What can beat a day out shopping with friends, trying on clothes and generally having the chance to chat about what you do and don’t like about each other’s choices?
So far, you haven’t been able to have a similar experience online, as although the concept of social shopping has been around for quite a while; (Bluhalo covered it in a blog post in the summer of 2008). Historically, to enjoy the social shopping experience, you have always needed a browser plug-in to chat to friends whilst on shopping sites.
However, there’s a new kid on the block, Plurchase.com; who just might have found a solution that really will make it possible to shop till you drop, but with your friends in tow online, there to stop you making those disastrous shopping purchases and generally making it a whole lot more fun!
The way it works is simple. Visit Plurchase.com, choose where you want to shop and then email your friends a URL, which means they can join you real-time and see what you’re looking at before you go ahead and decide to buy. It also gives you the option to connect to Facebook and share your product choices with all your Facebook friends; there’s even a Twitter link.
The best bit is that you don’t need to register. They make their money from affiliate payments from the shopping sites they support, making it completely free to use. The downside at present is that they don’t have a huge portfolio of stores they are linked to – just www.Zappos.com, www.amazon.com and www.craigslist.org, but the potential is fantastic and I’m sure they are busy trying to persuade other sites to join in!
Plurchase loads as a sidebar on the site that you are visiting and shows which of your friends are online. The item you are looking at is displayed in the sidebar on your screen as well as on that of your online friend. They can then click on the link so they can see what you’re thinking of buying and can write comments in a box in the sidebar. And there you have your instant feedback.
It may not be quite as good as the real thing, but just think how useful it would be if you needed to buy a shared present for your parents for example. You could find the perfect present, send an email to your siblings and then get everyone to discuss and agree to it then and there. Even better, it could also be a brilliant way to make sure your other half buys the right present for you – no more excuses!
The traditional older established social shopping sites like www.kaboodle.com, www.thisnext.com, www.wists.com and www.wishpot.com are all still serving us well, but in theory, the Plurchase offering takes it one step further – they just need to make it work in practise by getting a decent number of sites to sign up so it makes it worth our while to use them whenever we can.
Jill Thater
Client Services Director
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