Since its launch several years ago, the deal-finding browser add-on Honey has grown its install base to 4.4 million users on Chrome, in addition to its smaller presence on Firefox and Safari. Initially conceived as an easier way to find savings by tracking sales and retailers’ promo codes, the company is now expanding its selection of online shopping tools to include an Amazon price drop tracker called DropList, along with other new tools for finding travel deals.
With its heavy focus on finding coupon codes, Honey has been missing out somewhat on making itself indispensable those online shoppers who mostly buy from Amazon. DropList’s launch is an effort to change that.
The feature is an expansion of Honey’s earlier efforts to help provide helpful pricing information to Amazon shoppers. It had earlier launched an informational feature called Price History, which displays historical pricing data on any product on Amazon’s marketplace. This was designed to help Honey users better understand if it was now a good time to buy, or if they should wait for prices to fall.
With DropList, Honey can now directly notify you when it’s time to snag the items you’re watching.
To use the feature, you simply visit a product page on Amazon after having installed the Honey extension. The extension adds Honey badges to the page, including one that flags whether or not the item is the “best deal” (or how much you’d save by shopping elsewhere), as well as the new “Add to DropList” option.
You can also add items to your DropList from Amazon’s shopping cart, if you prefer.
When you click the “Add to DropList” button, you can tell Honey to watch the price of that item for either 30, 60 or 90 days. If the price drops more than 5 percent, Honey will send an email to alert you. It will also email you when items on your list are about to expire, so you can extend your price tracking of the item in question, if desired.
The tool may be useful during Amazon’s upcoming Prime Day sale, which was just announced as taking place on July 11th, 2017, with deals beginning at 9 PM ET on Monday July 10th. If there are particular products you’re interested in watching, you can simply add them now to your DropList then wait to see if they become a part of the Prime Day sale’s savings.
DropList is currently only available for Amazon, but Honey says it plans to bring it to more stores over the summer.
To date, Honey has focused primarily on helping customers save when shopping from online retailers, but another new addition will expand Honey’s focus into the travel space.
Next week, Honey will officially launch Honey Travel, a savings tool that will allow Honey users to unlock member-only discounts when shopping for hotels. Honey says it will provide comparisons to rates on sites like Expedia, Priceline, Booking.com, and others, and when it doesn’t have the lowest rate, it will let you know.
“So far, we’re seeing an average savings of about $30 per night compared to the next cheapest rate online– that’s more than $200 for a weeklong vacation,” a Honey spokesperson notes.” In terms of total savings – booking through us as opposed to the hotel site – our users are getting up to 55% off,” they added.
Honey’s travel savings are being handled through a unique system, which involves the use of something called “HoneyKeys.” When you first install Honey, you’re offered one HoneyKey. As you continue to shop online, you’ll earn more keys. The keys randomly pop up on retailers’ checkout pages as a perk for Honey users.
The Honey Travel site (powered by Hotel Storm) is already live, and some users have discovered it despite it not having been formally announced.
Honey declined to share details regarding its revenue, but it makes commissions when users find a sale or coupon through its extension, much like other services in this space do. However, the company splits that commission through its cash bonus program, Honey Gold, which is meant to incentivize use of its software.
DropList is available now from the latest version of the Honey Chrome extension. Honey’s Travel site can be found here.