Jason Rosado

So, I’ve been consulting a good friend of mine on the development of a blog, Green Eggs and Glam that focuses on the intersections of her passion for fashion with being a mother and educator. Another friend and fellow classmate at ITP, Ruxy Staicutt also shared some thoughts recently on designing and building an iPhone app for the shopping experience for her Thesis.

This led me to research and think about particular iPhone apps that cater to fashion and shopping. Here are some articles and thoughts about the topic:

Here’s a cool write-up in Styleist on Tommy Hilfiger’s iPhone App (here). From the article, below:

Let’s say you’re in a store and there’s a Tommy item you just can’t live without. But, alas, your size is sold out. Don’t fret! You can immediately check availability with the app and place an order from your Apple device. If something’s out of stock, you have the option of being alerted when it becomes available again. And if you start shopping from your computer, but need to run out mid-spree, your cart will show up on your iPhone and vice versa.

Norma Kamali has been getting a lot of on-line press for her App too (here). But for the most part, the app is not very interactive, in
the sense that you can’t purchase apparel through the app itself. It focuses for the most part on images, press clippings, and a mobile web version of her blog.

Here’s a great overview of different fashion apps as well.
This article led me to find Ralph Lauren’s make-your-own-rugby app. Now that’s creative! I think I’ll be seeing a couple of self styled rugby shirts in my wardrobe soon.

What most interests me in this space, beyond migrating what amounts to “brochure-ware” to the iPhone for viewing on a smaller, albeit touch-enabled screen are the models that allow the user to initiate and execute transactions right through the device. This facilitates the retail experience and adds additional value to the fun (sometimes pain) that can be retail shopping. Here’s a good article from the Times on how mobile commerce facilitated Holiday Shopping this past season. The article also introduces ShopSavvy:

With ShopSavvy™ users can scan the barcode of any product using their phone’s built-in camera. Once scanned, it will search for all the best prices on the internet.

The Lucky iPhone App is billing itself as:

the first-ever digital shopping concierge. Shop Lucky’s favorite products from your iPhone, and we’ll track them down at a store near you, check availability, and even put them on hold for same-day pickup!

Check out the screen shots from their iPhone app below. This business model makes a lot of sense since it ties the retail, catalog and mobile experience together. It is a free app, although I’m willing to bet for the value (and saved time) it provides to a consumer, one could argue it could be a pay-app.

More to come on this topic, as I come across it myself. In the meantime, Happy Shopping!

I thought you might find some of this research regarding Mobile Commerce interesting:

Key facts from this article regarding Mobile Commerce:
– Nine million Americans have already made at least one m-commerce purchase
– 125 million Americans are willing to make a purchase in the near future.
– Many merchants are utilizing alternative Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for their websites to be activated when their customers access their websites via mobile devices

And per this article, the Tower Group estimates:
– by the beginning of 2009, between 150-300 banks and credit unions will sign contracts for mobile banking solutions
– Mobile banking will reach close to 6 million users by the end of 2009
– 42 million active users of mobile banking solutions by 2012

According to this article:
– More smart phones will be purchased than PCs in 2011

And interesting developments per global giving/donations, in this article:
– Donations via mobile devices are outpacing commercial payments
– $11 million in 3 days were raised for Haiti’s disaster relief efforts via text messaged initiated payments

Here’s another article that supports my long-held hypothesis that mobile philanthropy will drive mobile commerce in the United States. The article posits that the crisis in Haiti will be the turning point for adoption of mobile commerce.

… and this article discusses the opportunity for mobile remittances addressing un-banked and migrant worker customer bases

I thought I’d share some tips/tricks that I’ve acquired as a result of the mobile web development classes I’ve participated in for my Master’s Program at NYU. I’ve built a couple of mobile web sites by now, and these lines of code and URLs for frameworks and tutorials have been very useful. For the most part the code here is open source and freely available on the web. Leave me some comments if you find these useful!

The php code below can be included in the index page of your website. It is intended to identify whether/not the visitor is accessing your site using either an iPhone, iPod Touch or an Android. If it is one of those devices, the script will re-direct the user to what can be your mobile-optimized website. Otherwise it will do nothing.

<?php
if((strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], ‘iPhone’) !== FALSE || strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], ‘iPod’) !== FALSE || strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],’Android’) !== FALSE) && !isset($_GET['noiphone'])) {header(‘Location: http://putyourwebsiteaddresshere.com’);}
php>

Adding this code below between the <head></head> section of the HTML for your mobile website will assist in optimizing the website for display in iPhone/Android/webkit resolution:

<meta name=”viewport” content=”width=320; initial-scale=1.0; maximum-scale=1.0; user-scalable=0;” />

<meta name=”apple-mobile-web-app-capable” content=”yes” />

Adding this code below between the <head></head> section of the HTML for your mobile web site will allow you to add an icon to the iPhone home screen such that access to the website can be obtained through the home screen of the iPhone.

<link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”http://yourdomainhere.com />

This tutorial shows how to make and the save the icon and the appropriate size and file type (45×45 and .png)

http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_to_create_custom_apple_iphone_website_icon.html

Adding this code below between the <head></head> section of the HTML for your mobile web site will hide the web browser bar from the screen and thus, make it appear even more like a native app:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
<!– <![CDATA[/*http://ajaxian.com/archives/iphone-web-development-tips-and-official-documentation-released */
window.onload = function() { setTimeout(function(){window.scrollTo(0, 1);}, 100);}
// ]]> –> </script>

The link below provides an easy-to-use open source CSS framework that offers the ability to stylize a mobile website to look and feel like an iPhone/Android App. I’ve used it for a couple of projects in my Master’s Program at NYU. There are a few others out there, but this one has been the easiest I’ve found.

http://iwebkit.net/

To boot, there are now open source development kits that allow you to build an app using traditional web languages such as HTML, Javascrip, CSS and then port that site into the development kit which will wrap the other necessary layers around it to function as a iPhone app that can be submitted to Apple for approval in their App store. Here are examples of two available

http://phonegap.com/
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321604555