Westfield London launched a free iPhone app last week that it claims is the most comprehensive of any shopping centre in the UK.

At first glance the new app looks great. The elegant design sits perfectly with the Westfield brand and is intuitive to use. Features include a directory of stores, live travel info and cinema times.

The main feature, location mapping, sounds great, in theory allowing users to find their way from one store to another and easily find facilities. In practice it could have done with a little more thought. The maps are tiny and, apart from the larger stores, the units are not named. In addition, phone signal in Westfield is poor in a number of areas, rendering the route finder useless.

This seems to be the case for many of the features; they’re fine but they could be so much better. Why not allow the maps to locate you? And why not link to the cinema’s website allowing customers to buy tickets via their phone? The app is superior to the handful of other shopping centre apps already around, but is it good enough?

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