It’s taken a while but the UK’s Invitation Digital has finally brought Vouchercloud, its location-based discount app, to Android. Like the company’s existing iPhone offering, the free app enables users to find the best offers local to them and have the associated ‘digital voucher’ delivered to and redeemable from their phone. That’s both off-line in brick ‘n’ mortar outlets as well as online via a traditional discount code. Its closest competitor in the UK is probably MyVoucherCode’s Local app, which targets iPhone and Android too.
Considering, however, that Vouchercloud boasts 1.2m downloads for the iPhone version, which was released over a year ago, it’s surprising that an Android version has taken this long to get out of the door. The answer may lie in the company’s decision to target non-smartphone users not long after it debuted on Apple’s smartphone with an SMS-based version. As I noted at the time, falling back on the humble text message – given the UK’s texting habits and low barrier of entry, particularly for teens – is a strategy that startups shouldn’t necessarily ignore. And indeed, Invitation Digital didn’t.
Another thing to note is that the Vouchercloud business model deviates slightly from most of its competitors. While the iPhone/Andoid app is free with 100’s of vouchers that are also fee to use, Vouchercloud is offering a small selection of high-value premium offers, which users actually have to pay for. The idea is that those select vouchers – should you actually redeem them – will in turn save you money and is how Vouchercloud gets paid too.