by Fred Brown

Last Exit, London

www.LastExit.tv

Open 24/7

I loved working in retail. The pace of it, the volume of goods, the customers, the camaraderie of the team. Using early Psion series 2 hand held computers to count stock while earning some student cash in the food department at Marks and Spencers in London’s King’s Road. Inspecting the shopping baskets of celebrities. But what I remember most clearly is the quality of display and service to which we aspired. For example:

- ensuring that the display ends were always full, so that when you entered the store it looked well stocked, even though it quite often wasn’t

- monitoring stock levels of the top 20 lines (smoked salmon, champagne, caviar, that sort of thing) to avoid customers’ dinner parties being ruined by the absence of the crucial ingredient

1. -placing new lines in optimum locations so they can be seen
   

2. -opening additional checkouts if queues started to form
   

- having staff always on hand to help customers find the foie gras

- a consistent layout, flowers and bread at the front, cold chain to the right, groceries to the left, freezers at the back, so you know where you are

1. -customer services provided in a prominent location
   

Why then, do I find online retail so universally uninspiring? Because very little, if any, of the above has been translated into the online space. Food retailers from upmarket Ocado to value-driven Asda have websites that ask you to wade through lists (optimistically labelled as aisles) and then to scroll through endless items with miniscule thumbnails. It doesn’t have to be like this. I see no reason why the general idea behind the iTunes store or the BBC iPlayer site cannot be applied to grocery shopping, presenting things in an intuitive and appealing way. And when it comes to delivery, extra vehicles should be allocated to continue availability at the most popular times.

That said, some retailers are trying. Same day delivery for the instant gratification generation in London and half a dozen American cities from Amazon is more like it. And aggregators like Kayak for travel and confused.com for car insurance show the benefit of innovation and making things quick and simple for customers.

But the sad bottom line is that for the shopping any household needs to do most often, for the food and the washing powder, the experience is depressing. We could fill a shopping basket with ideas to make things better.