Notes and Thoughts on Grocery 2.0

There’s nothing like having a cold or the flu to zap your energy and leave you feeling, frankly, miserable.  But for the makers of cold and flu products, sniffles, sore throats, sneezes, and body aches are big business.

According to the Center for Disease Control, Americans typically exhibit more signs of colds, or worse, the flu, between November and March.  Experts believe that more cases occur during cold months because people spend more time indoors where viruses can spread easily. Low humidity and dryness of the nasal passage are also thought to be conditions under which many viruses thrive.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that Americans are buying a lot more cold medicine in the winter.  We were curious to know just how dramatic the difference between summer and winter sales of these products would be.

Sales of products designed to treat cold and flu symptoms increased a whopping 369.74% overall in January of 2010, versus August 2009.  Category sales, overall, were up nearly 70%.

Implicatons: As a culture we have come to expect a “quick fix” for what ails us.  Today’s consumers are willing to self-medicate and are comfortable making purchases they feel will improve their health without seeking the guidance of a doctor.  Today, new self-care products are seen as a necessity, even though many did not even exist a decade ago. Less than eight years ago, for example, hand sanitizer products were used primarily by physicians. Today, the product is ubiquitous in schools, offices, shopping centers, and many people even carry the product wherever they go.

Marketers who provide products that allow consumers to feel they are proactively caring for their health are poised to benefit from this trend. Exposing consumers to health-focused messaging at the point of sale is one tactic that is especially effective for capturing the attention of consumers from November to March.

Methodology: MyWebGrocer provides digital solutions for 95 of the nation’s leading retail grocery chains. We create tools and deliver services that help grocers strengthen their relationships with customers and increase their basket size, including mobile solutions, digital circulars, e-commerce, recipes, shopping lists, and search engine marketing.  MyWebGrocer captures aggregate sales data for the online grocery transactions it powers.  The data above was drawn from online grocery transactions occurring between Aug. 1 – Aug. 31, 2009 and Jan. 1 – Jan. 31 2010.

Photo courtesy of middleagedsuburbandiva.com

On Wednesday, August 5, 2009, Stripes Group completed a $13 million equity investment in MyWebGrocer Inc., a rapidly growing and profitable Colchester, VT‐based software‐as‐a‐service company providing leading regional and national grocery store chains and consumer packaged goods companies with online commerce and digital media services. As part of their unique platform, MyWebGrocer operates the nation’s largest grocery ad network with over 4 million monthly shoppers.

DanMarriott, Managing Partner of Stripes Group, will be joining the MyWebGrocer Board of Directors.

About Stripes Group:

Stripes Group, founded in 2003 and based in New York, is a private investment firm focused on growth stage minority and majority investments in rapidly growing and profitable internet, software‐as‐a‐service, technology‐enabled services and consumer products companies. Stripes Group typically partners with founder‐owned and operated companies that have had no prior institutional investors.  For more information on Stripes Group, visit www.stripesgroup.com.

About MyWebGrocer, Inc.:
MyWebGrocer, founded in 1999 and based in Colchester, VT, is a founder‐owned and managed software‐as‐a‐service company providing online commerce, communications and digital media services to leading grocery store chains and consumer packaged goods companies while also operating the nation’s largest grocery ad network. MyWebGrocer has been profitable nearly since inception and has established itself as the leader in the industry with over 5,000 grocery stores nationwide using their platform and over 60 globally recognized brands, including Kelloggs, Unilever, Nestle and P&G, reaching 4 million monthly shoppers on their industry‐leading grocery ad network.

The Burlington Free Press recently ran a story on how “Companies get social with marketing”.  One major take away, if it can work for grocery it can and will work for your business.

MyWebGrocer was the feature for this story:

“Facebook and Twitter are fun, but they can also make a business thrive.

So say Alec Newcomb, vice president of MyWebGrocer, and Rebecca Roose, a project manager with the Colchester firm. MyWebGrocer provides digital services for leading retail grocers such as Shoprite, Lowes Food Stores, Big Y and Food Lion. Newcomb said the lessons he’s learned helping grocery chains can apply to almost any business.

Social media helps level the playing field, Newcomb said. There’s no need to spend thousands of dollars on an ad campaign when a business can use social media to do its bidding.”

Continue the full online story here

MyWebGrocer and Big in Japan have partnered to bring timely and relevant product data and advertising to the Google Android Platform. ShopSavvy, Big in Japan’s popular price comparison application, utilizes MyWebGrocer’s grocery data to help consumers find relevant products and pricing at their local grocery retailers.

Using any Google Android phone, shoppers can scan a barcode found on any grocery product and are instantly shown product results from ShopSavvy. These results include prices on the web and at local stores, consumer reviews, an option to save the product to their “wish list” and to sign up for results when the price changes on the item. As consumers are grocery shopping, from the palm of their hand they will be able to see information that they traditionally had to get from newspaper circulars or direct mail.

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with a mobile leader like Big in Japan,” said Alec Newcomb, MyWebGrocer’s Vice President. “Customer response to ShopSavvy in the US has been incredible, and we are excited about being able to provide relevant and timely information on the 800,000 branded products across our 95 Grocery Retailers.”

“Grocery data has been a challenge for ShopSavvy from the very start. More than 25% of ShopSavvy users have scanned more than a million grocery items with limited success over the past year,” said Alexander Muse co-founder of Big in Japan. “Our partnership with MyWebGrocer means users can finally access real-time pricing and inventory for hundreds of thousands of grocery related items.”

ShopSavvy Demo

MyWebGrocer is currently live on ShopSavvy and relevant CPG Advertising is being deployed this quarter on the application.

About MyWebGrocer:

MyWebGrocer is the leading digital services provider for retail grocery, connecting retail brands to their consumers through ecommerce and online tools.  Retail partners include Shoprite, Lowes Food Stores, Big Y, Food Lion and 90 other leading grocery chains. MyWebGrocer has the largest online grocery-advertising network with 3.8 Million monthly shoppers, attracting advertisers such as Kellogg’s, Unilever, Nestle, P&G and 60 other leading brands. For more information please visit MyWebGrocer.com or call 1-888-662-2284.

About Big in Japan:

Big in Japan builds cool applications for mobile devices, including Apple’s award winning iPhone and Google’s open source Android platform, think of us as the mobile idea factory. Our latest application ShopSavvy™ won Google’s Android Developer Challenge and is available on T-Mobile’s G1 Google Android phone. Big in Japan is not just a development shop, they manage and support applications for millions of users for major brands including FX Network and LEGO.

So your company has a website, fantastic – this is step one in managing your online presence, but how OLD is that website? When was the last time you watched/asked people about it’s ease of use and functionality? Sure you know what you think the website should do and be used for but are you aware of how your customers use your website?

YOU ARE NOT YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE.

As marketers we all feel as though we know what the customer wants, how they use and navigate the website. We feel as though we have the ability to see through their eyes and can put ourselves in the customer’s position – YOU CAN’T. (ok maybe some of us have the ability to remove ourselves but not many)

So what should you do? Watch. Your mom, your best friend, anyone that’s never been on the site before. Set up a list of tasks you wish to have the user accomplish and take notes, use SnagIt and capture all of their mouse movements. Watch a few people and see where they get caught up. What is obvious to you may not be obvious to them and it’s important for you to see this. Resist the urge to help. Say absolutely nothing. You are simply there to observe.

AMERICAN AIRLINES WEBSITE  = FAIL

User experience is important. It’s how your customers interact with your brand when you can’t be there in person and you want this to be the best experience possible. Recently Dustin Curtis was booking a flight on the American Airlines website and had a terrible experience; so much so that he felt compelled to send them a letter complete with a mockup for a redesign of their homepage.

How embarrassing. Not only are your customers unhappy but they actually redesigned your homepage for you! The response from the lead UX architect was even more surprising – he agreed with Curtis. The architect admitted that the website was horrible and then explained to him why – over 200 people touch and have input on the AA website. 200 people! and that’s not the UX team – this includes the marketing people, product people, code development, business analysis, etc. etc – and each group with their own agenda, no wonder the site is a mess. Read the UX response letter and see if it’s similar to the process that your website goes through. If it is, it’s time to re-evaluate.

I understand that many people have an idea of what purpose a company website serves but if it’s not inline with what your use wants than it doesn’t matter what what you think. If you lose people on the homepage what’s the point? A website needs to stay fresh and serve the needs of it’s users. If you’ve received feedback that the website is hard to navigate, maybe it is. If Google Analytics is showing that the top landing page is not your homepage maybe there’s a reason and you should investigate further.

LANDING PAGE LESSON

A while ago I had created a landing page with a store locator for a paid search campaign, the page did well and had high traffic. One day I noticed that there were very few new customers and a lot of direct traffic using the page, meaning that the page had to be either bookmarked or the url directly typed in. Why was this? Turns out that users found it easier to google the brand name, click on the text ad and use this landing page rather than navigating the website to find the store locator there.  This is a problem for the website. It should never be easier to click on an ad than use a company’s website. EVER.

No one likes to hear that their website is ugly or difficult to use but if you do hear this do something about it. Your customers are savvy, we know what an old, outdated website looks like and this will reflect poorly on you. Take the time to audit your site – pay someone – do it in-house – but do it. (While you’re at it audit your SEO/SEM initiatives as well.)

A positive user experience will reward you tenfold and there’s nothing more powerful than happy users and word of mouth.

Elise