers” to their venues.

With Yelp Check-in Offers, business owners can incentivize repeat checkins and reward patrons with three different offer types: percent off, free or fixed price offers.

Businesses are able to offer one check-in special at a time, and patrons can redeem earned rewards by presenting a special mobile certificate showing they’ve unlocked a particular offer.

Yelpbusiness owners can navigate to the “Offers” portion of their business dashboard to specify offer type and checkin terms — a 25% off discount for three checkins, for instance. Patrons can work to achieve an offer with each venue checkin via the just updated Yelp iPhone (awaiting approval) and Android apps. After redemption, users can start earning the offer again. The approach is not dissimilar to SCVNGR’s system for unlocking rewards.

Offers are certainly nothing new in today’s location-based mobile app landscape, but Eric Singley, Yelp’s director of mobile and consumer products, believes the company has a unique opportunity to marry the venue search intentions of application users with offers that influence behavior.

“Thirty percent of all Yelp search traffic is happening on our mobile apps, which means people are using the Yelp apps to search for businesses around them … [the apps] are an opportunity for businesses to get in front of users, and checkin offers can help influence their decisions,” he says.

For the full story visit: http://mashable.com/2010/11/23/yelp-checkin-offers/

eBay's new barcode scanning iPhone App

eBay has released version 2.0 of its primary Phone app, eBay Mobile, the company announced Monday.

Version 2.0 [iTunes link], which appeared in the App Store Friday, allows users to buy and sell on eBay’s flagship auction site, as well as scan product barcodes for comparison shopping. Previously, the latter two capabilities were available only in independent apps, eBay selling [iTunes link] and RedLaser [iTunes link], the latter of which was acquired in June.



Now users can do everything on their iPhones that they could previously do on eBay.com — and then some. The integration of RedLaser’s barcode scanning technology is particularly useful, allowing users to quickly compare eBay’s prices to retail, and to pre-populate information about the items they’re selling.

New iPhone App locates products in store aisles.

aisle411 is today launching its iPhone application for locating products in specific aisles and sections at retails stores. The application works at more than 600 stores in the U.S. and is meant to serve as a faster, more convenient way for shoppers to search and find items at stores.

Application users can type in product search queries or use the voice recognition technology, powered by Nuance, to search at participating stores. For each supported store, aisle411 also includes a comprehensive store map and store info, and UPC barcode scanning to pull up user-generated product reviews.

Generic product searches — double sided tape, for instance — will return search results that specify available types and brands. App users can then glance the section and aisle number for each result, select to map a product for navigational assistance or choose to add it to a shopping list.

Participating stores may also opt to include coupons and offers. The application surfaces Coupons.com offers available at stores, and highlights them in the offers portion of the app.

The service even includes a now ubiquitous checkin feature, so users can check in to stores, share their location with friends via Twitter and Facebook and earn badges and titles for their behaviors — think becoming the “Captain” of a particular store. These features seem a bit tired and unnecessary; if there’s a voice search or barcode scan, then there should be sufficient information for the service to automatically recognize that you’re at a particular venue.



aisle411 currently works at locations such as Home Depot, Schnucks Market drug stores and at Shop’n Save’s grocery chain. Obviously, the application is limited by the fact that its application only works at participating retailers.

For full story visit: http://mashable.com/2010/11/22/aisle411/