Giftwhale aims to be an application that anyone can quickly get familiar with. Although the premise is simple, in that it is there for people to create and share gift lists, there are a number of different ways that we have found it is used.
What better way to share some of these uses than tell you how we ourselves have used Giftwhale since we created it.
How Tom uses Giftwhale
Creating lists for our children The main use of Giftwhale over the last few years has been in creating lists for my children. This has proven to be a really useful way of sharing all the present ideas with family and friends. I tend to start the list a month or so before a birthday (earlier for Christmas) and fill it with relevant gift ideas over the course of a few weeks. Once the list is in a state to be shared (or maybe sooner if we are getting family pressure!) I share it with our friends and family. And for each event that is basically it. Sometimes we need to add a few more ideas if the number of items is running low but that has always been easy to do and anyone who has access to the list gets told when we add items which I know has been useful for those people waiting to choose a gift.
Collaborating on wish lists More recently my wife and I have used one of our new features, list collaboration. This means that one of us can create a list for one of our children and add the other parent as a collaborator on the list. Both of us then have the ability to add and edit items on the list which has proved really useful.
Additionally I have also used it for all my own birthdays and Christmases.
How Matt uses Giftwhale
Over the many years we've been working with Giftwhale, I haven't missed adding a single Christmas or birthday on the platform. These are the bread and butter of Giftwhale, it was built for these occasions, and although I'm pretty biased I believe it always performs really well.
Baby wish list More recently, my wife and I have been expecting a child, so we have created a private baby shower wish list which we both collaborate on, adding all sorts of different items we'd love for when the baby is born. This has helped up keep things organised and makes it easy to share with others, when they want to see which items we love.
Saving ideas for other people Throughout the year I often stumble across items I think are perfect gifts for family and friends. I use the ideas section in Giftwhale to save these items against the individuals name. This ensures I don't forget about it when either Christmas, their birthday, or any other special occasion comes up. One of the nice features we've built into Giftwhale is, when you visit a friends wish list, if you have saved ideas for them, the system will remind you about them. You can either get these for yourself, or share them with everyone (except the friend who created the wish list), so that you or someone else can surprise them with this gift.
