Guest post from Cameron Gross
This week, our team published Best Buy's first application for the Android platform. It is a beginning. We look at it as a work in progress. Can we call it "beta?"
We have a lengthy list of features and user stories we are working to implement. For now, our first release includes: search, browse, add to cart, complete purchase (through Best Buy's Mobile website), and the beginnings of some offer delivery on the home screen. Our process is one that encourages the release of a "work-in-progress" for users to try and provide feedback. It is this feedback that will guide the priorities in future releases.
Features at the top of our list include:
* MORE OFFERS!
* Store locator
* Improve search
* Add Reward Zone features
* More offers
After that, the pile of ideas we are working to develop is tall. They are just ideas. Ultimately, we are hoping to get guidance from users and their preferences to determine the features we should add next. If you have ideas, please feel free to email us (bbyandroid@gmail.com), comment here, or post your suggestions on IdeaX.
From a technical perspective, this application is a public display of Best Buy's ongoing effort to embrace an API (Application Program Interface) data strategy. Projects like Remix, Giftag, Idea Giftr, and our mobile applications on iPhone and Android take advantage of APIs. It is an approach that makes various kinds of information portable and reusable in the interest of enhancing customer experience- without violating any privacy agreements. Using APIs accelerates our ability to produce useful applications that have consistent information.
Our pursuit of developing APIs for "everything" gives us the ability to bring the Best Buy shopping experience and consumer electronics expertise to any place the customer desires from mobile devices to social networks to connected (IP) televisions.
