Online grocery shopping

Lee McIvor
Tuesday 6:49am

Post a Response | Most Recent by Lee McIvor

Hi guys,

After the great feedback I got from my last request, i'm going again! : )

Does anyone have any feedback or insight on shopping for groceries online? I'm doing some work for a client in this area, and i'd like to get feedback from anybody on this list, particularly if they've used UK grocery shopping sites. I'm doing some user research, but i'm interested in what other UX professionals think of the current crop of sites, and of course, allowing you all to vent!

I'd also welcome any pointers to articles or research material on online grocery shopping if anyone knows of any.

Thanks

Lee

http://leemcivor.co.uk/

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Barry Briggs
Tuesday 8:05am

Lee

Having done a quite a bit of research (both professional and as a consumer) into this area, I'd confidently say that Ocado are one of the leaders in this field

http://www.ocado.com

The general usability level is very high, the product details (eg: ingredients) are usually quite extensive, and the site contains a large number of genuinely useful cart management and ordering-related features.

I gather it makes shopping for groceries via their site one of the easiest and most pleasurable of all the big supermarket sites - and the wife agrees!

IMHO, Sainsburys are a close second, with Tesco somewhere behind that.

http://www.sainsburys.com

Thanks
B

On 7 Oct 2008, at 14:49, Lee McIvor wrote:

Hi guys,
After the great feedback I got from my last request, i'm going again! : )
Does anyone have any feedback or insight on shopping for groceries online? I'm doing some work for a client in this area, and i'd like to get feedback from anybody on this list, particularly if they've used UK grocery shopping sites. I'm doing some user research, but i'm interested in what other UX professionals think of the current crop of sites, and of course, allowing you all to vent! I'd also welcome any pointers to articles or research material on online grocery shopping if anyone knows of any.
Thanks
Lee http://leemcivor.co.uk/

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Brooke
Tuesday 9:08am

Lee

Another site I'd recommend you take a look at is Fresh Direct (US) http://tinyurl.com/4fuflg

As a user of the site & service for several years the simple design, high resolution images, suggestions on cooking methods, and ease of check-out appeal to my desires for a shopping experience.

Since the purchase of most food items (esp. produce and meat) are very reliant on visual inspection the high res images really help.

Good luck!
b

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Dan
Tuesday 9:13am

Grocery shopping consists greatly of repeat business - the best sites will be those that facilitate and make it easy for the user to purchase favorite / repeat products easily. Tesco does this very well with the use of their Clubcard merging data captured in store with that online - making it extrmeley easy for the customers to make quick repeat purchases of their favourite products.

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 4:05 PM, Barry Briggs barry at myheartland.co.ukwrote:

Lee
Having done a quite a bit of research (both professional and as a consumer) into this area, I'd confidently say that Ocado are one of the leaders in this field
http://www.ocado.com
The general usability level is very high, the product details (eg: ingredients) are usually quite extensive, and the site contains a large number of genuinely useful cart management and ordering-related features. I gather it makes shopping for groceries via their site one of the easiest and most pleasurable of all the big supermarket sites - and the wife agrees! IMHO, Sainsburys are a close second, with Tesco somewhere behind that. http://www.sainsburys.com
Thanks
B On 7 Oct 2008, at 14:49, Lee McIvor wrote:
Hi guys,
After the great feedback I got from my last request, i'm going again! : ) Does anyone have any feedback or insight on shopping for groceries online? I'm doing some work for a client in this area, and i'd like to get feedback from anybody on this list, particularly if they've used UK grocery shopping sites. I'm doing some user research, but i'm interested in what other UX professionals think of the current crop of sites, and of course, allowing you all to vent!
I'd also welcome any pointers to articles or research material on online grocery shopping if anyone knows of any.
Thanks
Lee http://leemcivor.co.uk/

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Jonathan Abbett
Tuesday 10:56am

I agree with the FreshDirect recommendation— as someone with access only to Peapod online groceries, I'm very envious of their user experience (and product variety) .

-Jon

On Tue, Oct 7, 2008 at 12:08 PM, Brooke brooke at brookebaldwin.com wrote:

Lee
Another site I'd recommend you take a look at is Fresh Direct (US) http://tinyurl.com/4fuflg
As a user of the site & service for several years the simple design, high resolution images, suggestions on cooking methods, and ease of check-out appeal to my desires for a shopping experience. Since the purchase of most food items (esp. produce and meat) are very reliant on visual inspection the high res images really help. Good luck!
b

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MJ Broadbent
Tuesday 6:19pm

I can definitely vouch for FreshDirect, as a customer since its inception and as an area IxD practitioner. I believe one of the main reasons for its amazing success is that interaction design was and is an integral part of its development. It's another great example of what can be accomplished when top management integrate design from the ground up.

One of their lead IAs, Andrew Purcell, gave a great talk in 2005 about the development back story. Details (including slides) are here: http://www.nycupa.org/pastevent_05_0621.html

Also, in locating that info, I turned up a tech case study, which might prove useful to your team: http://www.splunk.com/article/2017

Cheers!
MJ

P.S. I had one occasion to use a brick-and-mortar grocer's online site (D'Agostino) and it was SO terrible, particularly in comparison with Fresh Direct, that I filed a complaint and bailed out completely.

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Lee McIvor
Today 12:50am

Thanks for that MJ. I'm in the UK so I haven't come across FreshDirect before, and those links are great. Thanks to everyone else too for their replies.

Here in the UK Ocado seems to be the leader in this space - they're my client - but it's interesting to see what other companies are doing elsewhere in the world. There's always something new to learn from competitors, even the ones that don't look that good!

Lee

Original Message -
From: MJ Broadbent mj at mjbroadbent.com
To: discuss at ixda.org
Sent: Tuesday, 7 October, 2008 19:19:00
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Online grocery shopping

I can definitely vouch for FreshDirect, as a customer since its inception and as an area IxD practitioner. I believe one of the main reasons for its amazing success is that interaction design was and is an integral part of its development. It's another great example of what can be accomplished when top management integrate design from the ground up.

One of their lead IAs, Andrew Purcell, gave a great talk in 2005 about the development back story. Details (including slides) are here: http://www.nycupa.org/pastevent_05_0621.html

Also, in locating that info, I turned up a tech case study, which might prove useful to your team: http://www.splunk.com/article/2017

Cheers!
MJ

P.S. I had one occasion to use a brick-and-mortar grocer's online site (D'Agostino) and it was SO terrible, particularly in comparison with Fresh Direct, that I filed a complaint and bailed out completely.

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Online grocery shopping

Online grocery shopping

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