Children’s shoe brand Stride Rite wants to make par­ents’ lives eas­i­er with an iPad app that will deter­mine the size of their kids’ feet by sim­ply tak­ing a pho­to­graph. Increas­ing­ly, shoe sales are shift­ing online, so Stride Rite hopes the app will boost online sales and build brand loy­al­ty by mak­ing it eas­i­er for con­sumers to shop from the com­fort of home.

Children’s shoe brand Stride Rite has launched its Rit­e­Fit iPad app, which it says helps par­ents mea­sure their kids’ feet “with accu­ra­cy and ease.”

Using the app, par­ents take a pho­to of a child’s foot while stand­ing on an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper, which the app uses as a ref­er­ence point.

“Paper is some­thing most peo­ple have around the house,” said Kristin Smith, Stride Rite’s direc­tor of e‑commerce. “And then you put that on a hard sur­face with the back of the child’s foot on the paper and against a wall and take a pic­ture. Once you take a pic­ture, there are guides that make sure you have paper aligned prop­er­ly and the longest toe is iden­ti­fied, things like that, and you get a size.”

Oth­er app fea­tures include the abil­i­ty to track growth via charts, try on shoes vir­tu­al­ly and share mile­stones and “oth­er infor­ma­tion” via social media.

In addi­tion, the app also offers what Stride Rite calls “foot doo­dles,” art and char­ac­ters to enter­tain kids.

While the Rite­Size app is launch­ing for iPads only, Smith said the intent is to ini­tial­ly get the siz­ing right.

“The iPad real­ly allows us to have the largest inter­face size for mobile. Once we have siz­ing down and when we get cus­tomer feed­back [we will launch apps for oth­er devices],” Smith said.

Stride Rite launched anoth­er app ear­li­er this year, the Stride Rite Rewards Mobile app, for its rewards club mem­bers so they can check account bal­ances and enter a week­ly shoe give­away. The Stride Rite Rewards app is avail­able for both iOS and Android devices. Per Google Play, it has between 5,000 and 10,000 installs.

“One chal­lenge for par­ents is that kids’ feet grow so fast – up to half a size every three months – and as we shift more and more to online sales, it’s about find­ing a way to solve for that and allow [par­ents] to accu­rate­ly mea­sure at home,” Smith said. “We’ve been think­ing about it for a decent amount of time, but last year we decid­ed to put a plan in place and move for­ward.”

In addi­tion, Rit­e­Fit allows the 95-year-old brand to tar­get grand­par­ents and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers who don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have a Stride Rite store near­by or who can’t shop at a store for some oth­er rea­son, like it is busy, she said. “Some­times pack­ing up the kids is a daunt­ing expe­ri­ence ver­sus doing this from the com­fort of home,” Smith said. “So we’re mak­ing it easy for Mom and Dad to be able to share the infor­ma­tion.”

Stride Rite says it worked with “dig­i­tal inno­va­tion part­ner” MJD to devel­op the Rit­e­Fit app. Stride Rite did­n’t pro­vide down­load fig­ures to date. The free app launched Novem­ber 10, and is avail­able from iTunes.