Introducing Trade Me for Apple Watch

Trade Me turned 20 years young this month, but the Trade Me for iOS app has only been around for 9 of these years. From being a mere extension of the website, the iOS app has grown into a fully mature Trade Me experience. Today we are completing this experience by giving the iOS app a companion: Trade Me for Apple Watch.

Our iOS app evolved from being a simple proof of concept (back in 2010) to becoming the preferred way to interact with Trade Me for more than 750,000 members in January 2019. Over the last couple of years we have noticed that more and more of our members have started wearing Apple Watch devices. So much so that nowadays we see more Apple Watch owners who use Trade Me than there were iPhone owners back when we first started our native app journey!

Our vision for the Apple Watch app

The Watch app is built for the Trade Me member who doesn’t have time to muck about. After considering the expectations of the Apple Watch owners, and after looking into how people use their wearable devices, we concluded that our app must conform to these principles:

• Timely — the app must always show up to date information
• Personal — the app must not show any irrelevant content
• Quick to get done — any task should be able to be completed within seconds of raising the wrist

Our vision for the Watch app is to make it an indispensable companion for our iOS app.

What’s this app good for?

When the team started brainstorming and designing the app, we quickly realised that we already had two types of interactions that would deliver a lot of value to our members: the highly customisable Push Notifications and the personalised Activity Feed.

We believe that the Watch app is the quickest way to react to a notification and to become informed of the latest activity in your Trade Me account. You can quickly dictate a response to questions on your listings, you can easily place another bid when you’ve been outbid, and accepting a fixed price offer has never been quicker.

Tips to make the most of the app

In order to have the most fun using our app and to get the best experience you may want to do any of the following:

• use a passcode on your watch
• check that you have Push Notifications turned on for the iOS app by visiting the Account tab and navigating to the Notification Settings screen
• set up complications on your favourite watch face
• have a card associated with your Ping account
• make use of the Trade Me Watchlist when you engage with Trade Me

Feedback wanted

As with everything else we do, we want to learn from our members about what the app does well and, more importantly, where it falls short of expectations. The team read every single message that is sent to our email address so please don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can also tweet our team or myself.