Wednesday 2 June 2010

iPad fans disrupt Tesco.com

Tesco.com HQ has been disrupted by colleagues with iPads who seem to create groups of people who gather around them whenever they carry the things about the office. Which they're doing. Blatantly.

Sarah (middle) and Becky (right) caught admiring Lucia's iPad.
(the chocolates are there because there is always gooey food around Tesco.com HQ)

Oh and they get them out and nonchalantly go to the Tesco.com website which they zoom about impressively with various hand gestures, or run a drawing application and sweep about the screen creating instant art with some fluffy-ended pen thing.

The iPad doesn't come with an webcam, so sweet thoughts of using one in a kitchen where the customer points a barcode or just the product itself at it to try visual searching for easy grocery ordering is not available.

So I'm not buying one, not even on R&D budget!

7 comments:

  1. Not buying one? Are you joking?

    At long last there is a usable, instant-on, consumer friendly internet access device that someone like my mum (who won't go near a computer) would use. I can definately see her picking this up to order her groceries online..she must be part of a large market you haven't tapped into yet.

    As for the camera and product recognition, although fun to see in action its not really that useful as it only helps me shop for what I've got in my cupboard, not for what I might want to try new, or what I might have used and thrown away already.

    So dig into your R&D budget, buy one, and add a dedicated Tesco shopping app for the ipad to your to do list please!

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  2. Surely the website will be sufficient on the iPad as it can't make use of features such as barcode scanning, and it has a fully functional web browser

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  3. I think the challenge is whether your Mum would spend £429 upwards on such a device. I can't get away from the fact that it is "a lot of money for what it does", though equally I can see that it "does less things, better".

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  4. Just looked in the itunes store but no grocery shopping app for the ipad. Ocado have one, take a look and just humour us Tesco loyals with an app....please (at least then the missus wouldnt complain as much on the cost!!!)

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  5. Perhaps someone at Tesco should buy one, then they might encourage someone to make your groceries site work with iPad. I've just had a very frustrating experience with it...

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  6. I'm also waiting for a Tesco iPad app. I care for my Mum and consequently do a lot of the shopping online. Ocado have a good iPad app but they don't have the range of products I need available. I think Tesco are being very short sighted not acknowledging the wide consumer base the iPad has in this country already. Surely an app to tap into a ready market is a wise move?

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  7. Agree with RogerJ. My parents have just purchased an Ipad. I tried to help them with a shop on Tesco website, but gave up and went to Waitrose instead. You really have to use it on your website to believe how incompatible it is on a touch sceen. You don't need an 'app', you just need to make your site less reliant on drop downs. Instant market access to commuters with 3g phones etc.

    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.


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