TheFind introduces local shopping

Mid-december, TheFind improved its already impressive shopping search, by adding local shopping capacities. If you are US-based, you can register to TheFind, indicate your town / state / zip code, and get near-by local presence of online stores. TheFind doesn’t have access to real-time inventory of those local stores; but by displaying their phone number, it gives you a way to quickly check if the product you are looking for is available or not.

It’s really a great v1 even if, I think, the usability could be improved:

• You can switch between “online view” and “offline view”, but therefore you cannot easily compare online and offline offers. It is especially important when, as a customer, you have to balance a better online price + delivery costs vs a higher offline price + immediate availability.
• It is not obvious to see and understand the “local items” checkbox on the left side is there to switch from “online view” to “offline view”.

Scott Hurff, from CSE Strategies, has a very interesting interview of Siva Kumar, TheFind CEO, regarding those new features, where we learn:

• TheFind builds the database of physical store adresses by crawling merchant web sites,
• Merchants can also submit their physical adresses through extranet or mail to TheFind.

Well done, TheFind! I’m waiting for the v2 :)