MyVoucherCodes, the UK’s leading discount voucher code site, is preparing to go hyper-local. The idea isn’t a new one: let users find the best local deals using their iPhone via GPS.
In fact, Vouchercloud from Invitation Digital, which we profiled in February, is another such offering. There’s also competition from the host of deal-a-day Groupon clones, of which MyVoucherCodes founder Mark Pearson has one of his own – and Groupon itself, of course.
But that hasn’t put off MyVoucherCodes, which in its current form claims to have saved consumers £52m in 2009 alone, driving £480m worth of sales to its thousands of business partners. With its soon-to-launch MyVoucherCodes Local, the pitch is that smaller local businesses, with the discoverability offered by the pending iPhone app, can compete more effectively with the bigger players, thus helping to “prevent the gap from widening between local businesses and larger chains.” Well, that’s the aim.
Pearson chimes in: “Everything points to the fact that High Street sales are slowing down, and I firmly believe that this could be prevented if these businesses took advantage of tried and tested methods online companies have used to advance their market positions.”
And on that note, MyVoucherCodes Local is offering free signup for the first 5,000 offline businesses in the UK who pre-register for the service.