Saturday 26 June 2010

Credit where credit's due: well done Ocado!

Last week our grocery home shopping competitor Ocado won the BT Retail Week Technology Award for their iPhone and Android Ocado on the Go apps.

The two applications are excellent examples of applying technology appropriately for the customer's benefit - making the process of grocery shopping easier and more convenient.

I'm sure our forthcoming grocery apps will be worthy competition. Indeed if we can even do half as well as Ocado's claim that 5% of orders are made through their apps, then we we will be more than happy.

So take a bow, dear competitor, and let's see how well we do alongside you when we launch our grocery apps in another month or so. After all, with both of us raising our game in the world of mobile we both know who will benefit the most: Our customers!

I've talked about our forthcoming launch months for our grocery apps fairly openly. Isn't there a danger that our other online competitors, Asda and Sainsburys, might launch their own grocery apps ahead of us? My honest answer is: Let them! We want our offerings to be a real step change in the customer experience and, to answer the question, "Do you want it 'right' or 'now'?" we just want it to be perfectly right. I think our designers have done us proud with their thinking, and we just want to be sure with our test users.

We lost the 'First' trophy to Ocado. So we're going relentlessly after 'Best'.

2 comments:

  1. Great to see some appreciation for the competition. Hope that they have been a great source of inspiration... So we can not only expect a new tesco app for iPad but also the Android platform that has been so far neglected.

    Looking forward to see the results...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Never mind the app, how about making the Tesco groceries site work properly with the iPad? You can't browse the departments properly as doesn't bring up the drop down menus. Waiting for an app wouldn't be as bad if the website worked.

    ReplyDelete

As this blog grows in readership - and because it carries the Tesco brand - I have had to become more careful about the sort of comments that are acceptable. The good news is that I'm a champion of free speech so please be as praising or as critical as you wish! The only comments I DON'T allow through are:

1. Comments which criticise an individual other than myself, or are critical of an organisation other than Tesco. This is simply because they cannot defend themselves so is unfair and possibly libellous. Comments about some aspect of Tesco being better/worse than another equivalent organisation are allowed as long as you start by saying "in my personal opinion.." or "I think that...". ... followed by a "...because.." and some reasoned argument.

2. Comments which are totally unrelated to the context of the original article. If I have written about a mobile app and you start complaining about the price of potatoes then your comment isn't going stay for long!

3. Advertising / web links / spam.

4. Insulting / obscene messages.


Ok, rules done - now it's your go: