With its recent revamp of its iPhone app and the announcement of an app for the Android smartphone platform, Best Buy is clearly leading the retail pack in terms of support for multiple platforms. Both apps are nicely formatted to the platforms and do a great job of presenting information from bestbuy.com in an easier to navigate way. And embracing a multi-handset strategy that allows a greater percentage of Best Buy shoppers to use the app is a core element of a true "mobile retail" approach.
But despite Best Buy's leadership in UI and handset support, they still have a couple big features missing that keep the apps from being truly amazing shopping tools.
Too much focus on the "mobile Web" instead of the phone as a shopping tool: The search features are good, and Best Buy does a nice job making the parameter selection optimized to the phone UI, but shoppers on the go with their smartphones want different information... Many of the tasks the search and product information is optimized for simply are better conducted on a desktop, while many urgent/mobile tasks remain unaddressed by the apps (e.g. "I need a refrigerator under $500 that is in stock at the Best Buy near my house... which models do you have that meet that criteria?")
- Very little support for in-store shopping: Again, Best Buy errs on the side of too much mobile Web, too little shopping. Completely missing are features like store maps, or even enhanced information on what product lines are carried in each store. The focus seems clearly to be on getting shoppers into the stores rather than helping them once they get there.
Missing features competitive apps already have: Best Buy's app misses one of the key features that competitors big and small adopted months ago: use of the camera as an interface. If I'm in a Best Buy store and want to get information on a product, I'll be more likely to open Amazon Remembers and snap a photo of the cover and the flip it open and type in the SKU into Best Buy's app.
Comments