This week we’re testing Netgrocer.com, an online grocery store. Their design is very basic and clean. Here’s what the site looked like at the time of the test:

What Does This Website Do?

1. It is a website of a grocery delivery team. We can buy groceries online and it will be delivered to our home.
2. Sells grocery and drugstore items.
3. Netgrocer.com is a online grocery site.
4. It’s an online grocery store with a nationwide delivery area.
5. Based on what I see on the homepage, this site appears to be an online grocery store. It looks like most any “grocery store” items can be bought here and delivered via FedEx.
6. The site is an online grocery store. You browse the site, select the products, place your order, and have your groceries shipped to you.
7. This web site does a online grocery delivery of various products mainly refrigerated, frozen, and non-perishable groceries, health and beauty supplies, home, and gift items. It’s user friendly.
8. This website allows you to order groceries, gifts and other home items online and have them delivered to your home via FedEx.
9. The site provides consumers the opportunity to do their grocery shopping from the comfort of home. The website allows consumers to purchase grocery and non grocery items and have them shipped to the consumers home.
10. This web page allows users to grocery shop on the Internet. The prices on the site are meant to be bargains that are much lower than normal store prices.

Best Current Feature

1. Pictures of each product are displayed.
2. The colors on the site are very attractive and bright. The logo is also very nice. I like that the categories are lined up on top for easy use. The dirt cheap deals are also very clear to compare and understand.
3. I really like the setup and graphics on the site. Having a few (with pictures) sale items right there to see is very nice. I also like the large pictures on the left side toolbar and they are also very colorful. The pictures, typeface and colors really grabbed my attention right away.
4. For me, the best feature is the selection of products. I live in a rural area, and a number of products available on the site are not available at my local grocery store.
5. The best feature is personalized shopping list.
6. The design and display are very colorful and easy to read.
7. The best feature of the website is that there is the option to search for certain items or browse the store. I like this feature and believe it’s the best on the website because if the consumer is not really looking for anything in particular, they have the option to browse through the virtual store as if they were actually in a physical store location. However, if the consumer is looking for a specific item they can do a quick search for it and add it to the cart!
8. Bold print, user friendly.
9. For one thing I love the logo. The font is a great choice as is integrating the orange into the word Netgrocer. One thing that makes the selection easy to navigate is by breaking things up into such detailed sections, such as grocery, health & beauty, etc.
10. The separate categories. I shop organic and it is clear and easy to find them.

This feedback tells us that users like the bright, clean layout. It’s simple, user friendly and doesn’t distract from the purpose of the site.  The categorization and easy search function are also favorites.

One Thing to Improve

1. I don’t care for the ads at the top of the page. The site seems to lack a human approach. It is setup like a database of items.
2. Provide more of the cheap deals.
3. The first thing I wondered when I opened the page was if this is a legitimate business and, if so, will it work for me. I think I would make the box at the end of the page that contains information about what you deliver and how it is done more prevalent and bigger print. It appeared to me at first to be fine print, which I think people don’t usually read. In this case it contains important information that would sell people on the idea and I would want to be sure it is being noticed and read.
4. I found the product selection process to be a bit cumbersome. You have to click on the category menu several times in order to get to the selection of specific items you are looking for. It would be very useful if the selection process were simplified.
5. Explain more about the option for delivering fresh, frozen and non-perishable items. I would be concerned about whether the fresh and frozen products would be delivered in a refrigerated truck or freezer.
6. One thing that I believe could definitely use some improvement is the piece of information about frozen and refrigerated food should be in a location that is easier to find and in a bigger font. I think that a consumer could easily miss that information and have a bad experience with ordering an item that cannot be shipped to their state and perceive the website as a poor experience!
7. Display the link to create an account on the main page.
8. Your favorites or your products, so repeated items that you would purchase are easy to find.
9. Instead of just having text in the left sidebar, it would be easier to use graphics in the center of the page to display the different sections that items are listed under. Personally, I find it is easier to look at graphics rather than just the text off to the side. Since the initial page for say, grocery, doesn’t have much on it maybe the graphics could fill in all the white space.
10. I wish the dirt cheap deals were for healthier foods. Maybe list specials in each category.

There isn’t one glaring issue that the reviewers are focused on, and most of the suggestions are pretty simple. Reorganize the categories to reduce clicking, clarify the frozen foods shipment information and post it a little more prominently, and clean out some of the white space on the pages.

One of the reviewers suggests adding a way to save favorites so items you purchase repeatedly are easily available. This appears to be a function of the site once you create an account, however the account creation link is not available until you start digging deeper into the site, which explains why the reviewer missed it. What this means is that potential consumers hunting around for an online grocery store that they can use regularly will click through to the main page and may simply assume they cannot create an account and bounce back to the search engine that lead them here.

A few quick fixes and the site would be ready for retesting.