Mobile Shopping Engines

CNET Mobile: Read Reviews, Compare Prices

Mixed feeling on the mobile CNET shopper (the service, the description, the press release).

On one hand, I appreciate anyone who wants to help in this area. I research and retain a fair amount of product information before going brick 'n' mortar shopping, yet often get a feeling of disconnectness. After playing with products, things happen, and un-researched and lesser-researched products enter the mix. Even on a proxyless browser, I like the idea of shrinking a 100K+ page down to ~1K.

But finding the right amount of content per mobile page is not easy. A lot of mobile sites not only trim the fat, they also starve the muscle mass, and maybe even disrupt the functioning of vital organs.

two examples:

Reviews - there is a way to page through all of the prices, but we can only access a limited selection of the user opinions? Speaking of reviews, this would seem to be a perfect place for one of my favorite summary features, Pro and Con.

More Info - the site has messages like "Visit CNET.com for more detailed product information" and "For complete user opinion coverage, visit CNET.com"... but no link. Large information pages are not always bad, because they can be downloaded while doing other things. Having to navigate an unknown quantity of large pages is never a good thing.

+ + +

Like I say, the more mobile options the better, will be interesting to see if/how this progresses. I've seen a few mobile shopping apps scattered about, will have to pull them all together sometime for a more in-depth look.

http://m.cnet.com/ (also works with a standard web browser, check it out)

CNET Mobile: Read Reviews, Compare Prices (1)
Posted by Sean O'Rourke on June 19, 2005 at 10:33 PM
Archived at CNET Shopper | Mobile Shopping Engines