Waitrose v Ocado, the Final

Last order, I searched for Special K and got an error page. Oh. Well, I know it is a cereal, so Cupboard -> Food -> Cereals. Even better, it's from Kelloggs, so let's click that button. Hmm, in all the four pages, the only Special K items are the cereal bars. OK, turn off Kellogg in the search. There it is - a pain to find because you can't enter a page number of use a binary search as you only get the closest pages to choose from. Let's order while I can. Hmm, only 500g packets, I'm sure they do a 750. Here's a thought, I see Corn Flakes here, surely the most iconic Kellogg product, not sure it was in the restricted list. Ah, it isn't.

So, site too hard to use, coded by script kiddies wanting to show off rather than people with the customers' interests at heart. Too many mistakes, too slow. I'm out of here.

Bye!

Waitrose v Ocado - which one is better - Part 3

Second order from Waitrose. First thing I notice is that my trolley has items in it. It is the last order I made. Interesting. There is an option to tick items and remove them. I guess this will be useful as more and more things become part of a regular order, but there tends to be a lot of variation week to week. This first time I deleted about half the items.
On checking out, the delivery address does not default to my address, even though that is the only one on record. You have to select to use it, then click the radio button next to it. I know it's only two clicks, but strangely irritating.
That time it took me nearly three quarters of an hour. Still slower than Ocado.

Waitrose v Ocado - which one is better - Part 2

Following on from Part 1, still on the same order. Some more points:

• The Waitrose site is much slower than Ocado's. Having pop-ups that dim the rest of the screen while updating, even if just to add an item, means I cannot do anything else while waiting. On Ocado, I can add items as fast as I can move the mouse and click. Clearly, Ocado's web developers have learnt to separate processing from handling the input queue, which is pretty basic stuff
• Waitrose has a forum, which is good, whereas Ocado only has email communication
• Both sites have far too many graphical adverts at the top, before I see what I really want.

Waitrose v Ocado - which one is better - Part 1

We have been long term users of Ocado's delivery service - over five years, I think. Now that Waitrose has decided to make delivery free for orders over £50, which is less than my normal delivery, and Ocado charges me around £10 a month for deliveries over £40 each, for I have decided to give Waitrose a try for a month and see what I think. I believe it will take that long to become sufficiently familiar with the Waitrose site as opposed to Ocado.

So far:

• Multiple search on Ocado is incredibly useful. I often start by putting in my shopping list, knowing that the categories can be sorted by Favourites first means that I usually see the things I want early
  
• Ability to edit Favourites on Ocado is very useful
• Suggested order from Ocado also very useful. I never order everything, but it is a great reminder.
• Browsing through by pressing "Next" button for next category very handy on Ocado, as opposed to going to the top of the page, clicking on a (not very obvious) drop-down menu in Waitrose.
• Ocado site looks like it was designed for usability, Waitrose looks like a web designer was showing off

So far (and this is only one order), Ocado is looking like it is in the lead. It took me nearly 45 minutes to place my first order on Waitrose, it normally takes well under 15 on Ocado. And that order was around half of the normal order value. That is at least two hours a month, and I think my time is worth more than £5 / hr.