Washington company’s app for shoppers hits Target

SEATTLE — As Black Friday looms — only 11 days away — people are making lists of must-haves for the holiday season while retailers release sale fliers and announce store hours.

To make its in-store shopping experience easier, Target, in partnership with Bellevue-based Point Inside, announced new features in its Target app that are designed to help people navigate through its 1,943 brick-and-mortar stores in the U.S. and Canada.

The new app features went live Monday and include interactive maps, enhanced shopping lists that will show aisle numbers once inside the store, and interactive Black Friday maps providing store layout and doorbuster locations.

For years, shoppers standing in line outside Target, Best Buy, Wal-Mart have used printed maps available to them to plan out their routes through the stores once the doors open.

Target’s goal is to make its app more of a tool for shoppers while they are in the store, rather than a strict focus on online shopping, said Target spokesman Eddie Baeb.

Because stores are almost completely reset for Black Friday — with pallets of TVs next to the socks, and microwaves over by the bedsheets — the app is intended to make in-store shopping more efficient, Baeb said.