Shopper Review: Digital Shopping List for Your iPhone

Shopper is a shopping item/list management application for the iPhone.  Made by midcentury software, Shopper is a well thought out and user friendly application.  The user interface is clean and intuitive allowing for easy navigation and management while shopping.

When first released (mid 2008) I purchased shopper and immediately found it to be lacking some basic functionality.  I emailed the developer (Mark Krenek) with a few suggestions to improve the user experience and he responded promptly by email to assure me that my suggestions were in the plans for future versions.  Within a couple minor updates he had fixed the one issue i found and added the features that I recommended.  Having the developer listen and respond to suggestions and recommendations has helped this application evolve into a very refined shopping item/list application.

The settings screen, as with most applications, is where one can define global settings for the application.  Sort by Aisle is one of the more recent additions to the application where each store can be arranged by aisles matching the stores physical layout.  Before the addition of this feature I logged many miles tracking back through the store looking for an item.  Each store can have a different aisle order and the aisles can be added and removed as desired.

The application works best with all of your items on one big list regardless of which store you choose to purchase them from.  With the stores and aisles properly setup, choosing the store at the top will reorder the list based on the aisles.  If the aisles dont exist in that particular store the items in that aisle will not be visible.

With the stores and aisles setup, there are a couple different ways to add items to the list.  One can click the plus at the bottom of the list which brings up a text search window.  As you type, It will filter the results.   When you see the item you’re looking for select it to add it to the list.  If the desired item is not on the list, type the full text and click create to add it.  From there you can choose which aisle it belongs on to keep your list organized.  At this point you can also change the quantity as well.  The other method to add items is to browse through the list of aisles and items.  This method is great when a little help is needed to remember all the possible items to choose from.   If you’re interested in keeping track of more details shopper will allow you to keep track of costs, UOM, price, notes and also if you have a coupon or not.  Thats a bit more detail than I need, however there were many people that like that level of control.  If you fill in the prices it will keep a running total in the cart and include taxes if you so desire.

As you put the items in your cart at the store, click the box on the left of the item and shopper will drop the item into the cart icon at the bottom of the screen with a nice animation.  The items in the cart collect and stay in the cart until you empty it.

If you need to get the list to someone else that has offered to do your shopping for you simply email the list to them through the built in functionality.  The emailed list is a very simple text based list and is lacking visual appeal, however it’s functional. This application is a good addition to your library of productivity apps.

share permalink ping 5 Comments