CROSS-SITE ONLINE SHOPPING ASSISTANT
A shopping assistant for online shopping. The invention provides for a software system to assist consumers in automatically locating and systematically applying discount codes to electronic commerce platforms to obtain reduced prices. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, discount codes are automatically located, evaluated against a user's shopping cart, and evaluated for the best results for the consumer. In the preferred embodiment, information about the utility of discount codes is recorded to machine readable storage.
1 . A software system to systematically apply one or more discount codes to an electronic commerce platform comprising:
a. a machine-readable list containing one or more codes;
b. information about how to apply one or more codes;
c. software to systematically apply one or more codes;
2 . A software system as recited in claim 1 , where one or more codes are automatically applied to the electronic commerce platform.
3 . A software system as recited in claim 1 , where one or more codes are automatically applied to the electronic commerce platform after one or more user instructions.
4 . A software system as recited in claim 1 , where the list of codes is retrieved from a remote machine-readable data source, a machine-readable storage local to the user, or some combination thereof
5 . A software system as recited in claim 1 , where information about how to apply codes is mapped to a specific electronic commerce platform or set of electronic commerce platforms.
6 . A software system as recited in claim 1 , where the computer software to systematically apply codes is partially or fully stored or executed on the user's computing system.
7 . A software system as recited in claim 1 , where the computer software to systematically apply codes is partially or fully stored or executed on a remote computing system with at least some of the results delivered to a user's computing system.
8 . A software system as recited in claim 1 , where the electronic commerce platform is a mobile website or application.
9 . A software system as recited in claim 1 , where the result of applying each code is recorded to machine-readable storage and optionally used to determine the best combination of one or more codes to apply to receive the lowest price.
10 . A software system as recited in claim 1 , where one or more codes are removed after being applied as a part of the systematic application of codes.
11 . A software system that collects and records data from one or more consumers about the results of applying one or more codes to electronic commerce platforms comprising:
a. machine-readable data storage
b. computer software to observe the results of applying codes
c. information about the electronic commerce platform and/or shopping cart to which codes were applied
12 . A software system as recited in claim 11 , where results data is collected and used to build a sorted list of codes organized by one or more dimensions.
13 . A software system as recited in claim 11 , where results data is collected and used to verify if codes are currently functional.
14 . A software system as recited in claim 11 , where results data is collected to interpret the current status of a code.