Supermarket puts store on tick-the-box concept

Woolworths is continuing to develop its web-based shopping service, as ADAM GIFFORD reports.

Woolworths is hoping that a new "quick list" feature on its online shopping site will finally push this part of its business into the black.

"Making that first shop easier will encourage people to come back," said Richard Harrison, Woolworth's general manager of online services.

The change is based on old shopping lists being stored in the system, so that on subsequent visits shoppers can just check the boxes for items they want to reorder.

The site handles about 5000 orders a month, a figure which has been rising steadily over the past two years.

Harrison said a 30 per cent increase would be more than enough to make the online operation break even.

Despite never turning a profit, Woolworths has persisted with the site and it is now the 10th version.

The first version, launched almost five years ago, was a joint venture with Ad Pacifica and it required users to load a CD Rom into their computer before connecting.

A web version was developed three years ago with the help of 17 American developers flown in by Woolworths' owner, Hong Kong-based supermarket giant Dairy Farms.

Once the site was up the developers departed to roll it out in Hong Kong, leaving Woolworths New Zealand to support it here.

The back-end of the site is maintained in-house and Auckland web firm Olympic Software supports the site's front-end.

When trying the first web version of the site three years ago, I found it a laborious process to navigate the "aisles" and load my virtual trolley.

Using the present system I prepared a shopping list offline and pasted it into the quicklist window. At the click of a button I was presented with three options for every item on the list.

For the items that could not be clicked straight into the basket, there was a "more options" button.

The search function also worked better than I remembered. This improvement followed years of complaint logging, with the system administrators going through logs daily to see how people searched.

The changes mean odd phrasings, word associations and misspellings are matched up with likely items.

On my Macintosh the system responded sluggishly, but it flew on a PC.

Harrison said that although the Mac was supported, the site ran faster on the Windows platform because Microsoft ASP (Active Server Page ) moves a lot of work off the server and onto the PC.

With most of my list completed, I clicked on something I shouldn't have and lost all the navigation. Trying to go backwards, I got a pretty but useless screen as one of the page elements multiplied itself into a grid in the browser.

It took several minutes of hunting through past screens before I got back to one that worked and found the contents of the trolley intact.

"We mirror every transaction back on the server. That means if your connection drops off or your browser crashes you won't lose what you have done during the session," Harrison said.

"That is particularly important in rural areas, where people can have connection problems.

"It also means that if you want you can build up a big order gradually in multiple sessions, before you take it to checkout."

The order sent, I went out to Woolworths' Manurewa store, where "personal shopper" Adele Browning was working through the aisles loading my groceries.

The order had been turned into a picking list on Browning's Symbol bar code reader, arranged by aisle and bay to take her through the store in the most efficient manner.

Once she scans the correct item, the screen will tell her what to pick next. Out-of-stock items can be substituted, if the customer agrees.

Harrison said Woolworths had already got a return on investment in the system by improved stock control in the four picking stores around the country and by being able to measure the true cost of out-of-stock items.

"When we started we were leaving about 5 per cent of the spend on the table. We have got it down to less than 2 per cent."

Woolworths used to deliver orders in a shrink-wrapped cardboard carton, but switched to recyclable plastic baskets because of concerns about waste and expense. The baskets also mean fewer breakages and more orders can be packed into a truck.

Urgent Couriers has the contract to deliver around Auckland and is committing a new fleet of temperature-controlled trucks to the task.

Harrison said the demands of delivery, where parcels needed to be dropped off within a narrow timeframe, did not fit the way couriers usually worked.

My order complete, I jumped into the Urgent Couriers truck driven by Jon Crutchley for the ride into town.

He said the courier company delivered the goods to people "across the board, from student flats to big houses in Herne Bay.

Woolworths