Created by: Barnes & Noble.
The Barnes & Noble Bookstore iPhone® application gives customers of the store a quick way to find new books, music and movies.
The application has four main features:
- Discover – The Discover feature allows you to see the latest and greatest at the store. It has four subcategories:
- Bestsellers – The Bestsellers tab shows the most popular media currently available for sale.
- New Releases – The latest book, CD and DVD releases can be found on the New Releases tab.
- B&N Recommends – This tab shows what items are highly recommended by Barnes & Noble staff.
- B&N Review – The Review tab features longer essays and reviews on books, CDs and DVDs available for sale at the store.
- Search – Using Search with the camera function is finicky. I tried several CDs, a former bestselling hardcover book and a DVD and it only found the DVD. Fortunately you can do a text search as well based on the title or author/artist.
- Stores – The Stores feature looks for Barnes & Noble locations based on your location. You can input a city, state and zip code to find stores. Once you’ve found the store you want, it will pull up the Maps application on iPhone. The only downside to this is that once you leave the application, you’ll lose anything you had in your cart.
- Cart – Tap here to view the items you placed in your cart. Unfortunately, the app isn’t configured to actually process the sale; instead, it transfers your cart to Safari in order to complete the checkout process.
Probably the best feature on this application is the Find and Reserve In-Store button. Once you’ve found the item you want, you can tap this button to arrange for a local store to hold the book for you. Provide your name, email address and phone number on the Reserve screen and the store will send you an email when the item is ready to be picked up. It will be held for 3 business days.
You can also access your Barnes & Noble account from the application by tapping Account on the About page. As with the Cart feature, this will exit the application and open a new page in Safari in order to view your account information.
Pros: Provides quick info about new books, CDs and DVDs. Can snap pictures of books, DVDs or CDs and have the app look it up. Can reserve in-store via an email component within the application.
Cons: Doesn’t do much beyond help you find books and media for purchase. Camera search feature is limited. Does not have capability to purchase items via application.
