The biggest shopping season of the year approaches, and you need an edge. If you just had an app that could give you directions to a chain of deparment stores, maybe get some information about what items are on sale, and if they’re available in a nearby store… Target says: “We have an app for that!”
Overview
I went out today to do some early holiday shopping, and decided to try the Target app out. I tried to approach the app from the viewpoint of a user who just hit town and had no idea where he could find a Target store. So, I fired up the app to see if it could tell me where my nearest Target store was located.
First off, the menu is not on the opening screen, all you see is a pleasant greeting and links to their latest ad circulars. There is a red tab with a Target logo on it down at the bottom of the screen, so I touched that. The menu appeared. I selected “Stores”. A map appeared, showing my current location, and the locations of surrounding Target stores.
Touching any of the store locations shown brings you to an informative page about that location, including if they offer groceries, if they have a pharmacy, and most importantly, if they have a Starbucks onsite. The info page also gives you the option to set that store as “your store”.
Other options from the main menu are: “Featured” which brings you back to the opening page where you can see what weekly and daily specials are available; “Products,” which allows you to browse various merchandise categories; “Weekly Ad,” which takes you directly to the current weekly ad, “Lists,” which makes Target’s “Club Wed” and “Baby Registry” gift registries available (with a built in barcode scanner to add items to either registry); and “My Target,” where you can access information about the Target location you selected as your store.
Conclusion
The Target app proved intuitive and easy to use. Menu selections make sense, and searching for products is fast and reliable. The app even has a “Speak to Search” option. It uses the Nuance speech engine, but it needs some tuning as it only averaged around 40% being able to understand me. (Maybe I should take the marbles out of my mouth when I talk…)
Rating: 3.5/5[rating:3.5]
The free Target iPhone app is available through the App Store, as well as an iPad version.
Pros
- Ease of use, logical menu choices, things are explained on the screen.
- Ability to order items through the app.
- Has the ability to add to your bridal or baby registry using built in barcode scanner.
Cons
- Main menu could be a little easier to find. I suppose touching the logo is logical, but…
- While the search by speech option is cool, it needs a little more fine tuning to be reliable.
