Simon delivers better search to grocery shoppers
Simon Delivers is delivering on its promise to be the web grocer of choice
for its core Minneapolis market, thanks in part to new search features the
online retailer has been phasing in over the last several months. Simon Delivers
carries more than 8,000 online SKUs. With a full range of supermarket inventory,
it makes fresher produce a centerpiece of its value proposition by shortening
the typical supply chain and investing heavily in what CEO Christopher Brown
calls “chill chain management”—refrigeration storage technology in its
warehouses and trucks—to support that.
In the past few months, Simon Delivers has been on a new product expansion
binge, offering a wide array of new items such as DVDs and magazines as well as more deli items and liquors. To compete more effectively with traditional
chain grocers and give more choice to its more than 70,000 customers, Simon
Delivers sees expanded inventory as critical to its business plan. For instance, the
web grocer now stocks more than 300 brand-name beer, wine and hard liquor
items on its liquor product pages.
Butt too much choice can be overwhelming to online grocery shoppers, who are
typically pressed for time and don’t mind paying extra for the convenience of doing their grocery buying over the web. To make it easier, Simon Delivers has expanded site search to give busy shoppers more ways to find and purchase the items—particularly fresh produce and meats—that they are looking for. For instance, Simon Delivers now has a page with tips on simple or advance search
techniques that help shoppers reduce the time it takes to find, click and purchase
groceries.
The online grocer’s internal design team and search engine management vendor,
DT Search, have refined the site’s databases and search software to recognize
different spellings and abbreviations. If a shopper types in “Huggy” instead
of “Huggies” or “Welchs” rather than “Welch`s,” the search will still take
them to the same products. To locate items faster, shoppers can also search by interactive grocery aisles, much as they can in a real store, and by new items and weekly specials.
Simon Delivers is growing. Annual web sales now total more than $70 million,
and the average order value is almost $125. But Brown says better site search
is key to helping customers find precisely what they need in under a few
seconds. “If a customer wants a particular brand of chip and we carry it, our
search functions will get them there quickly,” he says. “Customers shouldn’t have to worry about spacing, abbreviations or misspellings when they are shopping and pressed for time. A good search function will take care of that situation, and that is what ours does.”
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