Buggy – Wayfair – Shop All Things Home Review

Would be absolutely the preferred way to shop if it didn’t hard-lock and require a kill/restart half the time you closed a pop out card (like reading reviews when you shop) or a photo light box (like looking at stuff when you shop), if the order information didn’t lag behind the website such that your order disappears into thin air for ten minutes after you placed it (like buying stuff when you shop), if it didn’t notify you with spam incessantly until you finally find the “no I obviously don’t want push notification marketing spam because it’s expressly against the app store rules” button buried in the settings, etc. The behavior where any viewing of the Wayfair website whatsoever throws you to the app even when you haven’t approved the open in app dialog is also not particularly charming. It makes it awfully hard to check your own account page or look up the order from the link in your email when the app steals every attempt then shows you nothing. Oh, and then there’s the UX that extends the “home” button all the way down to the bottom left corner pixel on the screen. You know the pixel if you have a Pro Max in your left hand, it’s the one you press all the time with your palm while reaching across the phone. In the Wayfair app they’ve designed that very commonly pressed pixel so that it helpfully erases the very complicated search you’ve set up, after the app also helpfully doesn’t offer any way to save that search. I’ve nearly thrown my phone against the wall in frustration after having shopping session after shopping session ruined by this UX flaw. Overall, you get the strong impression nobody at Wayfair shops through this app or even keeps it installed, because it’s absolutely excruciating to do either. It’s barely fit for purpose, it hangs so much, never mind all the rest. I restart it literally every 5 minutes looking for things because it hangs at least once every ten product navigations at the close or back step doing a simple “search, product, photos, close, specifications, back, reviews, close, photos, close, back, next product” type loop. In other words, shopping. So, I usually try the app out for a week until it gets in my way one too many times, then I delete it, come back a few months later. It’s never any different. The generic changelog is covering for the fact that the app hasn’t actually been significantly updated in a very long time, especially not for UX, bugs, or anything else that actually matters. I’m pretty sure they don’t prioritize this app compared to their website, and I’m also very sure whoever builds it doesn’t use it and doesn’t understand the usability or stability issues that are present. That is a real shame since it is otherwise the superior experience—the search function is pretty much -the- reason to use Wayfair over far cheaper, far more convenient options, and if the app worked worth a darn it’d be the best way to search. But this app is a bad citizen on the phone, so isn’t usable for me. In fact it’s so bad that I generally buy stuff at Amazon instead of even trying Wayfair’s website, because they break the web experience too if the app is installed so I got used to not going there anymore. So maybe someone should get on fixing some of the vast amount of stuff their QA department is missing, above, since it’s probably costing them business from others too.
Review by geoelectric on Wayfair – Shop All Things Home.