If you thought it was hard to charge more than 59p for anything on a phone – you might be surprised to hear that we are already spending megabucks through mobile commerce – buying £50,000 cars on mobile phones for example. People are clearly willing to make massive transactions on their mobiles – and we’re only going to do it more in the future if Steve Yankovich VP of eBay mobile is right.
“People just see it as a continuation of normal eBay” he said of the eBay mobile app, pointing out how handy it is to be able to bid on an auction from your phone as opposed to being chained to your computer.
In light of the boom in mobile spending, eBay are providing some more shopping fronts on the iPhone with the launch of a new Fashion app and a Motoring app.
More than just a link to the relevant site sections, these provide the sort of customisation and personalisation that we’re very used to seeing on apps, applied to the shopping experience.
We were quite impressed.
The fashion app will include fashion editorial – articles about trends and so on, but also – and this is the cool bit – a kind of create-your-own outfit place called The Closet where you can drag and drop items from around the site to create images of outfits. You can save your creations or share them by email or facebook. There are links back on individual items which will take you back to the Buy Product page. We really like this idea… it’s the sort of thing you could happily play around with for a few minutes, even if you don’t want to spend any money. And nothing like harnessing a bit of creativity.
Getting even more flashy, you can also superimpose this outfit collection on an image of yourself pulled in from your phone’s pictures or even live webcam. Intense.
There’s also going to be a very nifty price comparison tool in there – using the RedLaser bar code reading technology (eBay just bought them out) that will let you scan bar codes while you wander around real world shops and do a quick price comparison check for similar objects on eBay and indeed elsewhere on the internet.
That’s all the bells and whistles on the app, but add in eBay basics like searches by size and price range and the huge range of clothes listed on eBay (globally there are 20million fashion items listed at any given time) and this looks like it could be a winner.
eBay Fashion app is free on iTunes, though you need to register for an eBay account.
