cellfire_logo I’m never organized enough to clip coupons (or even remember to collect them from the supermarket) so Cellfire seems like an ideal solution.

It’s a small application that runs on your Windows Mobile phone (or can be accessed via a web browser interface) which downloads available local offers (you tell it your postcode) and you can search and redeem them in stores.

cellfire_wm The offers range from half price coffee to free slices of pizza, video rental or music downloads and many others, frequently updated and offered at no cost to you (beyond data costs if you download updates over the air)

I love the idea, but I think there are some ways it could improve to make it a much more useful.

  • Searching and filtering offers is a bit rudimentary, I’d like to see more granularity so I can quickly see if there’s something relevant to my current needs, but at the same time it’s important for their business model to have the serendipity of discovering new stores so a general browse mode is still needed. I’d like to be able to specify things I’m not interested in (diapers or all-you-can-eat Seafood Diners for instance) and raise the priorities of things I am (eg non-chain coffee shops, organic produce, independent music stores).
  • Location appropriate offers. I’m not going to drive 20 miles for a half price latte so it’s not worth showing those to me when I look for coffeeshops, but by talking to the GPS on my phone (or maybe integrating with something like Navizon for users without GPS) the offers can be much better targeted to where I am right now. A neat, but slightly freaky, extension would be to look ahead in my calendar to see what locations I’ve entered and find offers in those areas as well.
  • Smart sorting. Similar to the location appropriate offers it makes sense to show me the closest offers first as I’m more likely to use them, but it would be good to have options to also sort based on other factors such as value of offer or loyalty to a specific store.
  • Mapping integration. Don’t just give me the address give me a hot link to Windows Live Search for Mobile or (if not available) to Live Maps so I can get directions. Also with map integration you could plot offers and let me optimize my shopping trips ;)

The other thing I’d like to see is better integration with supermarket coupons – I’d be willing to pair my QFC Club Card to my Cellfire account in order to have relevant offers/coupons made available electronically (and it would be great if I could scan them at the quick checkout and not need to queue at the counter – similar to what we showed at Advance08). It would greatly enhance the value of the application and make more more likely to take advantage of some of the promotions offered. In fact if managed well it could be a real loyalty bonus as you’d have a constant reminder of the value of your continued patronage.

One new feature Cellfire could accommodate would be Club Card membership. Rather than me need to carry around the barcodes for QFC, Blockbuster and Borders I could enter the information (either in the app or via their website) and have the card image delivered to my phone so I can scan that and dump the plastic chits. It’s a much simpler solution and even more practical than some other solutions I’ve seen.