Countdown Online - Shopping Smarter!!!
Not only is the hype of a year-passed upon us, "getting busier by the day" syndrome continues, seemingly resistant to the season. Technology that helps ease this burden by facilitating us to live life 'smarter' is really quite important, anything to help us stay sane during the silly season!
A wonderful client of ours that has recently made huge strides in helping kiwis live (and in this case, shop) smarter, is Progressive Enterprises - with usability enhancements to both Woolworths & Foodtown Online, and the launch of Countdown Online.
Personally, I'm only a recent Countdown/Progressive convert, but I'm already a devoted one!
I live rurally, with both a New World and PAK'n SAVE equal distance away, in opposite directions. Until becoming a Countdown convert, more often than not I would go direction New World (my partner is a fuss-pot), despite how it made me grimace knowing the bill would have been that much smaller had I gone direction PAK'n SAVE.
Now though, just another 200m up the road from said PAK'n SAVE, resides a brand-spanking new Countdown - I'm in love. The experience is so wonderful for much the same reason as Microsoft's Cloud offering - the power of choice! (sorry, perhaps a bit unrelated, but true nonetheless!)
Shopping smarter alright, and that's not even taking into consideration that in this ever-busier world, the location of my supermarket doesn't even matter - I can just shop online! And so to the point of my post.
Pocket-friendly, intuative & fast (and created with the help of a great company called Olympic) check out my 5 favourite things about the new "Countdown Online" - Shop Smarter New Zealand!!
Number 5.
Ability to search and sort items by price (both low to high, and high to low). This seems an obvious feature, but was missing from the last generation of Progressive's online presence - so a more than welcome addition this time around.
Number 4.
The awesomeness of Product stamps. Click on the thumbnail of any product to open a product-devoted options window. Features include an in-depth text description of the product, but more impressively the option to add said product to any of your lists, and to add notes for your personal shopper. With bananas for example - "green ones please!" or "the oldest there, for a cake".
Number 3.
Got text-lingo/reliance on spell-check syndrome? No worries, enter what you feel, and the system will attempt (normally pretty successfully) to read your mind. The normal problem with such behaviour is the addition of a process step, in then having to choose 'what you actually meant' from a list before making a selection. However, in returning a list of 3 'you might like' options based on your shopping history and the mind-reading smarts, the 'what you actually meant' step is usually missed - and if the mind reading wasn't so successful, multiple options are offered so your next window will be a "ahh, that's what I'm after!" moment.
Number 2.
Access to your personal shopping history (whether a new or continuing online customer) is not a new feature, but that doesn't make its favourability any less fabulous in my opinion! Simply fill in your Onecard number for an instant history of all items you have ever purchased - organisable by aisle, alphabet, price 'low to high', 'high to low' AND my two favourites - frequency and recency.
Making your own lists is so easy - build from scratch, build as you browse, build based on a past shop. Thanks to all this functionality, the typical weekly shop, I estimate, could be condensed to take a total of 2 minutes quite easily. If that isn't 'shopping smarter'!!
Number 1.
My favourite thing about Countdown Online, is how handy a tool it is, even if I were to still go and purchase my goods from a Physical Store. For example, the above view shows my most frequent purchases - from this quick look I know to make a point of stocking up on my favourite yoghurt, V, and pork chops!
On my shopping trip tomorrow I intend on buying a Christmas Cake. A quick look online will inform me which package to keep an eye out for, so I can avoid being the annoying person with their bum sticking out, trying to establish the quality of the cake on the bottom shelf - as many others are likely to be doing at this time of year!
There's pretty much nothing online that isn't findable in-store, but with this knowledge on hand, I know my shopping trip will be alot faster and less aisle-clogging.
So there you have it - happy smart shopping & Merry Christmas New Zealand :) .