Tesco’s head of R&D Nick Lansley has leaked a few pics of the new Tesco grocery iPhone app – which should be released on to the iTunes store from 6am tomorrow (9 Sept 2010) – along with some descriptions of how it will work. UPDATE – The app is now launched and available on iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/tesco/id351841858
From Nick’s previews it looks like the app emulates near enough all of the functionality of the Tesco online website, according to Lansley “you’ll get the entire grocery range to choose from – on average that’s more than 20,000 products.”
When you first enter the app you need to enter your login email and password and you’re then passed to the opening screen (above). You can then choose a delivery slot, and see when the next order is due (which you can amend if you wish):
The Shopping List is your own memo pad, allowing you to type any product name in free-form text, or you can go through the different sections and dig-down into the entire Tesco.com grocery range using the department – aisle – shelf hierarchy to get to or browse for products.
You can also use your standard Favourites list (above) – When you register an account and use a Clubcard, your Favourites list stores all the items you have previously purchased online in in-store.
You can also filter your favourites to view just those on special offer. In the example right, notice that one of the products has a green background – this means that product is already in your basket. All searches showing products in your basket will be highlighted this way so you can change the quantity or even remove them if you wish.
Finally you get to the basket. From here you tap the checkout button which will cause the app to start the iPhone’s Safari browser which will connect into a checkout special page designed for iPhone on the Tesco.com grocery web site.
All in all it looks great. We can’t wait until tomorrow morning to put it to test. It looks like the year of planning, design, coding and testing by Tesco and their mobile design and development partner Ribot (see Lansley’s very nice piece about them here http://techfortesco.blogspot.com/2010/08/who-are-ribot-and-why-did-we-make-them.html) have all been well used.
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