Shopdeck is a personalized shopping app that tracks purchases from multiple stores and emails in one place. It monitors package shipments, allows searching and browsing deals from favorite stores, and easily reorders common purchases. By connecting to email providers through OAuth, Shopdeck can extract purchase information without accessing users' private messages. It plans to offer this service for free to individuals while generating revenue from affiliate commissions and partnerships with stores.
2. What is Shopdeck? Shopdeck is the personalized persistent shopping app that pays attention to where and what you buy, track your packages, search and shop your favorite stores (and get their latest deals without clogging your inbox)... all in one aggregated place.
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4. Why A significant number of people begin an online shopping experience from their inbox (not search), where they can find links to stores from which they ’ve already successfully purchased. Trust is key to most consumers, and purchasing from a merchant with a previously-successful transaction is a common means of shopping. 60% of women and 49% of men regularly save email in their inbox to refer to it later when making purchases, according to a 2009 Epsilon consumer survey. 1 Additionally, Mint.com, Quicken, and finance apps are good at monitoring from who you buy, when , and the total purchase amount. However, if you also want to find what individual items you purchased, where your items are in transit, and simplify the how (re-engagement), no mainstream consumer option exists. 1 http://www.epsilon.com/021209-Email-Branding-Study/p118-l3
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6. Product Deep-dive Where is it? To reach the widest audience, Shopdeck is Webmail extensions/apps in both Gmail and Yahoo! Mail, the Web's largest email providers. Additionally, you can access the app via the Web, as well as mobile iOS (iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch) and Android applications, and a desktop (Windows Live Mail and Apple Mail) companion.
7. Product Deep-dive How does it work? With your permission, Shopdeck operates quietly in the background to find receipts from your mailbox and extract the important details (store name, items purchased, purchase price, date, package tracking information, etc.). Shopdeck only stores copies of your shopping receipts; other messages are discarded, to ensure the messages you want to keep private are kept private.
8. Product Deep-dive Who is it for? People who make online purchases with one or more email addresses provided by a large Webmail provider (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, etc.).
9. Product Deep-dive Why OAuth? Protect against reliance on a single client/service, as well as support Facebook Messages (future). Additionally, via OAuth, Shopdeck will get more user data than email clients have access to; for instance: know user location through mobile apps and access to user's profiles on Y!, Google, etc., increasing targeting with relevant local offers, as well as ability to push current deals for a given location (think: deals via foursquare) Building an always-on, OAuth-centric model ensures that as other email service providers come on, Shopdeck can scale to easily incorporate their inboxes. As the online public moves away from email and towards Facebook, Twitter and other channels, the app can maintain functionality via a service-agnostic model.
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13. Appendix: Competition Akin to Yahoo! Query Language's open tables XML format, Shopdeck will Competitor Why a threat? ShopDeck differentiation Obstacles to compete “ Receipts” folder/label (physical) Free, and longest-running solution on market Quick, easy one-time setup with no maintenance (time, money) costs Onus is on you to setup structure, rules, and maintain system, with additional difficulty of printing each receipt and filing “ Receipts” folder/label (digital) in Email Free, and second-longest-running solution on market Quick, easy one-time setup with no maintenance (time, money) costs Same as above, minus printing/filing issues WeShop Offers OAuth persistent import of mail for receipts Does not share your data; focus on privacy Social focus will scare most of the consumer public from a private offering OtherInbox Persistent OAuth mailbox access and message organization Shopping-only focus No focus on a given mail vertical MyThings Allows emails to be forwarded, stored, and catalogued Shopping-only focus No large brand recognition or partnerships Swipely Offers OAuth persistent import of mail for receipts Does not share your data; focus on privacy Social focus will scare most of the consumer public from a private offering Mobile Receipt Allows physical receipts to be captured and catalogued Access and mine relevant data regardless of what device/app you are using No strong competence demonstrated in Web mail; no brand recognition TripIt Patents for parsing forwarded email Initially not travel-oriented, and both brand and service is as inclusive as needed Brand restricts its markets; hyper-competitive in travel space only Mint.com Trusted vendor for user’s financial transactions; wants detailed transaction information Lower barrier-to-entry; not an overall financial analysis tool; focus on simplifying purchases (fun!) not managing assets (boring) Mint has long faced user reticence to share more data with the firm due to security concern
14. Appendix: Sample filter Akin to Yahoo! Query Language's open tables XML format, Shopdeck will parse email receipts based on Shopdeck- and developer-created filters. This will allow Shopdeck to scale to support tail commerce quickly. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <table xmlns="http://api.shopdeck.com/v1/schema/table.xsd" https="false"> <meta> <author>Micah Laaker (micah@laaker.com)</author> <storeName> Amazon.com </storeName> <storeURL>http://www.amazon.com/</storeURL> <description>???</description> <storeAffiliateId>f0GHg546456fhjx21W</storeAffiliateId> <storeIconFavicon>http://.../favicon.ico</storeIconFavicon> <storeIcon64>http://.../icon64.png</storeIcon64> </meta> <filter> <inputs match="all"> <key type="xs:string" id="from" value="id@amazon.com" match="exact" /> <key type="xs:string" id="reply-to" value="amaz" match="wildcard" /> <key type="xs:string" id="subject" default="en_US" /> </inputs> <outputs> <date>{xpath.to.object}</date> <price>{xpath.to.object}</price> <item>{xpath.to.object}</item> <shipping>{xpath.to.object}</shipping> <storeUrlFinal>http://{something}.amazon.com/{values}/s={storeAffiliateId}</storeUrlFinal> </outputs> </filter> </table>