Image supplied courtesy of Argos

On the lead up to Christmas it can be expected that retailers will be pushing out their festive apps in a bid to wish us all a merry and profitable Christmas.

One of the first to launch its app is digital retailer Argos that has launched its 2014 Christmas Gift Finder. The world’s first swipe-to-like shopping web app, which has already been nominated for an industry award.

The Gift Finder takes a mobile approach, allowing all interactions to be made one handed and on the move, using any smart phone, tablet or desktop browser. As the user swipes the gifts that they would like they improve an intelligent collaborative filtering system that is running behind the scenes. Mark Steel, Head of Digital Trading, Marketing & Operations at Argos said: “With almost a quarter of our total sales now coming from mobile devices, we know shoppers are increasingly purchasing products on-the-go.  We’ve developed a rewarding mobile experience that is visually rich, thumb-friendly and intuitive to make Argos stand out from the crowd in the mobile battleground this year.”

James Dye, co-founder of Convert said: “Within the Argos Gift Finder the customer only discovers relevant, intelligently recommended products, one at a time, which makes for quick and easy decisions. It lets the customer drill down to a “maybe list” very quickly, then save, email the list or go straight on to purchase the items.”

The app has also been adapted for social media where it can be used as a smart social Facebook game ‘Friend or Fraud’, where players are invited to guess the users wish list. Users can also ‘Share or Shop’ which is a feature that allows users to give gift inspiration by emailing a particular product to a friend or click directly through to argos.co.uk to make a purchase.

Argos has also produced a digital Christmas list app for children to build a list for Santa Claus, complete with the child’s name and photo as well as an animated character. The list links to 3,000 toys that are on sale at Argos which the child can choose from and then share with friends and family via their parent’s email account.

Meanwhile Tesco has launched its Secret Scan-ta app that scans Twitter accounts to suggest gifts for users to buy. The user can input the Twitter handle of the person they are buying the gift for to provide inspiration for presents. The suitable gifts are linked to the user’s Tesco Clubcard website where they can purchase the products. Katie Aust, the digital marketing manager at Tesco Clubcard, said: “Christmas, although a happy season, can often bring with it panic and stress of buying gifts. This campaign gives the buyer a bit of genuine insight into what the recipient is really interested in, resulting in a personal, and thoughtful gift. It also promotes the huge offerings of the Tesco gifting range and the benefits of joining Clubcard and boosting vouchers.”