In its first appearance in The Grocer’s quarterly Online 33 survey, Morrisons came out cheaper than its rivals - including Ocado - but in terms of customer service it was last.

At 36 minutes, the time taken to complete the shop was second only to Ocado - and much to our shopper’s delight, a free gingerbread man was included with the delivery - but the order was plagued by poor availability and late delivery. One of the products couldn’t be found on the website and no suitable alternatives were suggested. One of the substitutions was felt to be inappropriate. Some product names were also reported to be “inconsistent” if there was a varying size. And the delivery was late (though 10 points were awarded as the driver called and texted to warn our shopper).

Conversely, the first supermarket to go online, Tesco, was in first place, with an impressive score of 93 - though this was its first win since October 2010 (or for 13 surveys), and it was also the priciest shop. It won thanks to “very easy” site navigation and “simple graphic layouts” that made it easy to find products, and, on delivery, a “friendly and pleasantdriver” who brought the shopping in.

Sainsbury’s was let down by a pricier substitution on delivery, which bumped up the overall cost, and the lowest web navigation score, as typos and apostrophes foiled the search results. The delivery was on time, though, and taken to the mystery shopper’s kitchen.

On the updated Waitrose site, our shopper had few problems - it froze once but the basket was saved. No alternative suggestions were made for one of the out of stock items. And despite no delivery charge, it was more expensive than Ocado.

But Ocado had problems of its own. Its site was the fastest to place the order but two items arrived damaged (the eggs and Cathedral City Chedds) - just the eggs were refunded as the Chedds were only discovered during unpacking. The driver didn’t offer to bring the shopping in to the house and seemed to be “in a bad mood”.

Asda underwhelmed our shopper: three items didn’t arrive our shopper had to call customer services as she had trouble with the checkout. And the “polite” driver didn’t offer to bring the shopping in.

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