13. GreenGrocer.com.au: Freshening up the Web
Category
Groceries
Overall impression and usability
The GreenGrocer.com.au site looks good, is competitively priced, and allows purchases to be made online. The customer is not required to be at home when delivery is made. This does lead to additional packaging costs for the customer, however, in order to keep food requiring refrigeration cold.
Hits
- Purchases can be made online, with same day delivery available. The customer does not have to be home to receive the delivery.
- A selection of specials is on the homepage.
- GreenGrocer.com.au offers to refund any items the customer is not fully satisfied with. The site also provides offline contact details, adding a human interface to what is predominantly an online company.
- The bottom part of the homepage covers all company policies including privacy, security, refunds, customer support, and competitive pricing--unlike others, you don't need to go digging for them.
- Customers of the site can subscribe to a newsletter, which includes specials and recipes.
- The site offers an organic department dedicated to selling only organic fruit and vegetables.
- A search facility is available. You can search by keyword for products and recipes. Tips on how to best use the search facility are also made available.
- The products of the store have been categorised in a logical and easy to follow way. As a result, a customer should be able to locate a desired product within one of the store's departments without too much hassle.
Images of all items is available for the customer to view.
Delivery charges appear to be quite inexpensive. Prices range from AU$4.95 to AU$9.90, depending on the day of delivery and the time of day of delivery. The tool to select the delivery option was great, and clearly showed the varying costs depending on preferences.
Misses
- Fresh produce is given a rating as to its quality (5 = excellent to 1 = unacceptable). The question is, how objective is this rating? All products are given a rating of either 5 or 4, and we certainly can't imagine a product receiving a rating of 1.
- The customer must register to buy online, and must be logged in to start shopping.
- Because the customer does not have to be home to receive the delivery, and also because the delivery trucks used are not refrigerated, the customer does have the additional expense of purchasing polystyrene containers and ice (AU$5.50) for cold items. It's unclear if these containers can be reused for subsequent purchases.
Purchasing procedure
- The method of choosing categories and seeing the results took a moment to get used to. We weren't expecting such as long list on the one page.
- The goods are selected and then checked out using credit card payment. The site offers an alternative payment method to paying by credit card online.
- Customers can create an account balance with the store by posting a cheque, and then draw on this account when making purchases. This is a clever way of still capturing those customers unwilling to provide their credit card details online or those customers who don't own a credit card.
- The checkout process was clear and well structured. We only had a small problem with the address selection, due to some bugs with the site.
Security
- The security of the payment procedure is guaranteed using SSL.
- GreenGrocer.com.au indicates that it has captured your IP address. However, this site presents its reasoning for doing this so you don't feel like you're being monitored.
ePharmacy currently has 3 staff members. It proves that you do not have to have a massive business structure to have a successful e-commerce business.