Quick launched their new app today, aiming to streamline online marketplaces into one place – your mobile phone.  The app brings buyers closer to sellers via multiple social and enterprise platforms such as eBay, Craigslist, Facebook, and of course the QUICK Mobile Marketplace.

“You can do almost anything from your smartphone – from paying bills to video chatting in real-time – but even with the huge boom in mobile commerce, it’s still a challenge to easily sell and buy things. The existing online platforms just don’t translate to the possibilities a smartphone presents,” said Doug Brenhouse, Co-Founder and President of QUICK. “We created QUICK to empower better mobile sales, to take the time and hassle out of selling and buying across multiple sites by integrating them all into one easy-to-use mobile app.”

Angling a unique spin on mobile marketplaces, Quick features automated product descriptions based on barcode scans and web info, and IM integration so buyers and sellers can chat directly in real-time.  The idea is to simplify the selling process across multiple sites, so Quick also includes templates to use for eBay, ensuring that you’re still optimizing your product listing for each respective site you post to.  While the eBay templates aren’t as full-featured as what you’ll find directly on the auction site, Quick does take measures to layer in a few goodies here and there.

One of the most important things any online retailer needs in this day and age is a solid social networking model, and one that’s deeply integrated for marketing brands and the retailer across web channels.  Quick is starting out with a compelling feature called Friends Only discounts for Facebook posts, which extends an automated price drop on purchases coming through the popular network.  It’s a creative way for sellers to offer discounts on certain brand products they wouldn’t otherwise have been able to list, and it incentivizes Facebook activity, which can often be a powerful marketing tool on its own.

This works in Quick’s favor, of course, minimizing the need to build up a buyer user base directly.  The social spreading of its sellers’ listings direct traffic back to the Quick Marketplace, where you’ll also find seller profiles and the option to browse through more products.  What I’d like to see incorporated into Quick’s platform is a loyalty program that further incentivizes social behavior, giving buyers and sellers points they can use in the market for purchases or even account upgrades.

In anything web-related, managing multiple accounts and channels is a given.  Quick’s also added an auto-sync feature so you don’t have to manually keep track of what products have been posted to which site, and subsequently remember to take down replicated listings across multiple sites.  Given Quick’s recent launch, the startup’s focused on a select few marketplaces for management, though I hope to see Etsy incorporated into this shortlist in the near future.

Another trend Quick will need to conquer is social/local/mobile (SoLoMo), and they’ve certainly been eyeing this, considering their mobile approach to selling physical goods.  “The way we’ve set up the app, you’re able to have a marketplace that’s both local and national.  No one’s latched on to the ability to do both,” says Brenhouse.

“You have the ability to locally drive traffic into your physical store, sell locally through Craigslist or shift across country.  Bringing foot traffic into your location is something the Quick app encourages you to do.”

A final perk for Quick’s mobile app is metrics, which is another determined area of growth for Brenhouse.  Managing multiple seller accounts requires a good handle on metrics to determine which outlet provides the best activity, and whether or not those upgrades on eBay are paying off.  Quick currently offers a good basis for metrics to understand traffic patterns, and this is an area Brenhouse has already pinned for future development.

The app is now available on Google Play for Android devices, with the iOS version  expected later this year.

Quick is entering a competitive marketplace where the outlets it supports already have mobile apps.  eBay and Craisglist, and even Etsy have mobile apps for sellers, though they don’t all connect buyers and sellers, have social networking integration and all operate in their separate silos.  There are other apps that let you manage multiple seller platforms like Zaarly, which has a focus on selling locally.

 Contributors: Mellisa Tolentino