Wedding wear seller David’s Bridal Inc. has launched mobile versions of its wedding planner and e-commerce tool, My Event. It includes six features to help brides-to-be organize their budgets, tasks and shopping lists, then share and collaborate on those tasks with their wedding parties through social networks.
The retailer had previously released a desktop version of My Event, which the new tablet-optimized site version mirrors, says Johanna Runyon, director of digital content. The new smartphone-optimized site version, however, is designed with a slightly different layout in order to make the tool function more like an app, even though the consumer is on David Bridal’s mobile web site, she says.
My Event is based on research David’s Bridal conducted to find the main challenges and fun aspects that brides identified as part of their wedding planning, Runyon says. One of the retailer’s surveys in November 2011 revealed that two-thirds of brides cited social media as a current or planned part of their celebrations, she says.
“David’s Bridal developed My Event to meet the needs of today’s brides who are increasingly looking to social media for inspiration and collaboration in order to create a uniquely personalized wedding celebration,” Runyon says. “By providing helpful tools and allowing brides to stay engaged wherever they are, we have successfully turned our mobile sites into a destination, not simply another e-commerce shopping site.”
The retailer hired m-commerce technology provider Usablenet Inc. to build the new mobile versions of the tool, she says. She declines to share how much David’s Bridal paid for the project. Chris Silva, an analyst at research and advisory firm Altimeter Group, says he regularly sees mobile-only projects like My Events costing in the six-figure range and, because this tool also works across desktop computers, it could be priced higher.
My Event’s features include:
- A wedding party organizer, which allows a bride to create a public or private group for her bridesmaids. She can invite them to join from Facebook, assign them to tasks and share products collected elsewhere in My Events.
- A personalized newsfeed that provides current updates and messages from the bride and her wedding party.
- “Mood Boards” similar to Pinterest boards, on which the bride and her party can collect images of products and weddings to share with one another. They may also share Mood Boards on Pinterest, Facebook or Twitter, David’s Bridal says.
- Task lists that can include notes and assignments for specific members of the wedding party.
- Shopping lists that the bride can customize with buying assignments for her bridesmaids or other notes. Users can buy items on the list through My Events.
- A budget planner that includes recommended spending allocations for the bride based on the total budget she enters.
David’s Bridal is No. 344 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 guide.
Usablenet ranks No. 3 among m-commerce technology vendors in Internet Retailer’s 2013 Leading Vendors to the Top 1,000 E-retailers guide.
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