MoneySupermarket.com Voucher iPhone App Review

Written by John Thompson on July 9, 2010 · Filed under Review, Software 

MoneySupermarket.com offers countless services to try and help you save money in every sector of the economy. It will compare prices on a whole host of services ranging from the best broadband deals to home insurance, but if there’s one platform you wouldn’t expect to see it on, it would be as an iPhone app.

Nevertheless, that’s exactly where it is right now, in the form of a voucher application which helps you find the best deals around you using your location and displaying offers nearby. There are a number of voucher applications on the App Store already (such as VoucherCloud iPhone app we’ve previously looked at), but this one has a major advantage: it’s an existing service.

As Moneysupermarket already had a ‘online vouchers’ database available, making this available on the iPhone was a logical and relatively easy move, making it more comprehensive than many other free applications currently available.

The annoyances of pop-up banners aside, the free MoneySupermarket app is fairly well designed and simple enough to find your way around to get the best deal. With the small screen estate of the iPhone, the interface seems somewhat cluttered at times. It’s actually split in to five information sections – six when an ad for MoneySupermarket appears – and this can make it somewhat complicated and difficult to find what you want quickly.

At the top of the home page, you’ll find quick links to edit your personal details, and perform a search for various products too. Under here, the main page is split in to 8 categories, which you can scroll along to find what you want. These include bars, days out and even groceries, so you aren’t short of choice here.

In the main part of the home screen (see what I mean when I said it got a little complicated?), there are a further 4 tabs to choose from, allowing you to find what’s local, popular, new or ending. I was surprised to find that the ‘What’s Local’ section of this worked without any problems on my 1st generation iPod Touch, so it must have gotten information from my home Wi-Fi connection to find an accurate location of where I was.

I found the ‘What’s Popular’ section to be the most useful section of this application, as it turned up some great deals available, such as ‘Buy 1 Main Meal and Get Any Pizza for 45p’ at a pizza place close to where I live. I found myself using this section of the application more than any other, as I didn’t need to search for anything in particular; I could just browse through what other people were using which was great.

If you want to search for a particular store or product, you can do so from the Search tab. You can type the product or store you want to search, or browse through a list of them in the bottom third of the screen. Again, the interface seemed quite busy which made the list hard to scroll efficiently, as you can only see three entries at a time, and the list is pretty big.

For functionality, the MoneySupermarket iPhone app works great, and is one of the best on the App Store. Using the app effectively, however, is another matter entirely, as the interface lets it down in many places. This is certainly an application that I would use on the Apple iPad, as it could really use the extra screen estate offered by such a device. If you want to download the app, it’s available for free on the App Store.

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