Fast track: the apps that are changing the face of shopping

It’s impossible to go anywhere without spotting someone staring at a smartphone. And usage is on the rise. Last year, mobiles overtook laptops as the number one device for using the internet, says Ofcom. Apparently we spend two hours a day glued to our phones. So it’s no surprise the supermarkets are trying to take advantage.

The big four were reasonably quick to roll out online shopping apps but now, after years of talk and trials, they are rolling out smartphone apps designed for the shop floor that promise to enhance everything from promotions to payments.

Next year, Tesco will roll out its mobile wallet app - PayQwiq - across all stores. In June, Waitrose launched Quick Check, which allows shoppers to scan products with their smartphones as they shop and pay at a designated checkout. Sainsbury’s is also trialling a scanning app called Smartshop. It is lagging behind somewhat - the app is only available in two stores and has been for a year (see box, over) - but the supermarket promises it will roll out to “more stores” at some point. And next week an app called Ubamarket (currently available in beta-testing mode) will appear. It claims to be able to take your shopping list, create the fastest route around the supermarket, and allow you to pay.

It all shows an appetite among retailers for apps that enhance the supermarket shop. But is there an appetite among their customers? Or are they a faddy waste of time, a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist? After all, how hard is it to track down the ketchup?

“There are apps that are a total waste of time for the user and the person developing them,” says Ru Barksfield, CEO of digital invention company Fat Unicorn. The consequence? “The end user will simply delete the app and the brand may be impacted adversely.”

Fortunately it’s relatively easy to understand what the consumer is looking for in a supermarket app. Ironically, it’s an app that will get them in and out of the place as fast as they possibly can.

Speed

Experts believe customers will buy into propositions that will shave even the smallest amount of time off the supermarket shop. The general dislike of spending unnecessary time in supermarkets was the premise behind Ubamarket, a shopping list, scanning and payment app founded by Will Broome that’s currently being trialled in Warner’s Budgens stores.

“I used to get texted a shopping list but I couldn’t find anything, even though I had been to that supermarket before,” says Broome.

It may sound like a lame complaint when anyone can simply ask a shelf-stacker or look for an overhead sign, but his research into the subject showed he was not alone. In a survey of 2,000 supermarket shoppers carried out by Broome, 66% were dissatisfied with in-store shopping and cited long queues (35%) and struggling to find items (15%) as their main frustrations.

Meanwhile, a survey by Researchbods found 13% of supermarket shoppers felt there weren’t enough people on hand to help them find things, and 27% said they didn’t go through the checkouts as quickly as they would like.

So Broome decided to create an app that eliminated these frustrations. Ubamarket claims to be able to optimise the perfect route around any participating store to scoop up the items in your shopping list, scan the products while you do it, pay with one tap and hightail it out of there.

Broome believes it can reduce the length of an average supermarket shop - about an hour, according to Grocer 33 figures - by at least 25%. This speed is particularly important to younger consumers who are “less tolerant of things like queuing because they’re so used to the convenience of everything being automatic online”.

The app is free to consumers but, at a cost of around £10,000 for a group of four medium-sized stores, it’s a decision retailers will consider carefully. But Broome says the price isn’t putting people off. He’s been “inundated” with enquiries from the US and India and says it is easy for retailers to adopt. Once the mapping of the store is done - Broome says it can take as little as a week - the app is live. Product updates come through automatically via barcodes and, if there is a change in their location, the retailer can update the app themselves.

Major mults

Of course, Broome would be a keen advocate of his own technology. But David McCreadie, managing director of Tesco Bank, says speed was also a key selling point of Tesco’s PayQwiq app, which enables customers to pay and collect Clubcard points with one swipe. Shoppers “want to pay quickly and the phone is the simplest way of doing that,” says McCreadie.

The addition of Clubcard was vital. “Apps that are only about payment aren’t enough to convince customers,” he says. Saving the bother of taking out your Clubcard may not seem like much, but customers approve. “Because you added Clubcard there’s actually a reason to use it,” says one user. “It saves me looking for my Clubcard, which is at the back of my wallet.”

This combination of speed and convenience must also apply to the download stage. As Fat Unicorn’s Barksfield points out, there is no point in having great functionality if no one takes the time to get the app in the first place. For this reason, he believes each brand should have one app that does everything, rather than separate in-store and online propositions.

Asda seems to have done this with apparent success. Unlike other retailers, its app integrates its online shopping proposition with in-store features such as an interactive shopping list, and has received 54,000 reviews on Google Play so far (mostly positive, by the looks of its 4.5 star rating). “The problem you’ve got with these in-store apps is people really need to download them before they get to the store, so it has to provide them with something at home,” he says. “Take Waitrose. If their scanning app allowed you to use an online service at home, you would already have the app on your phone so it activates when you get in store. If you try to get people to download the app when they get to the store, people will get frustrated.”

Loyalty

In-store apps also enable retailers to build up a more detailed picture of their customers than straightforward online shopping apps, or even traditional loyalty card schemes, ever did. Ubamarket, for example, can track what customers intend to buy at the store, and what they chose not to buy once they got there. And because it can track their exact route, it throws up all kinds of insight into everything from the effectiveness of a specific promotion to something as straightforward as shelf positioning. Broome says the app could function as a “behaviour pattern loyalty scheme” as opposed to simply measuring purchases.

Combine these observations with the ability to send notifications through the app and the fun could really begin. A shopper that exhibits dawdling tendencies when confronted with an on-shelf offer could be more susceptible to a pop-up promotion than a shopper who never deviates from their course. And how about incremental purchases? If they have written ‘baked beans’, the app could point them to a brand that has a two-for-one offer running. Then it could point out that they haven’t added a loaf of bread to their list. Or butter.

In essence, supermarkets can make recommendations in store in the same way that they now do online. This is already underway in the Ubamarket app, which notifies customers of offers related to their shopping list. But the app is sure to avoid notifying customers of promotions they haven’t expressed an interest in.

This is the key difference between a powerful marketing tool and an irritant, says Rob Mannion, founder and MD of RNF Digital. His team was behind the Bestway app (see box, left), which uses beacon technology to deliver “relevant offers and information” to customers.

“They like to be made aware that a relevant product is on offer but not about things that are totally irrelevant,” Mannion says. “It’s about delivering a personalised service.” The approach seems to be working - the app has a coveted five-star rating on iTunes. And this focus on personalisation helps retailers get closer to their customers, he adds. “With smartphones, retailers can engage with their end customer like never before - all day every day if they wanted to,” he says.

And considering much of the population would spend all day every day glued to their phones if they could, it’s no surprise the supermarkets are trying to take advantage. It’s only the smart thing to do.