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Waitrose Ocado

Battle of the Supermarkets: Waitrose vs Ocado

By The Drum Team, Editorial

QuBit

|

waitrose article

August 9, 2012 | 5 min read

Ocado and Waitrose have coexisted peacefully in the online shopping world for a long time. Ocado distributes quality food, predominantly sourced from Waitrose, across the country and in return Waitrose take a slice of the profits while enjoying a healthy online distribution of its own.

But the battle lines barring Waitrose from delivering within the M25 (Ocado’s home turf) have been removed and the fight for Middle England is about to begin. Waitrose have beefed up their online arsenal with a £10 million pound makeover in preparation for the upcoming battle.

QuBit conducted a comparative analysis of the pair of the pair to find out which came out on top, and which was just a rotten tomato.

Who will win? Only time will tell. Only one thing’s for sure...

There will be houmous!

Round One - Find

Waitrose’s homepage bombards the user with special offers and a wide variety of services which span from gift hampers to personalized cakes. The primary carousel shifts between displaying Waitrose’s free delivery service and the days ‘Top Offers’, making the page engaging and dynamic. However, the image heavy homepage contains conflicting calls to action which could be a source of confusion for new users. Waitrose also lost points on its dropdown menus which are narrow and too granular. On arrival to Ocado you are met by your (virtual) personal shopper who walks you through a set of questions regarding your family, meat preference, choice of milk etc. Although, initially, this seems like Ocado have taken the online supermarket idea a bit too literally by simulating the inane small talk of in shop encounters, it amounts to be time well spent. On completion, your personal shopper displays a range of goods tailored to your tastes and needs, for example, if you tell your personal shopper you have a baby he proceeds to give you promotional deals on nappies and baby food; simple, but very effective. This personalisation combined with clear and direct calls to action gave Ocado a great stronghold in the early stages of the battle.Round Results: 70% vs. 81% - the personal approach cinches it for Ocado

Round Two – Choose

Waitrose’s search features are well displayed and come with a multitude of filters helping you find want you want with sniper like accuracy. Not only can you filter your search on content, (e.g. show red wine instead of white) but you can also tailor your search to your dietary requirements such as only showing vegetarian foods or only food that doesn’t contain nuts. Waitrose’s product pages are exceptionally informative, including quick facts about the products, recycling information and, in some cases, media reviews. However, it misses obvious opportunities such as displaying related items. Waitrose showcases its products well with flashy zoom features but is let down by not doing the simple things and thus, fails to make up lost ground against its new rival.Ocado, again, showed it will not give up without a fight in the Choose section of the battle. Its search results are relevant and the calls to action are clearly displayed to drive the purchase, however, the search filters are displayed in a faded font down the side of the screen making them lose prominence on the page and losing the site points. That being said the site scored well on price display and the inclusion of customer reviews. Furthermore, the impressive personalisation of the Ocado site is again showcased by placing products that you have purchased before at the top of the search page. This speeds up the process and gives it the same feeling of familiarity one might get in a physical shop. Round Results: 78% vs 78% - even Stevens on this round.

Round three – Buy

Waitrose rallied hard to claw back ground against Ocado in the final section of the battle. The trolley system was well formatted with a clear price breakdown and a widget that allows you to write a note to your personal shopper to further personalise your shop (e.g. “green bananas please”). The registration system was well labelled but lost points because it didn’t offer a “guest checkout” service or explain the benefits of registration. However, the checkout process was free of any unnecessary stages and was very easy to navigate. Ocado, having dominated most of the battle, surrendered much of their lead to Waitrose by drastically underperforming in the closing stages of the contest. Style was prioritised over practicality in the basket system which was attractively minimalistic but neglected ugly little details such as the individual prices of the products. The checkout process is also unnecessarily long with whole pages devoted to last minute cross sales and voucher codes (when a box on the final payment page would have sufficed).Round Results: 79% vs 64% - Waitrose fights back

And the winner is......

At the end of the analysis QuBit found that the personalised approach to shopping lists offer that little bit of je ne sais pas to the Ocado site making up for any checkout failing. The final is a close: Waitrose 73% vs Ocado 75%
Waitrose Ocado

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