Shopping Guru – Plan, Shop and Save with Amazon
Shopping Guru is a mobile app to plan, shop, and save with Amazon. But wait, it is not just another shopping app. Make goal-driven purchases, share items from Amazon’s app or website, price drop notifications, product availability alerts, and more. Sounds interesting! Read along.
Got some ad hoc items to purchase? No problem. You can share items from Amazon’s app or website with Shopping Guru making it easier to transfer your wishlist or other items. You can even share an item that is currently unavailable. Alternately, you can always add items from Shopping Guru itself. Organize items into Item Groups for convenience. Once added, Shopping Guru will track product availability and price changes.
Take your shopping one level further by making goal-driven purchases using Shopping Guru projects. Have you ever wondered how to set up a cool home theater? Or that vegetable garden you always wanted. Shopping Guru takes the guesswork out and makes it easy to plan your purchases as projects by choosing from several out-of-the-box templates. Think of a template as a guide for what you should buy. For example, if you are looking to set up a home theater, choose the Home Theater Setup template. Likewise, if you were always wanting to set up a vegetable garden, but did not have the time to research what all would be needed, use the Vegetable Garden Setup template. A template makes it easy to find the items. Of course, you can always add or remove items from the project. And if you do not find a template that matches your needs directly, use the Blank Project template to create a project from scratch. Once you set up a project, the app will provide an estimated total so that you can plan your purchases. Shopping Guru will track price drops and notify you. This way, you can time your purchases and save money.
Personalize the app using Settings. Choose theme color, launch the Quick Guide, get help, and more. You can also suggest a new template!
Disclaimer: The app uses affiliate links at no additional cost to the users. It does its best effort to get the product’s data, generate the price drop alerts, and perform its functions. Individual results may vary.
Shopping Guru Demo
iOS
Android
Shopping Guru Screenshots
iOS
Android
Shopping Guru Features
Following is the list of Shopping Guru features.
- Manage Ad hoc Items.
- Share an item with Shopping Guru from a product page on Amazon’s mobile application or website. You can also share an item that is currently unavailable.
- Organize items into Item Groups for ease of management. An Item Group could be a wishlist, a specific type of grouping (such as Repeatable Items), and so on. An Item Group named “Wish list” is created by default.
- Manage the item quantity.
- Update/delete items.
- Refresh item prices on-demand.
- Track price movements (up or down).
- Buy a pending item using Amazon’s mobile app or website.
- Mark items as purchased or pending purchase for tracking purpose.
- Plan and manage your purchases as Projects.
- Choose from several out-of-the-box Project Templates to identify what you may need for a given project. You can always use the Blank Project template to create a project from scratch.
- Lookup items on Amazon’s site using the keywords or specify your own to refine the search.
- Update/delete Recommended Items.
- Update/delete Optional Items.
- Add/update/delete Custom Items.
- Manage the item quantity.
- See the overall project budget estimate.
- Refresh item prices on-demand.
- Track price movements (up or down).
- Add pending items to the Amazon cart in one go.
- Buy an individual pending item using Amazon’s mobile app or website.
- Mark items as purchased or pending purchase for tracking purpose.
- Periodically check product prices in the background and show price drop notifications.
- Periodically check for unavailable products and show a notification when a product becomes available.
- A convenient Savings Dashboard to show the overall savings.
- Choose a color Theme (via Settings).
- Choose a Country/Area to ensure that the correct currency and target Amazon site is used (via Settings).
- Configure Settings to customize the app.
Disclaimer: The app does best effort to get the products data, generate the price drop alerts and perform its functions. Individual results may vary.
Shopping Guru FAQs
Q. How much does the app cost?
The app is free.
Q. How can I get started with Shopping Guru quickly?
- Go to Amazon’s mobile app or website on the phone and navigate to the respective product’s page. You can do this for the items in your wish list or any other product on Amazon. Use the share button and look for Shopping Guru in the list.
Note: You may have to scroll till you see Shopping Guru.
- Do this for each item you would like Shopping Guru to track.
- From this point, Shopping Guru will start tracking price and alert you when the price drops.
- When you are ready to make a purchase simply swipe left on the item on iOS (or long press on Android) to initiate the purchase. This will launch Amazon’s mobile app and you can complete the purchase as normal.
- Optional: Once you have completed the purchase, again swipe left on the item on iOS (or long press on Android) and mark it as purchased. This will update how much you have saved using Shopping Guru.
Q. What is the best way to use the Shopping Guru app?
You can use the Shopping Guru app in the following ways to get the most out of it.
- When you have ad hoc items to purchase, simply head to the Items tab. This offers builtin price tracking, product availability checks, and Amazon app/website integration to make your purchases. You can either share items from Amazon’s mobile app/website or use the search capability to add items to Shopping Guru. On top of that use Item Groups to organize items.
- Use the Projects tab to make goal-based purchases by creating projects using the out-of-the-box templates or from scratch. Shopping Guru will automatically track price drop and movements for you and it provides a convenient way to integrate with the Amazon shopping cart.
- Use the Savings Dashboard to track your savings.
- Use the Settings to personalize, get help and more.
Note: Although Shopping Guru offers convenient item search for Amazon, sometimes you may want to look up specific items on Amazon directly and then use the Shopping Guru app for planning your purchase and getting the price alerts.
Q. Which stores are supported in the Shopping Guru app?
Shopping Guru is currently available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store in the US.
Q. Can I share an item from Amazon’s mobile app or website with Shopping Guru? How can I transfer my wishlist to Shopping Guru?
This is a useful scenario when Shopping Guru and lets you leverage Amazon’s site/app for researching an appropriate items, and then using Shopping Guru for price and availability alerts. You can also use this capability to transfer your wishlist items to Shopping Guru.
- Go to Amazon’s app or website and navigate to the respective product’s page. Use the share button and look for Shopping Guru in the list.
Note: You may have to scroll till you see Shopping Guru.
- Following are the known issues on iOS with reasonable workarounds mentioned below.
- On iOS 14 Shopping Guru may not show in the share targets the first time you launch Safari. It works fine on the mobile app.
Workaround: To share from Safari, simply click on share second time. - The share button next to the product image does not show Shopping Guru in the targets list.
Workaround: Use the standard Safari share button at the bottom of the page (and not the one next to the image).
- On iOS 14 Shopping Guru may not show in the share targets the first time you launch Safari. It works fine on the mobile app.
- Following are the known issues on iOS with reasonable workarounds mentioned below.
How do I set up a project in Shopping Guru?
- Install the Shopping Guru app (iOS | Android).
- If you are using the app for the first time, please review the quick tour. There are demo videos available as well.
- Create a project. Choose from several out-of-the-box templates or create from scratch. You can also suggest a common template to us from the Settings tab.
Tip: You can customize the search by using more specific keywords. You can also add specific items.- Use Recommended Items that one must buy, in general.
- Use Optional Items for nice to have items.
- Add any Custom Items that your users must buy, but were not included in the template.
- Optional: Delete any unnecessary items.
- Save your project and go back. You should now be able to see the newly added project on the list.
Q. Which price does the Shopping Guru app show? Is it always the price from Amazon or does it include other merchants too?
By default, Shopping Guru shows the lowest new price across all merchants. If the lowest new price is not available for some reason, it will try to fetch the lowest used price. Please note that there may be additional charges, such as shipping. Similarly, there may be additional discounts, such as coupons. You will get to see these once you have added item(s) to the cart. When you are directed to Amazon from Shopping Guru, you may see more pricing options. Please feel free to use the option that is most suitable for your needs.
Q. How does Shopping Guru use affiliate links? How does Shopping Guru make money?
Shopping Guru uses affiliate links to refer to products on Amazon. We make a small commission when you make a purchase using our affiliate link. However, this comes at no additional cost to you. That is, you do not pay more because you are using the Shopping Guru app. The data shown in the Shopping Guru app is based on the information obtained from Amazon. When Shopping Guru directs you to Amazon, you may be able to find more options, such as lower prices and more items. Also, the price you see on Amazon is the price that will apply regardless of the price shown in the Shopping Guru app. Please feel free to use the option that is most suitable for your needs.
Q. Once I add an item to Amazon’s cart, can I change it? Or can I buy something else altogether?
Of course, you can. Once Shopping Guru directs you to the Amazon’s site/mobile app, you can simply click “Continue” and feel free to proceed further as you please. This may also be needed in cases, such as, when you want to choose a specific color or size of a product that may not be available in the Shopping Guru search results.
Q. I successfully completed my purchase. What next?
We recommend you to mark the purchased items in the Shopping Guru app. This is helpful for both tracking purpose as well as Shopping Guru’s add to cart functionality – it will only add the items that are pending purchase.
Q. If I use Shopping Guru does that mean I do not need to use Amazon’s app or website?
Absolutely not. Amazon’s app and the site are quite helpful in finding the items you want. While Shopping Guru does offer some search capability it is not as powerful as Amazon’s native app and site (see Shopping Guru Limitations). For simple needs, it may be fine though. Once you have identified the items you want, that’s where Shopping Guru comes into the picture for planning the purchases, price watch and timing your purchases better. Once you are ready to make a purchase, simply use the add to cart feature of Shopping Guru to add the item(s) to Amazon’s cart. The actual purchase is done on Amazon’s site/app. In short, Shopping Guru is complementary to Amazon’s app/site.
Q. The currency shown in Shopping Guru does not match my country or the one I would like to use. How can I change it?
Shopping Guru uses currency based on your device’s language settings. If you cannot change these, you can simply go to Shopping Guru’s Settings and update the Language setting.
Note: The language setting can be changed only once.
Q. How do I add a specific item to a Shopping Guru project?
Note: Use the method below only when working with a project. For ad hoc items, prefer sharing item with Shopping Guru.
This is a useful scenario when Shopping Guru and Amazon’s site/app can be used in combination to buy a specific item, such as one with a specific color. In such cases, do the following.
- Go to Amazon’s site/app and under the “Product Information” section copy the ASIN value as shown in the screenshot below.
- Paste the ASIN value in the Item Search as shown below and click on search. The result should show a specific item.
Q. How do I request support?
Please use Settings->Submit Support Ticket within the app to raise a support ticket.
Q. What data is collected via anonymous usage tracking?
The anonymous usage tracking helps us in learning how the application is used so that we can add the most useful enhancements. No personal data is ever tracked. Following is a list of data that is tracked.
- General high-level geographical data (at country and city level)
- Application feature usage
- Application errors
Q. What are some limitations of the Shopping Guru app?
Following is a list of key limitations that we would like our users to be familiar with.
- Shopping Guru uses Amazon’s recommended APIs to get the data. So, what you see in the app is subject to what is available via Amazon’s APIs.
- There are limits, such as the number of calls that can be made to Amazon’s APIs in a given time period. Hence, Shopping Guru does a best effort to refresh item prices and track any changes. Also, Amazon’s site is very dynamic and has frequent price changes. Hence, it may occasionally happen that Shopping Guru may not catch a price change. Although we do not expect this to happen easily.
- Shopping Guru does not have access to all the data that you can see on Amazon’s website or the mobile app. For example, data like average user rating.
In spite of these limitations, we sincerely believe that the app will be useful and hope you have a great experience using it. We will also try our best to update the app with any relevant Amazon API changes. Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to Contact Us.
Q. Does the app store any credit card information?
No, Shopping Guru does not store any credit card information. All the purchases are made directly on Amazon’s site or the Amazon mobile app. Shopping Guru makes it easy to plan your purchases and redirects you to Amazon’s mobile app/website to place an order. Once redirected, you are completely into Amazon’s website/app and would use it as usual.
Change Log
| V1.2.1 |
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| V1.2 |
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| V1.1.3 |
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| V1.1.2 (Android only) |
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| V1.1.1 |
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| V1.1 |
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| V1.0.3 |
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| V1.0.2 |
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| V1.0.1 |
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| V1.0 |
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