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.
What'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.
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.
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