Google coupons now available on the go.
(Credit: Google)Google has been giving companies in its business listings ways to offer digital coupons to visitors since 2007. It wasn't until this week, though, that Google could bring the same coupons to mobile users.
It works like this: Businesses add a coupon to their listing in Google's Local Business Center. When you search a Google local listing from your Internet-enabled phone, any available coupons show up. As with other mobile coupon sites and applications, you'll simply present your phone face at the check-out stand. The checker will enter in the coupon bar code and you'll get your discount.
Google's mobile expansion of its digital coupons brings the search and advertising giant in direct competition with coupon providers like Coupons.com, Coupon Sherpa, Cellfire, and Yowza. With the exception of Yowza, which is a mobile-only application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, each service has a mobile coupons site and at least an iPhone app. Yelp has also jumped into the mobile deal business by letting businesses place special offers to Yelp users on Yelp.com and in its iPhone app.
Users' biggest complaints with mobile coupons tend to boil down to one thing: variety. While national chains are easier (and generally more effective) for a coupon service to sign, millions of other shoppers may prefer discounts for local or specialized brands, restaurants, and stores. Any business model that can capitalize on a self-service coupon sign-up for local and national businesses should have the upper hand.
So long as mobile shoppers navigate to Google's site from their cell phone browsers, Google's coupon business should grow. After all, Google isn't creating a brand-new business for digital deal distribution, but extending one that's already in place.
Twitter might just seem like a social place to converse with friends, but it's actually much more. In fact, with the help of some Twitter services that help you either compare prices or the find the right product for any occasion, it has become an appealing shopping tool.
So, if you're looking to save some cash, you might want to check out these Twitter tools.
Go shopping
CheapTweet CheapTweet combs through Twitter to find the best deals, coupons, or sales, users are tweeting about. From there, it displays all those findings on its home page, allowing users to vote on the deals they like.
CheapTweet is the like the Digg of the cost-conscious Twitter world. The app lists deals on industries ranging from fashion and beauty to technology and entertainment. The most popular deals, as voted by users, are listed under the "Cheapest Tweets" option. If you're looking for new deals, CheapTweet lists those under "Newest Tweets." In either case, CheapTweet is a great way to find deals. But beware that because it has so few users, you won't find Digg-like voting tallies.
CheapTweet lists all the best deals, as voted by users.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)CouponTweet CouponTweet finds coupons from across the Web that Twitter users have tweeted about. Right from the site, you can claim your coupon.
After analyzing tweets, CouponTweet lists all the latest coupons on the site. Once you decide you want one, you can claim the coupon and be brought to the appropriate page to redeem it. The site lists deals on a variety of topics, including cell phones, travel, and tickets to sporting events and concerts. You can also search the site for deals you don't find on the home page.
CouponTweet helps you find great deals on Twitter.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
Why pay list price? Especially now, when you're probably watching every penny? One of the best ways to get a deal on anything is to use a coupon. But instead of searching around the house for scissors and chopping up circulars, check out these 18 online services that give you what you need to save you cash on your next purchase.
Adpera It might not provide coupons in the conventional sense, but Adpera finds the best e-mail ads from retailers and displays them on the site. From designer sportswear to shoes and housewares, Adpera's selection is incredible. And searching for and finding deals is made simple with the help of a prominent search box at the top of the page. Adpera is basically one big spam folder. But instead of annoying you, it actually saves you some cash.
CoolSavings If you're looking for a full-featured site that includes both printable and online coupons from retailers on a wide range of disciplines, CoolSavings is for you. The site offers coupons for companies that you might have never heard of, and some that that are probably right down the street. The sheer quantity of coupons on CoolSavings is amazing. Unfortunately, though, CoolSavings' collection of free coupons isn't that helpful. In order to access the more sought-after deals, you'll need to sign up for the site. Once you do, you'll be happy: from personal finance to groceries, there are coupons for everything on CoolSavings.
Coupious is unique and worth using.
(Credit: Coupious)Coupious Coupious is one of the coolest services in this roundup. A mobile app, it can be installed on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or Android-based phone. With the help of those devices' location services, it actively searches for businesses around your location and finds coupons while you're on the go. I've tried it on numerous occasions and have been amazed at its speed and relevance. Once you're ready to use one of the coupons it finds, you need only to click "Use now" and you're all set. And it's free.
CouponAlbum CouponAlbum is huge. That's the best way to describe it. Unlike some services that specialize in a particular area, CouponAlbum wants to be your one-stop shop for everything that's on sale right now. Whether it's software, toys, sporting goods, or food, the site has it all. And since it's updated weekly, you'll never run out of deals.
CouponCabin When I'm looking to save a few bucks, one of my first destinations is always CouponCabin. Unlike other sites that throw any company's deal at you, CouponCabin sticks to major stores like Target, Walmart, GameStop, and a few others. All the coupons are up-to-date and new deals are placed on the site every week. And since you can search by company or category, you probably won't miss a single deal at the places you frequent.
CouponGood If you're an online shopper, CouponGood is a good first place to check before you decide to buy something. The site provides coupons for online companies exclusively. With the help of a simple design, it makes it easy to find any deal you're looking for. Simply input the URL of a company that you're considering buying from and the site will see if it has any active coupons available. Based on my testing, every site I searched for had at least one active coupon, ranging from free shipping to 20 percent discounts. And since the site's free, you'll only need to click a link or input a code at checkout to activate it.
CouponMom CouponMom is targeted at, you guessed it, mothers, but I'm not sure it's even worth trying out. The site requires you to sign up and promises big deals, but when I used it, I quickly realized it couldn't compete on any level with Coupons.com. It's an alternative if for some reason you don't like Coupons.com.
Coupons.com is a fine coupon service.
(Credit: Don Reisinger/CNET Networks)Coupons.com When you're getting ready to go to the local supermarket or grocery, go to Coupons.com before you leave. The site offers a variety of printable coupons on goods ranging from food to cleaning supplies and they're available for use anywhere the products are sold. I use Coupons.com each week and I save myself at least $10 in grocery costs during that time. It's an extremely useful site that's designed well and makes it easy to find coupons. It's a must-see.
... Read moreWhat's even better than getting grocery store coupons online? Getting them from your cell phone. AOL has released a version of its online coupons service, Shortcuts.com, that's now optimized for viewing from the mobile phone.
Cellfire and Shortcuts.com want your Ralph's Club Card number.
(Credit: CNET)Coupons for popular cereal and a jumbo pack of Pull-Ups Training Pants greet you when you navigate to Shortcuts.com from the mobile browser. After you've registered your savings club card with Shortcuts.com, you'll be able to add vouchers like these directly to your account, and redeem them in-store without a paper receipt.
The new mobile focus on Shortcuts.com's service puts some heat on Cellfire (coverage), a native coupons application built for a variety of mobile phones. While Cellfire branches out beyond grocery stores to get you coupons to local and national chain restaurants and other retail shops, Cellfire is also gunning for the supermarket tie-in. On Ralph's supermarket Web site, for instance, Cellfire and Shortcuts.com are neck-and-neck for advertising space.
The competition between mobile coupon purveyors is, of course, wonderful for the consumer, who could link their savings card with both services and possibly double the number of coupons to whittle down a bill. That is, so long as the savings arrive for grocery items you'd actually use, and for stores that are already on your warpath. Shortcuts.com has some coupons I would want to use, but none of its 14 partner markets is within a 60 mile radius of where I shop for food. Here's hoping that the undisclosed grocery store AOL says it will partner with this spring is the one situated just down the street.
I love a good deal, and the number of sites out there to help get special codes and links is massive and frequently packed with annoyances like pop-up ads and outdated content. To help sort through it I usually use Google, but a service called RetailMeNot seems like a worthy addition. The site's been around since last year, but has launched a new community portion of its site this morning that makes the coupon hunting experience a little more social and a lot easier to keep track of what deals are hot.
The service was created by the same folks who did BugMeNot and PDFMeNot (review) and follows a similar simplicity of letting you plug in a domain name of an online shop you're interested in like Amazon or GoDaddy to see if there are any promotional codes for discounts that might save you some cash.
With the new community additions the process goes a step further, letting other RetailMeNot users add their own coupon codes and note when they've successfully used a code to make an online purchase. Those updates, and other additions to the listings go into a central pool of updates, similar to Facebook's news feed. Ideally keeping an eye on this feed would give you the heads up on a new deal right when it's made available. It'll also try to match you up with other users based on the items you rate, similar to a service like Last.fm that matches you up with people who have similar tastes in music.
The rest of the features follow suit with any other modern day social network. Each user gets a profile and a variety of boxes to fill out to show their personality. It's the kind of thing I don't see a lot of my friends spending time or effort to engage in considering their efforts on pre-existing services. However, I really like the idea of collaborating with others to get good deals, which is something SlickDeals and FatWallet do a very good job at. If RetailMeNot could make this a good Facebook or MySpace application that does the same thing, I could see a lot of people flocking to it--myself included.
RetailMeNot lets you scour for deals. It also has a social element that lets you see deals other people are scoping out. (click to enlarge)
(Credit: CNET Networks)
If the spare contents of your wallet dictate your dining destination, you'll want to know of this reprieve. Cellfire (hands-on review), offers coupon deals with more than 10,000 local U.S. restaurants and services, and chains. With custom-built applications for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, the RAZR, and Nokia phones, Cellfire has rounded the smartphone bases. A WAP site--www.cellfire.com--that works with iPhone and other Internet-enabled devices brings the app home.
I like Cellfire, a mobile coupons app that's optimized for BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile, and has a WAP site for cell phones (www.cellfire.com from your phone's browser.) They've got a smart business plan, good partnerships, and wide accessibility to users through support for multiple carriers and platforms.
One of Cellfire's national partners.
Too bad some of the national offerings are so pedestrian, such as Cellfire's partnerships with Supercuts and Extreme Pita, announced Wednesday. That's only mundane if you're a snob like me. If you're most people, Cellfire's deals with local, regional, and national retailers are a useful, convenient way to save a buck or two for everyday items. Everyone needs a haircut, right?
Supercuts and Extreme Pita join Hollywood Video, 1-800-Flowers, Subway, Coldstone Creamery, and about 10,000 other participating merchants in Cellfire's posse. Dwight Moore, Cellfire's VP of Corporate Marketing, hinted that talks with department stores and other clothing retailers are under way. Partnerships with coupon publishers are also being forged, to distribute more deals to the phone. Not bad, but I'm still holding out for Whole Foods.
Cellfire is smart. The free mobile coupons company knows three things it needs to entice users to use its digital chits instead of stuffing paper cutouts into wallets, purses, and pockets.
1. Provide multiple ways to get the product. Cellfire is a downloadable PC-to-mobile app for BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows Mobile, but it also offloads into the phone via WAP (point browsers to www.cellfire.com/) and through some carrier agreements.
2. Offer compelling brands. In addition to dozens of national chains, like TGIF and 1.800.Flowers, Cellfire's service gets local, offering discounts for hundreds of neighborhood merchants and regional chains in metro areas to total 10,000 merchant partners across the U.S.
3. Make coupons easy to redeem. The coupon for San Francisco's North Beach Pizza gave me two ways to collect savings. I could select "in-store" to get a coupon code to flash the cashier, or click to call the vendor and read back the code. I could also clearly see how many more offers I could collect and (2) how many more days I had before each coupon expired (5).
Cellfire's coupons update every two weeks. Although the service itself is free, users will get slapped with the cell phone carrier's data charges. Better stick with those paper coupons if you don't have a data plan.
People often complain about the high cost of organic foods, hybrid cars and pesticide-free bamboo T-shirts. GreenDealsDaily, which launched this month, attempts to bust the myth that living a more eco-friendly lifestyle is only for the well-heeled.
The site lists the latest price drops, coupons and freebies for green products, as well as lifestyle tips from IdealBite, Treehugger and other blogs. Hurry and call ConEd now, for example, if you want free compact fluorescent bulbs for your Manhattan apartment. Or get thee to Gaiam for its 75 percent discount while the organic cotton bedding lasts.
You can register with GreenDealsDaily to submit deals and vote on the best or worst ones to help other users. The site also offers an RSS feed worthy for any picky eco-shopper's news reader. The site donates 5 percent of its ad proceeds to carbon offsets via Carbonfund. It would be nice if GreenDealsDaily also incorporated green business ratings; potential sources would include Alonovo, Badbuster, Sustainlane and FiveLimes.
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