One of the most widespread traditions in this world is giving. This is a scorching topic during the holiday season, but it stays highly relevant throughout the year. Birthdays, weddings, births, anniversaries, new homes, dinner parties, and, of course, holidays are occasions when we are generally required to search, decide and buy gifts.
There’s no shortage of gift guides for the holidays (and other occasions), and there are plenty of places to find ideas or shop for gifts online, but even when you’ve finally made that decision, how do you know if it’s the right one? Wouldn’t it be amazing if your friends could choose their gifts, without you losing your holiday? “gift” feeling?
What is necessary?
Wantful is a beautiful and original gift service. It learns about your occasion and gift recipient, offers a list of gifts you can customize until it’s perfect, and then sends the catalog to the lucky person who can choose their gift from their personalized gift catalog and have it delivered to their door.
It sounds too good to be true? It gets even better. The service will only cost you as much as you choose to pay for the gift: no service charges or commissions. The service is only available for shipping in the US (the buyer can be from anywhere), but the developers promised international shipping in 2012.
Starting
To start with Wantful, you should sign in with a Facebook account or create a Wantful account through the website.
If you log in with Facebook, you will need to authorize Wantful to access your Facebook account. Wantful will then fetch your Facebook friends’ birthday information and insert it into your Wantful account automatically. You can, of course, not use Facebook and create your events.
Once you’ve signed up, click “Get Started Now” to create your gift catalog.
Helping Wantful choose the right
Based on the information you provide, Wantful will present you with a list of gifts that your friend/family member/colleague must love. The more questions you answer, the better the recommendations.
Start by giving him some basic information, such as the occasion, the person’s name, age and gender, and how he relates to you. Wantful will launch into a set of questions that you are not required to answer. Answer as much as you want or know, and continue to the next step. I went through the process with an imaginary recipient whom I appropriately dubbed “friend.”
Creating the gift catalog
Now is the time to get into it. You first need to decide how much you want to spend. You cannot choose any amount; You must decide between the seven possible amounts of Desired Offers ($30, $50, $75, $100, $150, $250, or $500).
You can then browse the list of gifts that Wantful recommends, read about them, see more photos, and decide if they should be on the list or not. If you decide that a particular article should not be included, click the “Replace this article” button.
If you do this, you’ll be presented with a nice list of substitutes, from which you can choose a new gift for the catalog.
Once you’re done customizing it and feel like the gift catalog is perfect, all that’s left is to design and ship it!
Ending
A personalized gift is not the same without personalized gift wrapping. Wantful offers a good number of design options for its catalog. Pick a cover, add names and a short message, and voila!
And here’s the cool part. If you want, you can pay just the gift cost for the whole thing. Email the catalog to your friend, and you’re good to go.
You can mail a well-printed catalog for about $10 extra if you want to go further. The record sent by mail will arrive after no more than seven days, but during the holiday season, the catalogs are rushed and can take as little as two days to arrive.
Dashboard
While Wantful is a very useful service for the holiday season, it can and should be used throughout the year. When you log into your Wantful account, you can access your dashboard, where you can create new gift catalogs, add events to remember, and view your gift catalogs in progress.
receive gifts
When you or your friends receive a Wantful gift catalog, you must go to the Wantful website and enter the gift book code.
If you already have an account, the gift you received will also appear in your dashboard.
Bottom line
Wantful is one of the best-designed and most original web applications I have seen in a long time. The idea behind it is fantastic, and using it is a delight. The service is relatively new, and more gift options will be added over time, as well as additional shipping options.
