Soap.com, Diapers.com Roll Out Smartphone Apps that Work Offline, Too

Mobile commerce is often great in theory and hideous or frustrating in practice. Not only are the screens small, the product shots hard to see and the checkout pages difficult to type into, but there’s the simple fact that in many urban settings, getting a 3G phone connection is a pretty in-and-out proposition. Get one large parking structure between you and the cell tower, head into a subway station, or encounter any other metro “dead zone”, and you’re very likely to have your transaction tabled.

If you’re lucky, your shopping information might persist until you get your bars back. If not, you have the choice to either start all over again—or wait until you get to your office or home PC browser.

That frustration was a major mobile pain point for Quidsi, the parent company to home shopping Web sites Soap.com, Diapers.com and BeautyBar.com. The company focuses on entering urban markets where big-box shopping isn’t a real option and stresses convenience as one of its brand components.

So when it came time to roll out smartphone apps for its brands, Quidsi went the extra mile to design software that would let customers use the app to build shopping lists even when their mobile connection got cut short.

To use the free Soap.com and Diapers.com iPhone apps (Android versions and an app for BeautyBar.com soon to come), users must be registered at any one of those sites. That enables the MyLists feature that lets Web shoppers store their chosen brands of diapers, baby products, cleaning supplies and other household essentials.

In tech terms, Quidsi’s smartphone apps are actually hybrids: part Web-based and part located on the mobile device. When a user opens the app, an up-to-date version of that user’s current MyList is also sent and stored natively on the smartphone, so that it can be accessed even without a Wi-Fi or 3G connection. If a shopper drops all bars while completing a transaction on the Quidsi mobile apps, he or she can still continue to compile a shopping list from the information stored on the device. When the iPhone reconnects with a network, the user will receive an automatic prompt to complete the purchase.

“We think that’s a first for an mcommerce app,” says Josh Himwich, vice president of ecommerce at Quidsi. “Most other mobile commerce apps won’t even open if you don’t have a wireless connection of some kind. With us, about 95% of the shopping experience can be completed offline.

“We’re New Yorkers and spend a lot of time on the subway, so we get it. Everyone’s on their iPhones on the subway, but it’s to play games, read a book or listen to music, not to shop. This is one more activity that we can add to the subway experience.”

In fact, the offline capabilities of Quidsi’s smartphone apps may very well figure into the next iteration of the company’s already extensive subway poster campaign, Himwich says.

“We’ve always been about reducing the friction—about getting these things that you really need to you right away. For instance, in most major metropolitan areas we can get it to you next day with free shipping. Mobile really helps to continue that streamlining convenience.”

Besides that offline functionality, the new Soap.com and Diapers.com apps also let registered shoppers use mobile scanning of the UPC codes in their pantry or bathroom closet to add items to their shopping lists quickly.

When they’re ready to buy, shoppers using the apps encounter a single unified checkout page for both (and for BeautyBar.com, when that app becomes available later this spring), reducing the number of clicks needed on the touchscreen. If they elect to wait and buy over a PC, that same shopping cart will be available when they log into the Quidsi Web sites from home or the office.

“When you combine the convenience of mobile commerce with the kinds of things that we sell and the urgency with which people need them, it provides a real reason why you’re going to want to shop with us and not buy from CVS,” says Himwich.

The apps were built in-house at Quidsi and rolled out with assistance from PR and social marketing firm Launchsquad. According to Himwich, building the apps in-house using a technology other than the official Apple software development kit (SDK) let Quidsi achieve the smooth look and feel of a totally on-board app.

“With a lot of iPhone apps that are not native but are hybrid Web apps, there are no smooth transitions,” he says. “It’s page refresh, page refresh and just happens to be on mobile. But using this framework, we were able to do all the spins, move ups, fade-ins, and fadeouts—all the special things one loves about native apps on the iPhone—without actually having to use Apple’s SDK [Software Development Kit].

That in-house development on a non-Apple platform will also let Quidsi roll out apps for the Android that have the same look and feel as iPhone apps—something that isn’t always a given.

“Android is still kind of the Wild West and without any real sense of what makes for a good app,” he says. “But when we bring out our Android app, it’s actually going to look almost exactly like an iPhone app and behave like an iPhone app, and I think that’s going to be great. Apple has really set the bar high for how a mobile app needs to behave, and we’ll make it.”

Montclair N.J.-based Quidsi began as 1-800-Diapers in 2005 and is now the largest online seller of baby products from wipes to car seats. The company added household products seller Soap.com in July 2010 and salon care site BeautyBar.com in November of last year. At that time, Amazon.com announced its intention to acquire Quidsi for $500 million plus some assumed debt. That acquisition closed this month.