After posting about the Coles Shopmate app last week, I was talking to a friend while over dinner while in Melbourne and he mentioned a little app that he uses called Shopper. He showed me a few of it’s features and I liked the look of some of the functionality so I decided to take it for a whirl. Given the amount of shopping that’s going on at this time of year it seemed appropriate…
To start with the app costs $1.19 in the Australian AppStore so this isn’t a freebie like the Coles app, however I did find it a bit easier to use in many respects and it does have some nice features that are missing from the other app. In particular the ability to share lists with other Shopper accounts (i.e. if your partner has an iPhone and wants to edit/create a list to share with you).
The list creation interface is simple and easy to use, which is probably one of my favourite parts of the app. You generally don’t have to type more than a couple letters of the item you’re adding and the item comes up in the suggested items (sorta like predictive text). You can then select the item or keep typing to refine the list further.
When adding items I did find some things which are pretty basic (like bodywash for example) didn’t appear in the list of available items to select, though you can create items easily enough using the create button that is shown when you’re adding an item.
Once you have added a number of items to the list Shopper shows a number next to the app (both on the menu screen) and in brackets next to the shopping list name in the app itself, so you know how many items you have in your list. When you tick off an item the item no longer counts toward this number (as you’d expect).
Once you’ve reached the supermarket (or even before if you’re really organised) you can enter a price and quantity for each item that you’re purchasing. As you tick off the items Shopper totals up the value of the products in your cart, which is pretty handy for those on a budget who have a set amount to spend when you go shopping.
Getting back to the ability to share shopping lists, the app allows you to sync lists with other users who are using Shopper and it also comes with a companion website which makes it easy to create your shopping lists online and share these lists with others.
In summary, this is a handy little app for those who want to get more organised with their shopping. Personally I think it’s well worth the cost and an app that I’m likely to use for sometime.
