You may not have heard of Surfdome.com – I admit I hadn’t before they sent me a press release announcing their new iPhone app. Surfdome are a European online “lifestyle retailer”, offering over 10,500 product lines across more than 200 brands.
So far so late-1990s. But the reason Surfdome contacted me was because they’ve just launched an iPhone and iPad app that makes it easy to browse their catalogue and place an order. Their aim is to enable their customers to do their shopping while on the go.
What I really like is the way you can filter products by price range, gender, size, and colour, meaning that you should be able to find the right item quickly. A built-in gift finder also makes it useful when you’re looking to buy that perfect present for someone else. Now, I reckon you’re cutting it too fine to use the Surfdome app to find gifts for Christmas but, of course, Christmas isn’t the only time you buy gifts for people… or do some shopping for yourself.
Surfdome MD Justin Stone commented on the app’s launch, saying, “I’m delighted our app is now live and fully operational. We put a lot of work into making our customer experience first class and the app is just our next step in doing this. We’ve had great feedback from our customers on how quick and easy the app is to use and it just shows where the web and mobile phones are taking retail.”
He makes a good point, actually: this does show where smartphones are taking retail. If I visit an online retailer and there isn’t a mobile-optimised version of their site I feel a little put out… while retailers who have worked to ensure mobile visitors have a good experience are much more likely to elicit some pennies from my wallet.
Surfdome certainly makes mobile shopping easy and, if this is a vision of smartphone based retail, I think that can only be a good thing. The Surfdome app is available for iPhone and iPad and can be found in the App Store.

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One suggestion is that it’s the new multi-tasking ability that’s eating into data: apps running in the background that are continuing to send and receive data. This is certainly possible – I often minimise apps and want them to keep doing whatever they’re doing – but unless you specifically close them those apps will remain in the background even when you’re finished with them… days at a time. If this is a concern to you (and it is to me, but usually because I think having too many active apps will slow my phone down) double-tap the home button on your iPhone, then hold your finger on any of the active app icons. They’ll start to “jiggle” and a red X will appear on each icon. Tap the X and the app will be properly closed down.
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