5 Ways the Online Grocery Shopping Experience Can Be Improved
The Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent global lockdowns have created an unprecedented demand for online grocery shopping. Everywhere in the world, we saw online supermarket websites crashing, companies desperate to staff up quickly to meet demand, and users trying to order in the middle of the night hoping to find delivery slots available.
I‘m an early adopter of ordering groceries online, my first order was probably sometime in 2012. I live in Denmark, which has one of the highest rates of online shopping in Europe — the market leader in online groceries here, Nemlig.com, started deliveries in 2010. The idea of not having to wait in the check-out line behind 20 other people was always very appealing to me.
The articles published lately about issues people are having when ordering groceries online made me think of ways the experience could be improved. Here are 5 ideas for making the process better:
Note: These are pretty common sense ideas, so your preferred website might already work as described, but many still don’t.
1. Implement a Virtual Queue for Accessing the Website
Nemlig uses this during peak traffic periods — when you open the homepage, you are shown your place in line and the estimated wait time. The queue helps prevent a bad experience in two ways:
- limits the number of people shopping at once — that way the website doesn’t crash because of the load
- can be set to let people in only when there are delivery slots available
2. Make Selecting a Delivery Slot the First Step of the Ordering Process
Choosing a date and time for delivery should be the first thing people need to do when making an order.
One of the most frustrating experiences in online shopping is spending 20 minutes browsing and adding items to your cart, only to find out during checkout there is no delivery slot available — this should be avoided as much as possible.
3. Reserve the Delivery Slot and Products Selected Until Checkout Is Complete
Another very frustrating experience when shopping online is adding items to your cart, then discovering during checkout they are now out of stock and you can’t complete your order because someone else was faster.
The delivery slot you picked and the products you add to your cart should be considered “reserved” — removed from available inventory for other shoppers — until you complete the checkout process.
To make this work, there also has to be a deadline for completing your order. It’s not fair to other shoppers to reserve products by adding them to your cart, then leave your computer for 4 hours to watch Netflix. Allowing something like 20 minutes per order seems reasonable.
Concert ticket websites solved this problem a long time ago, I don’t see why the same solution can’t be used for groceries.
4. Accept Food Stamps/Meal Vouchers
Many countries have aid programs for low-income residents that involve some kind of vouchers that can be used to buy food — the SNAP program in the US, for example.
Sometimes food vouchers are offered by companies as an employee benefit. Ideally these would come in the form of a card that can be used for payments, but they are still paper-based in many countries.
Online grocery stores should support paying with vouchers to give people that use them the same opportunities as everyone else. Otherwise this segment of the population has no choice but to use physical stores, exposing themselves to greater risks.
To be fair, this is not an easy thing to implement — mechanisms need to be established to make sure:
- all voucher types are recognized and can be validated (checking they’re not expired, for example)
- the same voucher cannot be used multiple times in different stores
5. Notify the Customer Before Delivery If a Product Had to Be Swapped
Over the years, I’ve had several cases where I discovered after delivery that the product I ordered was replaced with something “equivalent” — usually the same product from a competing brand.
Keeping track of inventory for thousands of products during times of peak demand is difficult, so it’s understandable for mistakes to happen — a product is shown as in stock, when in fact only a competitor’s product is available.
This is not usually a huge deal since the product is the same and I would not cancel an order over it, but many people have specific brands and products they prefer, and it would be useful to be notified in advance if something like that happens.
Have you had any issues with ordering groceries online lately? Leave a comment if you have other ideas for improving the experience.
