New iPhone App Helps Students Find Back-to-School Promotions

Half.com, a leading media ecommerce company, has just released a new iPhone application and Buying Wizard, aimed at helping students during the Back-to-School shopping season. Half.com, an eBay company, enables people buy items at half the normal price sometimes, and offers a nice range of other features too.

According to the company, the new application is meant to offer students benefit from great deals on textbooks, DVDs, popular novels, video games and more, all via integrated barcode scanning technology.

Since the Back-to-School season is one of the busiest shopping times of the year for Half.com, the company came up with this solution to help its users. Most of the items sold via Half.com are textbooks, which are available throughout the year.

“With buyers looking to save more this Back-to-School shopping season, the Half.com iPhone app gives students access to the millions of great deals on Half.com virtually anytime, anywhere,” said Steve Yankovich, vice-president of mobile platform, eBay.

Some of the main features of the new iPhone application include:
- The app provides Half.com buyers access to over 80 million active listings from more than 700,000 sellers.
- Popular item search by category available on the home screen – see what others are buying.
- Speedy Checkout has payment and shipping information saved to complete the transaction quickly. Add a gift card or coupon code when checking out to save even more.
- With three easy steps the Buying Wizard will match users with the best deal:
Add Products – Users select the minimum criteria for item condition and seller feedback.
Find Deal Button – Buying Wizard will display the best deal for you, based on the criteria you selected.
Add to Cart – Move the items from Buying Wizard into your shopping cart to purchase.

The Buying Wizard (Beta) comes as an easy-to-use tool meant to offer users the possibility to find the best deals in no time. The wizard finds the lowest price based on users defined search options, and delivered adequate results.

The application was designed to offer sharing options too, with Facebook, Twitter, and email as the main sharing options, and is available for download via Apple’s iTunes Store.

“eBay has integrated barcode scanning technology into the app making it easier than ever before for students to comparison shop in their campus bookstores and find the best deals on textbooks, novels and more. And, the app’s Speedy Checkout reduces the friction of commerce, allowing users to buy with only a few quick clicks,” Yankovich concluded.