Supermarket orders by mobile app — comparing 3 Dutch market leaders — Part 2 of 3
This is the second post in our three-part series comparing the strategies and processes of three Dutch grocery retailers — Albert Heijn, Jumbo, and Picnic — when it comes to online sales via mobile devices. You can also read our deep dive into Albert Heijn’s ‘Bonus’ customer loyalty program here.
In Part 1 we looked at these supermarkets’ app interfaces, while in Part 3 we will examine customer service and how each retailer handles the delivery process.
To learn more about how Spaaza can help you customise powerful retail apps visit our website Spaaza.com
Placing your order — what’s the flow?
There are multiple ways to start and return to an order. Each of these three apps have a different flow. We will examine them and briefly compare some of the reordering features, which make it easy to add items you’ve previously purchased to your next order.
All three apps allow you to start by first selecting a delivery time, then adding items to the cart, which might seem like the reverse order to do things in, but you can keep an open cart in the app without confirming your order, come back later to add more to the cart, and then fix your delivery slot.
Picnic — the fastest ordering
One of the things worth noting about the Picnic app is the efficiency of the ordering process. Adding previously purchased items to your order is incredibly slick and fast, as is searching for new items.
Picnic’s ordering interface is built around a series of squares containing big pictures of products you might want to order. Information is kept to a minimum, just the product’s name, size, and price. Initially the selection is made up of products frequently bought by other customers, but after your first order the interface personalises the process, defaulting to your chosen products, marking them as ‘previously ordered’ (Besteld), starting with a section of ‘your favourites’ (Jouw favorieten).
It’s incredibly easy to scroll down the products, adding them to the shopping cart by tapping on each, one or multiple times. In our household we eat a lot of bananas. The screenshots below show me ordering 2 kilos of bananas. Note how the price on the ‘basket’ icon changes each time I tap to add more.
By scrolling further down the page you move out of the ‘favourites’ section and into other labelled sections — first ‘Your favourite deals’ (Jouw favoriete acties), then onto categories like ‘fruit’, ‘meat, fish and vegetarian’, ‘household’, etc.
At the end of each section there’s a ‘See more’ (Bekijk meer) square, with a call-to-action to show more products in that category. For example, opening up the ‘meat, fish and vegetarian’ or ‘dairy and eggs’ sections shows other products I’ve bought before, in order of how frequently I’ve bought them. It’s a handy way to avoid cluttering up the home screen with every single item you’ve ever bought.
Finding new products that you haven’t previously bought, but might like, is a little weaker. The ‘New’ (Nieuw) product category is a scroll off to the right of the screen, and easily missed unless you’re in casual browsing mode. Usually when I order the groceries I’m in the kitchen with three talkative kids asking me things, and want to get the order placed as fast as possible, so I don’t always notice what’s new. That said, the selection of new items is attractively presented.
The search function in Picnic is well designed too. Just click on the search icon and you’re in a search screen which also has a list of categories you can select. By clicking on the search box the screen immediately changes to show example search terms. The filter changes to show a list of suggested terms as you type.
Selecting one of the suggested search terms, or hitting enter, shows you a list of products. Then all you have to do is scroll down the list and tap the ones you want to add to your cart.
When you’ve finished searching, hitting the ‘home’ icon takes you back to where you were in the list of previously bought items. This is a great bit of attention to detail from Picnic, which saves a lot of time if, for example, you normally buy a bottle of Sauvignon, but want to try a Chardonnay instead. Once selected, you can continue adding the usual items to your cart.
Another nice feature with the Picnic app is that if you can’t find an item, you can request it, and the Picnic customer service staff respond quickly, often adding the product you’ve asked for, via an ‘Are you missing something?’ (Mis je iets?) button.
I wish I could provide a list of healthy products I’ve requested using this feature, but so far my only request was for a (much) larger jar of Nutella, which Picnic had in stock within a couple of weeks.
The new products list in the app also has a ‘Thanks to your tips’ (Dankzij jullie tips) section, which lists products added through customer requests.
Clicking on the information ‘i’ for each product displays detailed information, such as ingredients, country of origin, and the minimum length of time the item can be expected to stay fresh.
The shelf life is worth looking at. In a physical supermarket you could choose an item with a later expiry date if you weren’t planning on cooking it immediately. Once or twice we’ve had items delivered, such as fresh chicken, which needed to be consumed within two days, which isn’t long if you’re planning meals for a week.
As you add items, the red ‘amount’ oval next to the cart icon changes to reflect the changing value of your order. You can see what you’ve ordered so far by clicking on the amount, and increase, decrease, or remove the quantity of individual items, as well as seeing which, if any, of your chosen items are out of stock, a feature also displayed during the ordering process.
Albert Heijn — many ordering and delivery options
How you start an order isn’t as obvious in the Albert Heijn app as with Picnic, although once you’ve got going it works well, and I’m sure regular customers quickly get used to the interface.
There’s a minimum order value of €70 and a variable delivery fee to deal with, so the barrier to placing your first order isn’t as low as with Picnic’s minimum order of €35 with zero delivery fee. However, AH has lots of extra options, such as having your groceries delivered at the same time each week (from €10 per month for one delivery a week, with the minimum order value lowered to €50) which can reduce the price for regular customers.
Because the AH app is designed for the in-store shopper as well, the home page also displays promotions and other information. You can still start your order from there, by typing the name of the product you’re looking for into the search box and then clicking the ‘plus’ icon to start an order.
You can also start your order via the ‘My list’ (Mijn lijst) view and then either type in a product name, or scan a barcode to recognise a product you already have at home.
A couple of other useful and noteworthy options are tucked away on this screen:
- Sharing your list — you can share your list of items with chosen recipients via other apps on your phone. This is just shared as a text list of product names and is not a link to the app.
- Walking route — you can choose a store and the app will sort the items in the list into the most efficient walking order for that specific location.
The AH app does have a list of categorised items, and ways to reorder items you’ve bought in previous purchases, but these are hidden away in the ‘More’ (Meer) menu, which is a pity, as ordering that way is nowhere near as fast as with Picnic.
As with the other two apps, in the AH app tapping each product shows nutritional and other information.
Albert Heijn’s recipe-based orders seem like a good feature, although not one that I have actually used. They’re provided in association with the free Albert Heijn magazine, Allerhande, available online and in-store. Scrolling through nice recipes seems like a relaxed way to go (mobile) shopping. There are lots of recipes to choose from in different categories, and you can order all the items in a given recipe with just one click. You can even alter the number of people you’re cooking for and the list of items adjusts automatically.
You can also search for recipes which contain a particular ingredient, bookmark a recipe as a favourite, or share recipes with friends.
You can of course add, remove, and change the number of items in your shopping list at any time. To actually place your online order once you have your shopping list sorted in the app, just click on ‘Order online’ (Online bestellen) to confirm, click on one of the available time slots, and then on ‘finish up your order’ (Rond je bestelling af).
Jumbo — build your own lists for faster ordering
The Jumbo app opens into the not very order-centric ‘My Jumbo’ (Mijn Jumbo). It’s a little cluttered, with quite a bit of text and few graphics. You have to drag the screen down to start searching for products, something I discovered quite by accident.
There are a few ways to start an order:
- Choose a delivery time using the yellow ‘Reserve’ (Reserveer) button.
- Look at one of the ‘lists’ in the interface, which includes lists of your most frequently bought products, your most recent purchases, as well as curated lists, and lists you create and save yourself. By using these lists you just tap on a product to add it to your order.
- Drag the screen down to expose the search field, where you can start typing in the name of a product.
- Tap on the ‘Products’ (Producten) icon at the bottom of the screen.
Product search in the Jumbo app works as you’d expect it to. Just search for a keyword, click on a product in the list of results and add it to your basket.
If you’ve previously bought an item matching the search, it will be returned first in the results shown, which is a handy way to speed up your ordering.
There are a couple of neat extra features in the search option in the Jumbo app:
- You can scan a barcode directly from the search interface, meaning you can order repeat purchases easily by walking around your kitchen scanning the packaging of products you want to buy again, although it might be quicker just to type in ‘milk’, ‘peanut butter’, etc, or select the product in the list of items you’ve previously bought (more about lists in a moment).
- Promotions applicable to an item show up in red in the item list. If you add the item to your basket, a message appears telling you the item is on promotion and inviting you to view the promotion.
As with the other apps, the items in your order are shown in a list. You can swipe them to the left to remove them.
The Jumbo ‘lists’ feature is something you might not use for your first orders, but over time you may find yourself using the feature more often, either to speed up ordering or to look for inspiration. A list is a pretty simple concept — a curated list of products which you can add to your basket either individually, or all in one go.
Jumbo has pre-set lists, ones which are curated. But it is also possible for customers to create their own lists, and even share them with other customers, or ‘follow’ another user’s list.
The usefulness of lists really comes into its own when you consider the different types of lists in the app:
- Automated, personalised ‘most recently bought’ and ‘most frequently bought’ lists for each customer.
- Lists of favourites a customer can create (and name)
- Themed, curated lists, such as ‘Mother’s Day’ or ‘Summer Picnic’.
- Seasonal lists, such as ‘Asparagus’, which includes asparagus and items it commonly accompanies.
- Labelled lists — this is a grouping of themed lists, like ‘Sport’ or ‘Italian’
- Promotional lists — items which qualify you for extra points in the Jumbo ‘Extras’ loyalty programme
As well as lists, like the AH app, the Jumbo app has a recipe section where you can find a recipe and add every item to your basket. There are thousands of recipes available, and you can similarly also search by ingredient to find a recipe matching ingredients you already have in the cupboard.
The different ways in which the Jumbo app allows you to add products to your order make it more suitable for leisurely browsing than for rapid-fire ordering. But it is very good for finding inspiration if you have a little more time available to read a recipe, or look through some of the themed lists for products you haven’t tried before.
Pricing — which supermarket is the most competitive?
There’s quite a lot of price competition in the Dutch supermarket sector, so I wasn’t expecting to see great differences in price between the three retailers. But in the end I was surprised to find that I’m quite a lot better off with one of the online services. Which one? All will be revealed.
Overall, Jumbo and Picnic are very close on the price of individual items. Often items cost exactly the same, or there is a difference of only a couple of cents, with Jumbo usually the more affordable if there is a difference. Albert Heijn, however, usually turns out to be substantially more expensive at the individual item level. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule.
Jumbo just wins on individual item prices, but since Picnic doesn’t charge a delivery fee it comes out lowest overall. For my household shopping, Picnic usually costs €4–5 less per order than Jumbo, while veteran retailer Albert Heijn comes in at a much more expensive third.
None of the pricing I’ve shown here takes into account any loyalty bonuses. Albert Heijn and Jumbo have extensive programmes, with individualised discounts on top of any general price or volume discounts. In fact we described the AH Bonus programme in a lengthy deep-dive article that you can read here. Picnic doesn’t have a loyalty programme, but, like its competitors, does offer some promotional pricing.
Here are a few unscientifically-selected price examples:
Cornflakes
Jumbo and Picnic are an exact match, Albert Heijn is 6.5% more expensive.
Courgettes
Jumbo is the cheapest, Picnic is 10% more expensive, while Albert Heijn is 34% more expensive than Jumbo.
Brown Sugar
Jumbo and Picnic are an exact match, Albert Heijn is 16% more expensive.
Erdinger Beer
Jumbo and Picnic are an exact price match, Albert Heijn is 9% more expensive.
Maza Hummus
Jumbo and Picnic show an exact price match, while AH is 7% more expensive, though at the time of writing the difference was only 1% if you bought two at Albert Heijn.
Broccoli
This one is a bit of an exception to the rule — Picnic and Albert Heijn are both 16% more expensive than Jumbo.
In Part 1 of this short series we looked at these supermarkets’ app interfaces, while in Part 3 we will examine how the delivery process is handled by each of the retailers. You can also read our deep dive into Albert Heijn’s ‘Bonus’ customer loyalty program here.
To learn more about how Spaaza can help you customise powerful retail apps visit our website Spaaza.com
