As customers and retailers look across all touchpoints rather than siloed channels, so IR retailer reviews look at the entire retailer’s eco-system of website, mobile, the use of digital in store and their overall strategy. Longer in-depth analysis of the four areas can be viewed online a www.internetretailing.net. This issue our reviewers examine Morrisons .
RETAIL STRATEGY 5/25
EMMA ROBERTSON, MANAGING DIRECTOR, TRANSFORM
After years of will-they-won’t-they speculation and city commitments, Morrisons has launched an online grocery offer, covering 1/5 of UK households or 40% of its 2014 target. The grocer aims to be able to offer online ordering for home delivery to half of the UK’s households by the end of the year, accelerated in the summer by opening up the proposition to London.
The challenge for Morrisons on many fronts is occupying the middle ground, or the famously “squeezed middle”, and with its online delivery proposition it is in danger of occupying the same space virtually having to face the challenge of winning back online customers from the other big players, whilst defending the threat of whatever Aldi , Lidl and Amazon have to offer in the coming years.
Read full review here.
WEB EFFECTIVENESS 13/25
AMY MCINNES, USER EXPERIENCE CONSULTANT, USER VISION
Considering Morrisons had the examples of Tesco and Asda to follow, it is disappointing to see such a lacklustre site that appears to have had little, if any, user research involved in its creation. The navigation, although workable, is reminiscent of dated ecommerce sites. Content is disappointingly sparse in both description and visuals, providing a poor experience for the user even before trying to checkout. On trying to do so, various obstacles are placed in front of the user. Morrisons let themselves and thei users down by not optimising the site for mobile. The main problem, as others have highlighted, is that it has duplicated Ocado’s platform; there is clearly little re-invention or thought put into the first launch. It works, but it certainly could be better.
Read full review here.
MOBILE 5/25
ROB THURNER, FOUNDING PARTNER, BURNER MOBILE
Based on the time I spent getting to grips with their mobile site, I’d say Morrisons has a mountain to climb. While, the homepage of the Morrisons site is mobile optimised, the pages beneath are not. This makes the rest of my browsing experience, and the rest of this site review, rather brief.
Morrisons misses an opportunity to apply some of the information architecture of its app to its mobile site and considering its subsidiary Kiddicare is a pioneer in mobile retail, Morrisions should be able to apply this formula to the master brand. On a positive note, Morrisons’ low price positioning stands out, throughout the site: “These aren’t offers, they’re our new everyday prices”. Bold “DEALS” shout out from most product lines.
Read full review here.
INTERNET RETAILING IN STORE 4/25
REETA JUNANKAR, CONSULTING MANAGER, JAVELIN GROUP
At present, use of digital technology in store at Morrisons is limited, particularly from the customer’s point of view. That said the business has been going through a transformation in the last few years with signifi cant investment in it systems to take them into the multichannel era and also to start to integrate themselves with sister busines Kiddicare .
Morrisons now uses wirelessly connected tablets in-store which enable greater autonomy of ordering on a store-b store basis so that each store can refl ect the needs of its local community. Also, recently implemented, are state of the art self-service checkouts that offer many interesting capabilities such as mobile scanning and personalisation using customer data. In 2012, the business reported trials of a Kiddicare kiosk in the baby aisle of some Morrisons stores, however thi digital initiative seems to have been rolled back. In future, using their 400+ stores as an ordering and pick up point for Kiddicare orders would certainly be a step forward in cross-brand omnichannel integration.
Read full review here.
