(Sorry for the hiatus - Christmas and all that means a time of rest for me, and it's taken a while to get back into the swing of things. But, here we go... :) )
Back in July 2009, I wrote a blog post about UK grocery retailer Ocado, and their release of a really rather impressive iPhone grocery shopping application. I held it up as an excellent implementation of an already-impressive web-based application on the smaller, touch-screen device; an opinion I still maintain now. Indeed, information I have direct from Ocado, is that the iPhone application now accounts for "3% of company sales" - an impressive feat to achieve in just 8 months - which would seem to indicate that others are finding the application familiar enough that they are changing shopping habits of a lifetime.
One of the other things I noted about this move by Ocado, was my surprise at a supermarket brand leaping into the application world with such commitment. We'd seen a number of brands 'give it a go', such as Barclaycard and their waterslide game app, but these were really rather throwaway 'toe-in-water' attempts. They've had huge success with it, but it was little more than brand campaign awareness.
Far from taking their foot off the pedal, I've now been priveleged enough to receive advance notice that Ocado are about to release 'Ratings & Reviews' on their grocery website, "allowing customers to score and evaluate all 21,000 products". Intially available to Ocado Demand and Ocado Reserve customers as of this week - with a full rollout to consumers in February - Ratings & Reviews will implement the familiar 5-star rating system (as seen on the likes of Amazon and TripAdvisor), allowing their consumers to leave their rating for any product they choose. Additionally, consumers will be able to leave a review of the product, under an online 'alias'. It's unclear as to whether this alias is linked to the user's account or created at review-time, but I'd expect it to be linked to their account to maintain the loop of sign-up provide a means of tracking offensive or problem reviews. Indeed, moderation of all this new, freely entered information on the website will be one of the challenges facing Ocado in this new venture, as each review will require vetting to ensure there is nothing offensive in them. Or perhaps they will implement 'Mob Moderation', which is (seemingly) the method of the likes of Amazon and Google. This assumes that people are largely good, and lets the users of the site moderate posts and flag offensive content to the site owner. A quick look at the screenshots I was sent below shows "Flag as inappropriate" functionality so this would indeed seem to be their way forward.
So, let's take a look at what's coming up for the site. Click each image to open a full-screen view...
Whilst browsing for products, it would appear that consumers will be able to see the current overall rating for each, allowing them to make informed decisions when deciding between similar products. I'm a fan of this system - it informs many of my decisions when shopping from the likes of Amazon, primarily because I'm more inclined to believe 100 consumers who've shelled out and tried a product, than the opinion of the company who has something to gain from selling it to me in any case. The use of the star rating system will be familiar to millions of web users so Ocado's consumers should be able to hit the ground running with this. I'm pretty sure my missus will give a 5-star rating to their jars of Silverskin Onions and Cornichons, given that we get through about a jar of each a week ;)
I'd hazard a guess that the button beneath the stars (that looks like a 'plus' symbol and 4 horizontal lines) opens a text area and associated buttons to allow the consumer to post a review right from here, but I can't be sure until I see it in action.
The updated product view also shows the overall 5-star rating, but also details how many customers have recommended this product to others for purchase, which is also a fairly standard feature. We can see the share functionality here too, allowing users to share a link to the product with other on social sites such as Facebook, Digg, Delicious, MySpace and Twitter. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out - how useful people will find this. I'm not sure that I would want to Tweet about a can of Lyle's Golden Syrup, but then I've been wrong about the social media before, complex beast that it is. It might be that it's used between people discussing recipe ingredients, but either way it'll be good to see how this is used.
We can also see the usual "was this review helpful to you?" functionality, again a familiar device to many web users. Interesting to see that you can read all reviews by a user here too, which seems to both confirm that a user will need an account to be able to post, and also suggest that there may be a reward scheme in planning for users, to encourage people to write reviews and rate products.
All-in-all, it's good to see a major high-street brand taking this approach to user interaction. It provides Ocado with a closer link to their consumers, which should have a positive impact on how their consumers view the brand. At the same time, it provides a useful and broad feedback loop in one fell swoop - helping Ocado to weed out the products that are less valuable to their range and tailor their stock to consumers' needs. The introduction of the social sharing functionality is a little unclear to me at this stage, but giving users the tools to seed your 'wares' will at least potentially broaden Ocado's reach and hopefully reign in some new customers. At the same time, it may help to break down the perceptions that Ocado are expensive. If users inadvertently see a product they are familiar with in their social stream, being sold by Ocado at a reasonable price, it may lead them to look into shopping with them directly.
Of course, there is some risk associated with this sort of mechanism: primarily, that of transparency. One of the fundamentals of Amazon's sales model that I reference is that they don't sell their own goods. Therefore, if Item X is a piece of cr*p, ultimately, consumers blame the originating brand, and don't see this as a fault of Amazon per se. However, Ocado will be selling third-party and own-brand goods. So, it's entirely possible that their own products will receive bad ratings and negative reviews. This is one of the fundamentals of transparent interaction with your customers and user-generated content - there is inherent risk, so be prepared to take the rough with the smooth. As long as Ocado are true to this and don't delete/moderate negative comments of their produce (an even worse tactic as you always get found out and the web community start referencing 'Big Brother' and all manner of chaos ensues), then they should be fine.
Overall, I'm really pleased to see Ocado pushing proven functionality into everyday life, and it will be interesting to see how they fare. It'll also be interesting to see what comes next. I'd be keen to see some easy method for users to recommend alternatives (sold by Ocado) to others on the site. So, for example, someone may offer an alternative to the golden syrup I'm considering buying, because they've found that it stays more liquid even when cold, and is therefore easier to cook with. And yep, that was an issue I had with syrup while cooking at the weekend, so - Ocado - if you want a case study for future functionality, drop me a line... :)
Back in July 2009, I wrote a blog post about UK grocery retailer Ocado, and their release of a really rather impressive iPhone grocery shopping application. I held it up as an excellent implementation of an already-impressive web-based application on the smaller, touch-screen device; an opinion I still maintain now. Indeed, information I have direct from Ocado, is that the iPhone application now accounts for "3% of company sales" - an impressive feat to achieve in just 8 months - which would seem to indicate that others are finding the application familiar enough that they are changing shopping habits of a lifetime.
One of the other things I noted about this move by Ocado, was my surprise at a supermarket brand leaping into the application world with such commitment. We'd seen a number of brands 'give it a go', such as Barclaycard and their waterslide game app, but these were really rather throwaway 'toe-in-water' attempts. They've had huge success with it, but it was little more than brand campaign awareness.
Far from taking their foot off the pedal, I've now been priveleged enough to receive advance notice that Ocado are about to release 'Ratings & Reviews' on their grocery website, "allowing customers to score and evaluate all 21,000 products". Intially available to Ocado Demand and Ocado Reserve customers as of this week - with a full rollout to consumers in February - Ratings & Reviews will implement the familiar 5-star rating system (as seen on the likes of Amazon and TripAdvisor), allowing their consumers to leave their rating for any product they choose. Additionally, consumers will be able to leave a review of the product, under an online 'alias'. It's unclear as to whether this alias is linked to the user's account or created at review-time, but I'd expect it to be linked to their account to maintain the loop of sign-up provide a means of tracking offensive or problem reviews. Indeed, moderation of all this new, freely entered information on the website will be one of the challenges facing Ocado in this new venture, as each review will require vetting to ensure there is nothing offensive in them. Or perhaps they will implement 'Mob Moderation', which is (seemingly) the method of the likes of Amazon and Google. This assumes that people are largely good, and lets the users of the site moderate posts and flag offensive content to the site owner. A quick look at the screenshots I was sent below shows "Flag as inappropriate" functionality so this would indeed seem to be their way forward.
So, let's take a look at what's coming up for the site. Click each image to open a full-screen view...
Whilst browsing for products, it would appear that consumers will be able to see the current overall rating for each, allowing them to make informed decisions when deciding between similar products. I'm a fan of this system - it informs many of my decisions when shopping from the likes of Amazon, primarily because I'm more inclined to believe 100 consumers who've shelled out and tried a product, than the opinion of the company who has something to gain from selling it to me in any case. The use of the star rating system will be familiar to millions of web users so Ocado's consumers should be able to hit the ground running with this. I'm pretty sure my missus will give a 5-star rating to their jars of Silverskin Onions and Cornichons, given that we get through about a jar of each a week ;)
I'd hazard a guess that the button beneath the stars (that looks like a 'plus' symbol and 4 horizontal lines) opens a text area and associated buttons to allow the consumer to post a review right from here, but I can't be sure until I see it in action.
The updated product view also shows the overall 5-star rating, but also details how many customers have recommended this product to others for purchase, which is also a fairly standard feature. We can see the share functionality here too, allowing users to share a link to the product with other on social sites such as Facebook, Digg, Delicious, MySpace and Twitter. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out - how useful people will find this. I'm not sure that I would want to Tweet about a can of Lyle's Golden Syrup, but then I've been wrong about the social media before, complex beast that it is. It might be that it's used between people discussing recipe ingredients, but either way it'll be good to see how this is used.
We can also see the usual "was this review helpful to you?" functionality, again a familiar device to many web users. Interesting to see that you can read all reviews by a user here too, which seems to both confirm that a user will need an account to be able to post, and also suggest that there may be a reward scheme in planning for users, to encourage people to write reviews and rate products.
All-in-all, it's good to see a major high-street brand taking this approach to user interaction. It provides Ocado with a closer link to their consumers, which should have a positive impact on how their consumers view the brand. At the same time, it provides a useful and broad feedback loop in one fell swoop - helping Ocado to weed out the products that are less valuable to their range and tailor their stock to consumers' needs. The introduction of the social sharing functionality is a little unclear to me at this stage, but giving users the tools to seed your 'wares' will at least potentially broaden Ocado's reach and hopefully reign in some new customers. At the same time, it may help to break down the perceptions that Ocado are expensive. If users inadvertently see a product they are familiar with in their social stream, being sold by Ocado at a reasonable price, it may lead them to look into shopping with them directly.
Of course, there is some risk associated with this sort of mechanism: primarily, that of transparency. One of the fundamentals of Amazon's sales model that I reference is that they don't sell their own goods. Therefore, if Item X is a piece of cr*p, ultimately, consumers blame the originating brand, and don't see this as a fault of Amazon per se. However, Ocado will be selling third-party and own-brand goods. So, it's entirely possible that their own products will receive bad ratings and negative reviews. This is one of the fundamentals of transparent interaction with your customers and user-generated content - there is inherent risk, so be prepared to take the rough with the smooth. As long as Ocado are true to this and don't delete/moderate negative comments of their produce (an even worse tactic as you always get found out and the web community start referencing 'Big Brother' and all manner of chaos ensues), then they should be fine.
Overall, I'm really pleased to see Ocado pushing proven functionality into everyday life, and it will be interesting to see how they fare. It'll also be interesting to see what comes next. I'd be keen to see some easy method for users to recommend alternatives (sold by Ocado) to others on the site. So, for example, someone may offer an alternative to the golden syrup I'm considering buying, because they've found that it stays more liquid even when cold, and is therefore easier to cook with. And yep, that was an issue I had with syrup while cooking at the weekend, so - Ocado - if you want a case study for future functionality, drop me a line... :)
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