Social media apps and AI chatbots dominate the app charts on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. One or two games usually hover in the top 10, but from month to month, little changes.
However, the holiday season is as inescapable as death or taxes, and its unstoppable approach touches everything, including app stores.
For a brief moment, a single shopping app hit the number one spot on the App Store, ahead of ChatGPT and Gemini.
GoWish launched in 2023 and rapidly grew into its current spot as the top wishlist and gifting app. I couldn’t understand why a wishlist app could be so popular, so I dove in and gave it a go myself.
My initial impressions of GoWish were disappointing
I’m tired of modern apps
One of the more frustrating experiences of modern digital apps is the sign-up process.
I’m tired of jumping through a corporate-flavored slideshow describing how this app will change my life before plugging in my details, validating my emails, then being treated to a walkthrough of all the app’s features.
GoWish cheerfully adopts this design language.
As one might expect from a wishlist app, GoWish starts you off by suggesting that you build a wishlist.
However, in an age where I’ve become accustomed to data-driven recommendations, GoWish’s suggestions were bizarrely irrelevant.
They probably fit existing shopping trends, but I skipped the recommendations for cologne and AirPods and finally jumped into the app.
Creating a wishlist is simple and takes just a few seconds. However, I quickly stalled.
GoWish was throwing recommendations at me, but a lack of any relevant data meant I might as well have typed “suggest gift ideas” into Gemini.
On the Inspiration tab, I’m presented with a sea of influencers, brands, and trending products. The trending page was particularly irrelevant; it’s hard to believe items are actually trending when they all have the “sponsored” tag below them.
Using GoWish feels a lot like TikTok. The core experience is fun, but the app’s purpose lies in the supplemental marketing designed to suck you into buying sponsored content. But unlike TikTok, GoWish’s core feature is pretty good.
GoWish’s strength is in its simple but versatile wishlists
You may never buy duplicate gifts again
It’s a sad tale of modern software that apps and websites, which started with a powerful, unique selling point, have become bloated to the point that their success is mostly due to momentum rather than innovation.
Facebook and most other social media apps are the best examples of this phenomenon.
GoWish started out as a wishlist gimmick created by the Danish-Swedish postal service, and it’s this core feature that survives today.
The core feature of GoWish is that you can quickly add any item from any website to your wishlist.
While the app suggests products, and brands are apparently adding “GoWish” buttons to their websites (I couldn’t find one when I looked), you can paste any link into your wishlist, and the app will try to auto-populate the relevant fields.
It’s a mixed bag; items from Amazon fit neatly in, but the app failed to accommodate my attempts to add products from Games Workshop and Sony.
The link is there, but you don’t get the detailed breakdown of the item that you would on an item from Amazon.
Nevertheless, the final result is a simple wishlist that clearly displays everything you’ve added.
The best part is that when you share it, the recipient doesn’t have to wade through all the junk to see what you want.
GoWish’s sharing features are unmatched
Create a wishlist for any situation
When someone views your wishlist, they can click any item to go directly to the product.
They can also reserve it to avoid duplicate purchases and mark it as bought. It won’t show who reserved or bought what, but it’s an excellent way to avoid embarrassing scenarios around the Christmas tree.
You can also follow a wishlist and receive updates when someone adds an item. This is useful for creating a living wishlist that can last for multiple occasions. It’s also perfect for collaboration.
GoWish has a collaboration feature, where you can create a wishlist on behalf of someone. You can then share this wishlist with others and build it yourself. This is an incredibly useful feature.
For example, my father is notoriously ambivalent about creating wishlists, so the rest of my family usually engages in long text messages about what to get him. With GoWish, we can all collaborate on adding items, then mark them as reserved or bought.
Collaborative wishlists are brilliant, but you can forget about the recommendations
GoWish’s collaborative wishlist features take the stress out of Christmas shopping for me. Sharing the app with my family ensures I don’t worry about duplicating gifts, and I’ll stay up-to-date on what they want.
However, I’m shocked by how terrible the recommendations are. GoWish’s only metrics for recommending products are age and gender. Even then, it shows irrelevant products.
I created a wishlist on behalf of a fictional 80-year-old man. According to GoWish, an ideal gift would be a Roblox gift card.
More work on recommendations is sorely needed to make the app more useful, but its wishlist features are enough to carry it for now.
