MNteractive.com

You remember webvan…I never used it myself so I can’t speak to what they offered, but this post isn’t a “buying groceries online is cool,” Ric Romero kind of post. I wanted to focus instead on the “activity based” aspects of it. In other words, it’s not the fact that you can buy your food over the web- it’s HOW you buy your food that I thought merited a mention, since it’s soo much more user centered and, more importantly, contrary to what we’ve always known about supermarkets (layout, design, advertising, etc) which has me wondering- exactly who’s idea was all this?

First, a look at what activity based shopping should be. They don’t have a brick and morter market to visit, but simondelivers.com has the right idea. When you make your list, you think- “I’m going to make fajitas… I need, chicken, tortillas, cheese…” and add those to the list. Online shopping of course, lets you click “Fajitas” and then lets you tweak from there. Big time saver, especially if you just take what they give you. Simon takes it a bit further though. There are several different methods of choosing a meal, with most you can choose the main course, and add sides and dessert or others as you see fit:

• Healthy- this appears to not be available for me, but you can sign up to get a full weeks worth of healthy fresh meals that are rotated amongst 100 or so different meals and capped at a calorie limit
• One click meals- you click on pasta, and you get a handful of meals with all the items you would pick up in the store shown there. You can buy each one, or the whole meal at once. Ideal if you actually like to get a pot or two dirty
• Ready to heat- place in oven or microwave.
• Ready to cook -raw meats and veggie type meals. Steak and potato type meals
• A la carte-Parts of the above meals as near as I can figure
• Simon’s Diner- fresh prepared meals that are “ready to heat”

There are so many choices here, that I haven’t quite figured out the differences available between all those (Simon’s diner vs ready to heat?, one click versus ready to cook?). The cost is $6,delivered to my apartment in special containers to keep the colds cold. Beats the line and hassle of the local market.

Speaking of which, my local grocery store (Hy-Vee, Rochester MN) is doing its part. It allows you to build your order online and for 5 dollars, will have someone compile everything for you. You pull up to the store, someone rolls out a cart and loads you up. You don’t even need to get out of the car. There’s a little focus on the meal or “activity”, but the website is not nearly as easy to use as simondelivers. Hy-Vee goes one step further by allowing you to enter your grocery list as you would using say notepad or something,and it will search for matches… you type “yogurt” ‘and it will pull up all the yogurt there, and you add the one you want to your cart. Simon delivers will remember master shopping lists as a starting point, but I would welcome that function in the simon site.

Meal (activity) based shopping and all the ecommerce trimmings makes for an interesting discussion by itself, but there’s something I found just slightly more interesting about all this. Namely, it flies against everything I’ve thought about supermarket layouts and design; it’s no surprise that you have to walk completely across the store to get milk or eggs, or bread. It’s so that you get exposure to as much product as possible. You might impulse buy. The layout of the aisles is changed once you’ve memorized it for the same reasons. They seek the balance of convenience for the shopper and maximizing exposure (convenience for the store).

So what’s this online stuff? Where is the convenience for Hy-Vee (simon is different since they only exist online)? Is a pleasant customer experience really what’s driving this for them? The Hy-Vee site I use does not push any products at me. The closest it comes, is if I click “allow substitutions” they fill in with the store brand (I hope this is substituting if the original is not available, and not just on a whim to inflate store brand numbers). The simondelivers site has a main page of ads that focuses on both sale products and services offered.

Most importantly though, grocery shopping is finally supportive for the budget conscience (who isn’t?). Just like any other online app, you can see exactly what you are being charged as you go, and if you are over budget, you don’t have to run back to the other side of the store to put the frozen pizza’s back, you just remove it. Again- this is not news to anyone, just another step towards a nice UX. I’ve always wished markets had a “go back” self near the cash registers. I always go over budget and realize it as I’m heading to the register. I don’t want to burden the checker with the items I don’t want buy, and I certainly don’t want to return them to the shelves throughout the store. I see most people just shove them in crevices in and around the checkout stand. If there was an area nearby to place unwanted items, I would use it.. but I’m certain it doesn’t exist because a large enough number of people will just buy the unwanted items anyway.

I’m (pleasantly) surprised that these services exist. I’m curious what the motivations are for the stores to offer them. Is the 5 dollar charge worth the overhead? Is Customer satisfaction guiding all of this? How many people use these services? I hope they continue to grow and improve. Speaking of which, the web application Hy-Vee uses has some usability issues (simondelivers is very slick), but baby steps my friends, one thing at a time.