Shooger brings mobile coupons from iPhone to Android

Today a mobile coupon service called Shooger has joined the ranks of those offering their services on both iPhone and Android. The shopping application allows users of the two most popular smartphone OSs to receive coupons from over 50,000 merchant locations.

What’s the story?

For those who haven’t heard of them, mobile coupon services use digital versions of the paper coupons you can use to get discounts from retailers. Since mobile coupons either need to be scanned in-store, or just have the right information written on them, it doesn’t matter whether you print them on a paper or on a screen. And so mobile coupon services can let you store multiple coupons on your device, and use them when you need them.

How does Shooger work?

Shooger launched on iPhone last September, and is just now coming to Android. It claims that its coupons can be used in over 50,000 merchant locations around America – including some pretty big brands like Subway, Apple and Kmart.

How do you get a coupon?

There are two main ways to get coupons through Shooger. You can either search for them beforehand, or grab them on the spot:

Planning ahead: you can search through categories of shop, and pick out whatever coupons you fancy. So if you know you’re going clothes shopping, you can open the Shoes & Apparel category, and see what retailers are offering deals today. If you find a coupon you like, you “clip” it and save it your phone. You can also choose to follow that merchant, so any new coupons they offer will be sent to you automatically (either through the app or by SMS).
On the spot: there’s a location-based offer option. You can just ask the Shooger app to pull all the coupons that are active in the area around you, and see if there’s anything you like.

It also has a pretty nifty after-coupon service. Once you’ve found the coupon you like, you can click to call the merchant, get driving directions or open their website.

What we think?

There are quite a few mobile coupon services out there now – Zavers, Yowza!! and Tetherball are the ones that come off the top of my head. And one of the funny things about mobile coupons is that useability will only get you so far. You also need to have a really good selection of brands and retailers offering coupons. People are willing to forgive a slightly awkward interface if it means they get genuinely good service. Now, Shooger seems to have both a pretty decent selection of brands on its service and a good UI. I particularly like that it doesn’t rely totally on the application, and also works on SMS.

But the expansion into Android is a good sign: because while consumers like to get a good selection of retailers, it’s also true that retailers like to get a good selection of consumers. There are roughly 11 million iPhone owners in the States (we’ll have to re-evaluate that number after a week or two of iPhone 4 sales), and another 9 million or so Android owners. And that number of Android users looks like it will climb increasingly quickly as more manufacturers release smartphones packing the Google OS. With a single release, Shooger has doubled its potential audience – and therefore its attractiveness to retailers.