According to The Grocer magazine, online supermarket delivery service Ocado has just reported that its Ocado ‘On The Go’ mobile app has become a major revenue stream, with sales up 600% to £66 million.
With 10,000 users registering every month and 4,000 checkouts made each day, mobile transactions via Ocado ‘On The Go’ now account for 12% of Ocado purchases.
The app is available across 20 different platforms, including on the iphone and for Android users, and it includes user-friendly options like enabling shoppers to search for products by speaking into their phones or scanning bar codes, as well as helping customers to sync delivery slots with their mobile calendar.
A new “over the counter” service also means that an Ocado ‘On the Go’ mobile app user can specify how they would like fresh meat and fish to be prepared, helping to bring the offline experience online.
While the stats speak for themselves, having used the app a few times myself I feel what is lacking is a better way of sorting results – it’s quite difficult to sort results by “best value” but given that the app is meant for users “On The Go” I’m not sure this is a top priority anyway.
What would be useful though is integrating social media into the app, particularly feeding in customer recommendations and reviews to the results that are fed back from a search. Yes, the app selects products it thinks I would like which are dependant on my purchasing habits, but what it doesn’t do is show products that are recommended by consumers. Given the much quoted Nielsen statistic that 70% of online consumers trust opinions posted online by other consumers, incorporating reviews and recommendations would help to increase sales through Ocado ‘On the Go’ further, particularly since Ocado has launched its own-brand products to rival the Waitrose own branded products they stock.