Browse, book and buy online in your local area on ShopAppy.com

Shop local on ShopAppy.com

ShopAppy makes it easier than ever to get just what you need from your favourite local shops and services. By bringing 24-hour local shopping to your home, ShopAppy supported by Visa is helping protect the shops that make our towns unique.

Founded in 2016 by Dr. Jackie Mulligan, ShopAppy is an easy-to-use website that allows you to go online, find participating shops in your area, and browse their products and services. Once you see something you like, you can decide to go in person, book or buy and then checkout in one simple transaction. You can make a booking or choose to have your shopping home-delivered or available to collect from the store or a single collection when you’re ready.

That means you can still support your local shopkeepers and businesses even if you’re shielding, at work, pressed for time, or just not able to get into town during the day. It also means you can support the local businesses that give your town or city its character, from homemade pies at the market to specialty gifts from craft stores, from booking a table at your local café to securing your place for an art workshop.

ShopAppy.com allows you to see what’s on your doorstep, book or buy it when you’re ready, to spend where your heart is and support your local community. You can shop at the super local businesses you know and love, places that offer much more than goods and services, they give you and the community opportunities to connect and support local jobs and producers.

Supported by Visa, ShopAppy service is now launching in more than 150 towns across the UK.

How to get your business online with ShopAppy

From as little as £3 a week and no commissions on sales, you can register your shop or service on ShopAppy, set up your store and start selling online to your local community. And it’s easy…

  1. Register your shop in your local area and choose your membership plan
  2. Once your account is verified, you can access your store and start listing your products and services on your own microsite which can link to your social media or another site too
  3. You will be contacted by one of ShopAppy’s friendly team to help you get started too so you and your business can make the most of the platform.

By joining your local area, you’re making it easier for residents and visitors to discover you, see that you’re open for business, see what you do and sell and you makes it easy for them to shop with you and with other businesses around you – locking that spend into your area. And ShopAppy takes care of all the communications for click and collect and home delivery too.

As part of ShopAppy, your local business can also be part of social media promotions as well as seasonal and national campaigns to support local such as our Love Local Day campaign in February and many others.

Don’t just take our word for it, learn about other businesses who are part of the growing ShopAppy family

Heavenly Sensations
Kirkcaldy

Heavenly Sensations

A hair and beauty salon owned by Amanda Allan, Heavenly Sensations was established in 2003 and has recently joined ShopAppy after the platform’s expansion into Kirkcaldy. Relying on customers coming into the salon for treatments and beauty services, Amanda had to close Heavenly Sensations when lockdown restrictions were put in place and was faced with trying to find a new way to generate income and continue engaging her customers.  

Having only bought a laptop for the first time a year ago, Amanda wouldn’t describe herself as a ‘tech savvy’ person, but ShopAppy presented a simple and easy way to start trading online. Considering how she could recreate the salon’s beauty services at home, Amanda contacted her skincare company to asked if they would consider putting together a skincare pack to sell online and found out they had combined a selection of their beauty skincare products giving a facials in a box. With different packages from anti-stress to anti-aging, the facials in a box have proved hugely popular and Amanda has been able to deliver these for free to her customers through ShopAppy. Making over £450 of sales in 24 hours during her first week on the platform, Amanda has been delighted with the success ShopAppy has brought the business and she even went out to donate £300 of these earnings to local charities to help give back to the local community. 

Most of our business comes from the local community and I’ve been overwhelmed by their support while we were closed, continuing to buy products and vouchers from us online through platforms like ShopAppy.com. When we reopened our customers were even refusing to use the vouchers, saying they would rather pay in full or use the vouchers next year – I still get really emotional at the generosity they have shown.

The Artery
Banbury

The Artery

‘My online art classes helped people switch off’: how creativity became a lifeline in lockdown.

Art shop owner Barry Whitehouse went from having no website to running virtual art classes for his local students – now, they’re joined by people from all over the world.

It may be packed into a small space, but The Artery is full of everything you would ever need to get creative. The Banbury shop is an art lover’s paradise, full of watercolour brushes, lino sets, calligraphy pens and more. Upstairs there is a classroom where owner Barry Whitehouse delivers art classes for up to eight students.

My customers range from complete beginners to professional artists and my passion is to make art accessible and affordable to everyone,” says Whitehouse. “I know all my customers by name and many are retired or ‘recycled teenagers’ as I like to call them. It is wonderful to see the positive effects learning art has, such as mindfulness, confidence building and creating communities.

In March 2020, he was forced to close his beloved shop and put his two part-time staff on furlough. Stuck at home like everyone else, Whitehouse started experimenting with streaming his classes online direct from his dining room via closed Facebook groups. The camera was trained on his easel and he offered step-by-step instructions just as he did in the real-life classes.

Those first few weeks were about getting my older students used to new technology,” he says. “For some, my classes were the only outside contact they got all week. It became a special time where they could connect and switch off from the stress of Covid-19 for a couple of hours. I have gone from around 50 students pre-lockdown to several hundred now.

A Little Decorum
Wimborne Minster

A little decorum

Alan has been running A Little Decorum, a unique stylish and contemporary gift shop in Wimborne Minster for 8 years. There is something for everyone. Gifts for him, delights for her, country and contemporary items for the home, reflecting the changing seasons and moods of life. People always have a warm welcome and friendly service offered by Alan.

In early 2020, the BID manager of Wimborne Minster introduced Alan to ShopAppy where he saw it as a great opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. Since being on the platform for 3 weeks, ShopAppy has been helpful and advantageous in promoting the business and the local town. As soon as A Little Decorum went live, he sold two products almost immediately. Alan has now uploaded about 120 products on the site. He has also put posters on his physical windows and advertised the platform through his social media channels, Facebook, where 800 people have interacted already with the hope that they convert to buying products from ShopAppy.

For Alan and A Little Decorum, the benefits of being on the platform include having control; it’s been an opportunity to learn new skills, where if there are any issues there is immediate support from the wonderfully helpful ShopAppy team, such as bespoke video tutorials; it’s a very versatile platform for him. Moving forwards, Alan has vowed that he will continue running his business on ShopAppy, as this is something which he sees as permanent. It has been phenomenal for Alan and A Little Decorum. 

Being unable to open during lockdown was a huge worry for my business and I’ve never faced a challenge like this in the eight years I’ve been running the shop. Overnight I had to completely rethink how I sold my products, I then came across the ShopAppy.com platform and its partnership with Visa that allowed me to sign up for free and start selling my products again right away. Being able to sell my products online without the hassle of setting up my own website made the process very simple and we actually sold out of two products almost immediately after signing up – it will certainly remain a permanent part of my business offering going forward!

Blind Bus Driver
Kendal

Blind Bus Driver

Hidden away in the heart of Kendal town centre, The Blind Bus Driver is a cool "Speakeasy" bar serving classic Golden Age cocktails alongside modern original craft mixes. Specialising in straight up cocktail service, and with a curated collection of vintage whiskies, liqueurs and other spirits, the BBD team are always ready to adapt recipes and ingredients to create innovative riffs on classic recipes to make the experience genuinely unique and fun. 

Simon Thomas opened the bar two years ago, after creating one of the first real Artisan Bakeries in the UK and running it for twenty years. Simon is determined to keep the Blind Bus Driver distinctly different to others in the area and only reveals the bar's secret location upon booking a table.

The Blind Bus Driver has been on ShopAppy since it launched in Kendal in Autumn 2019, but the platform has proved an essential lifeline recently by allowing Simon to keep the business running by selling vouchers for customers to redeem when the bar is allowed to reopen. The team is also being creative introducing new products onto the website, offering Home Bartender cocktail kits and Lockdown Cocktail Party Boxes so that customers can still enjoy great BBD quality drinks whilst staying safe at home. The ShopAppy platform has been a brilliantly effective way for Simon to set up shop online without the time and financial strain of starting and running his own sales platform from scratch. 

Choc Moose
Todmorden Market in West Yorkshire

Choc Moose

Choc Moose of Todmorden Market in West Yorkshire has been run by Clare Pattinson for the past two years. The traditional sweet shop has been in Todmorden’s Victorian Market Hall for over 70 years and was family run across three generations. Continuing the sense of community, nostalgia and tradition from the previous business, Clare built the new product offering from scratch whilst retaining the Victorian market tradition of selling old fashioned pick & mix sweets, home baked biscuits and even penny trays.

Since Choc Moose joining the ShopAppy website, Clare has been delivering her confectionaries alongside her husband to the local community. During a time where things have changed so quickly with Covid-19, ShopAppy.com was a no brainer for Clare as her account was set up within a week. Further benefits followed where Clare didn't have to spend time on setting up her own website or a payment system as everything was paid for online which saved a significant amount of time and also met the social distancing measures. This was a great opportunity for Choc Moose to expand the business and make its name recognisable amongst a wider customer base, as well as providing opportunities to collaborate with other local companies.

I was already online building up my business selling across the UK but I needed a way to reach local people. As they were unable to come to the Market, we needed to get to them. I signed up to ShopAppy.com and got others in the Market to do the same. Most run their own now but I helped those who didn’t use technology before.