Recently, I blogged about the new shopkick update: 3.0. (Read my original review of the old shopkick here.) After my first impressions, I was definitely less than impressed with the reduction in walk-in kicks (many stores’ walk-in kicks were cut in half). However, shopkick’s new “lookbooks” are now allowing users to “unlock” extra walk-in kicks on certain days, in certain stores. Today, I tried out this new feature in Target, Crate & Barrel, Old Navy, and Aerie. All I had to do was open the app and enter the main screen. Shopkick supported stores appear in little cards you can either swipe through or stretch out.
Stores with locked kicks have a lock icon in the upper right hand corner. Open that store’s “lookbook” to preview merchandise, swipe through all the pages, and unlock bonus walk-in kicks you’ll score the next time you visit that store. For example, here’s a page from Best Buy’s lookbook:
Ordinarily, I’d get just 35 kicks for walking in Best Buy (50 with the old version of the app), but now, if I spend 30 seconds with the Best Buy lookbook, I can earn a 100 kick walk-in.
You can only unlock extra walk-in kicks on certain days, so part of successful shopkicking means checking out what the app has to offer and planning your shopping trips on lucrative kick days.
Shopkick is adding a ton of of new stores like Urban Outfitters, Forever 21, and DSW, which is really exciting. Right now, you can only score a couple one-kick bonuses in these stores’ shopkick cards but I hope that, soon, they’ll dish out walk-in kicks too.
Shopkick is currently offering some pretty good scanning opportunities. I earned 100 extra kicks scanning easy to find items in Aerie today. However, there is some store overlap when it comes to scans. I scanned a few items in Target today, and now those same items no longer qualify for kicks if I scan them at CVS. Bummer.
When I originally blogged about the shopkick update, I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to score as many kicks as I was used to. Now that the “unlock walk-in kicks” feature is accessible, I’m not too worried that kicks will be hard to find. I earned over 500 kicks on a brief shopping trip to the mall today, without really trying.
Buy & Collect is getting bigger. More stores, like Crate & Barrel are offering kicks for purchases.
TIP: The new version of shopkick will seriously drain your iPhone’s battery. I used to leave shopkick running while I made my rounds at the mall; now I’m going to have to close the app between walk-in kicks, if I’ll be shopping at one store for a while. Nothing will put a damper on a shopping trip more than a dead smart phone, so I’ll have to be smart about when I have shopkick up and running.