My kids have been poring through the holiday catalogs that are flooding my mailbox, circling everything they want for Christmas. Plenty of which might be junk. Since Consumr is currently the number one app for consumer reviews in the Apple store, I thought I’d try it out using my kids’ wish list to see just how valuable it can be for holiday shopping.
First off, the Consumr app’s search function is super easy. You can browse through their categories, search for an item in the search box, or scan a barcode for instant feedback. I was able to find every single product I searched for, which doesn’t always happen. When the results appear, you can easily see how many stars each item was given as well as how many people reviewed that particular product; the kind of thing you see on Amazon or Trip Advisor. Then when you click through on the item you like, it’ll tell you if it’s a good buy, just a so-so buy, or if you should skip buying it altogether.
You can also pin the page to Pinterest for quick reference later, which I love!
It’s not just toys and beauty picks, though; there are food reviews too. So if you’re standing in the grocery wondering if that new tomato sauce will be any good, you can quickly see what other people think. And if you use the app a lot, they’ll send you free samples for you to try out, which is a nice touch.
Of course consumer reviews are only as good as the consumers doing the reviewing–you want to be sure that Amy P has the same standards that you do if you’re going to trust her. So in order to boost our confidence in the reviews, Consumr manually reviews every rating, and each reviewer has a rating score next to their name, so you can see how trustworthy they are.
My only complaint is that there are aren’t that many reviews up for many of the products I’ve checked out so far–interestingly, there seem to be a lot more reviews of food than there are of toys. But this is one to download, because the more people who use it, the better it will be. –Kate
Download the Consumr crowdsourced product review app for your iOS device for free.
