Sunday 18 October 2009

New Release of Tesco Finder Features Prices and Offers

The need to sort out the "Town/City Search" issue with Tesco Finder gave me the excuse to update this iPhone application with the users' most requested feature: prices and offers.

The updated application has just been submitted to the Apple iTunes App Store and so should be arriving on your iPhone in the next few days.

This new data come from the live Tesco Grocery API. If the store you are searching delivers grocery home shopping, you'll see prices (and offers where relevant) on every product.

If the store you are searching does not deliver home shopping, the data comes from looking up the information at one of our so-called"Dotcom-Only Store" warehouses, which has amongst the largest product ranges. The range you search will be for your selected store, but the prices and offers (which are national anyway) will come from the warehouse range, as long as there is a 1:1 match. Some products may show without a price if it's in your store but not in the warehouse.

Here are a few screen shots to show you the updates:

First, an update opening screen announcing the arrival of prices and special offers:


Now, proof that the Town/City Search works wonderfully (via our own servers!):


So as usual you type in a search word to get your products. In this version of Tesco Finder, the app is using the power of the search system on our grocery web servers to perform the search which gives much improved relevance over my initial method which involved simple SQL searching. The new search copes with spelling problems and other text-searching challenges - oh and look: PRICES! And not just prices - products on any sort of special offer get highlighted in the search results:


Select a product to see full details - and spot the Tesco 'Price Cut' (£-and-scissors) button to the left of the location description:


Touch the price cut button to see a full description of the offer - and a gentle reminder that these are guide prices, which I have talked about in previous entries on this blog:


I hope you like the updates. Actually I better give the source code back to my colleague and the app's author, Tom Courthold, before I do anything more to it. I'll be in enough trouble as it is!

Anyway this update application is on its way to you now, and will appear in your updates list as soon as it passes through Apple's QA team.

3 comments:

  1. Would be useful to be able to make a shopping list and then the app will route you around the store you are going to shop at

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes this very function - to make a shopping list and then the app will route you around the store - is on its way!

    Cheers
    Nick

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nick,

    This app. has the potential to beat any of the other, frankly useless list apps. out there.

    You'de think that exporting my Tesco.com shopping trolley, or even a 'mysupermarket' trolley, to my iPhone and then have a list of those items in a logical order of my choosing so that I can cross them off (with a swipe) would be something a hundred other developers would have done??? but no, no-one has done it. Every other 'List' app. over complicates the whole process by trying to do all manner of other clever stuff. A simple UI is all that's needed for my SHOPPING LIST only.

    If you take this one step further and make the list order suitable for a single path around my local store, you will be my hero.

    All I want to know is WHEN, WHEN, WHEN?? Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete

As this blog grows in readership - and because it carries the Tesco brand - I have had to become more careful about the sort of comments that are acceptable. The good news is that I'm a champion of free speech so please be as praising or as critical as you wish! The only comments I DON'T allow through are:

1. Comments which criticise an individual other than myself, or are critical of an organisation other than Tesco. This is simply because they cannot defend themselves so is unfair and possibly libellous. Comments about some aspect of Tesco being better/worse than another equivalent organisation are allowed as long as you start by saying "in my personal opinion.." or "I think that...". ... followed by a "...because.." and some reasoned argument.

2. Comments which are totally unrelated to the context of the original article. If I have written about a mobile app and you start complaining about the price of potatoes then your comment isn't going stay for long!

3. Advertising / web links / spam.

4. Insulting / obscene messages.


Ok, rules done - now it's your go: