[App Fridays] Shopzy aims to make shopping at malls easy for you

For those shoppers in two minds about buying something, a deal is a great driving factor which tips the balance in the favor of the seller. This is true especially for an Indian customer; discounts almost always work.

Many a smartphone app has worked on the deal discovery space and none more popular than Bangalore's Delight Circle and LoReMo. Today's App Friday is also solving a subset of the same problem - it helps you find malls nearby and helps you find deals in them.

From the makers of location based social network, Nukkad, comes Shopzy, an app that aims to make shopping easy for you -

What is it about? 

The landing page on this app for a first time user is one of the most interesting ways to Login that I've seen. It's a form, as opposed to the regular login with Facebook option, which asks for some information about you. Of course you can skip this, but this data will tailor deals for you.

Once you're done, the app has a cover page like landing page which shows you top deals in your locality. Below this option you can search for malls or the stores in them. The app also presents two other lists - one for new arrivals and offers and another for shops and malls that you've subscribed to on the app.

Beyond this, it's a content app, that give you lists of malls and stores in them based on location and about deals in the shop. It also gives you information about the stores and the malls also.

Is deal discovery overdone? 

In places which doesn't need to be done. I still remember what Dave MCclure said to us at a fireside chat - "making a technology product is probably one of the easiest things to do. Yes it has changed phenomenally in the past 20 years or so, but marketing has changed as much in the past 5 years alone."

My point is that Shopzy is in a business play. Of course, you need a stable app that works with an intuitive user experience. Beyond that, it's about getting the malls and stores on board. The innovation here lies in the increasing the number of businesses on the platform in a scalable manner and in getting more users for the app.

DelightCircle's success is not in how great the app is, but it is in how many businesses they've signed up. And Shopzy's success is also going to be there.

Pros and cons 

Shopzy is easy to figure out. in about the first minute or so, you'll figure out everything that you can do with this app. The fact that Shopzy doesn't perform any transactional functions might actually be a good thing, as not having it makes the app simple to use.

Shopzy's only (and biggest) con is in the content, or the lack thereof. It caters for two cities, Ahmedabad and Bangalore and the number of deals or even malls (in bangalore's case) isn't much. As of now, there are only two deals that Shopzy shows me in Bangalore. That can't be right.

Our take 

After Nukkad, Shopzy is another great app from the team and from a product standpoint, there isn't much wrong in it. Like I mentioned earlier, the key to this apps success, isn't in how awesome the app is going to be. It is in the content and the app makers are going to have to figure out a scalable way of populating the app with more cities, malls and deals. Something like what Squeakee recently did in Mumbai.

The app also has no visible revenue model and as of now, it looks like Shopzy is playing the user acquisition game. Having said that, an interesting thing that I noticed in the app was that the malls with movies in it, Shopzy gives you listing of the movies playing the mall as well. While this feature is like an Easter egg, if they choose to partner with say, a BookMyShow, it can work as a revenue source for them.

However, I think Shopzy is a good platform to discover deals. It's simple and easy to use. All it needs is the deals.

Download Shopzy and tell us what you think