Good news for those of you who live near a Macy's US store as they have released a shiny new app for the holidays just for Windows Phone (it says for it’s for Windows Phone 8 but will install on 7.x too).

The app has some nice features, which make it more than just window dressing for the store or company. Launching the app will treat you to holiday gift guides that remind us of eBay’s method by drilling down by gender and category for gift recommendations—not a bad idea for those who have no inkling of what presents to buy this year...

There’s the 'My Gift List' where you can create personalized catalogues for friends or family, add items for later and get birthday reminders too (requires login as the info is hosted on Macy's servers). The ‘Find a Store’ feature is quite obvious but a nice touch as it uses built-in-mapping to locate your nearest store (also with geo-location ability). ‘My Account’ lets you manage your account right from the phone, including paying your Macy's credit card should you have one.

Finally, the best part is probably the ‘Special offers’ section as it gives you up-to-the-minute information on all the latest sale items. It will even generate barcodes for coupons that you can then use to scan at the checkout counter. But what if you don’t want to go to the store? The app allows you to purchase store items directly, including picking the color, size and viewing more images.

Sometimes around here we roll our eyes at “official’ retail apps as they are no more than just a few pages deep and really don’t allow you to do much besides look. Macy's though have made what appears to be a pretty killer shopping app—gift guides, coupons, up to date discounts and sale times, personalized shopping lists, account management and the ability to actually shop in their app make it quite an impressive offering. Granted, we haven’t carried through on a checkout but in our brief experience with it, we have to give Macy's a golf clap for the attempt—you made us proud, sniff. (Having said that, it has crashed on our HTC Arrive once or twice but seems okay on our 8X).

Pick up the official Macy's app just in time for the holidays here in the Windows Phone Store.

QR: Macys