In a first for the country, Dutch retailer Albert Heijn is launching mobile phone shopping for home delivery. Appie, the retailer´s mobile app and shopping assistant, has been enhanced with a mobile ordering function.
The Dutch increasingly rely on Appie. With nearly two million downloads to date, the application is used some three million times every month. Appie ensures that Albert Heijn customers always have an up-to-the-minute shopping list to help them get through their shop a lot quicker, as it is organized according to their store’s layout. Many of today’s Appie users have expressed a desire to order their shopping by mobile phone, and this latest ordering function fits in with Albert Heijn’s objective to make shopping even more convenient and easy.
Some 4,000 Appie users have exhaustively tested the new ordering function over the past couple of months, placing and taking delivery of hundreds of mobile orders. The pilot revealed that customers would like the option to change their order later in the week, and Albert Heijn has used these and other findings to improve the ordering function even more and make mobile shopping through Appie as easy as possible.
Albert Heijn first launched Appie for iPhone in November 2009, later also supporting the app on Android devices and via ah.nl. Appie helps consumers remember, select and order their shopping. Functions such as autosuggest and the barcode scanner help draw up a list swiftly and easily, with promotional offers and previous buys added in. Albert Heijn’s delivery service ensures that customers’ shopping is delivered into their kitchens within 24 hours of ordering, and they themselves select a time that best suits them. The service is widely available but does not yet cover the entire country. Customers can check online whether their address falls within the delivery area.
By: Leon Goldwater
